Instapaper, One of My Favorite Writing Tools

Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing No Responses »
Nov 092011

Save time and energy saving articles to Instapaper

 

 

A dozen times a week I’ll stumble upon a news story or an article on the web that I’m interested in but don’t want to take the time to read right then.

This happens too when I’m researching material for this blog or the three (!) books I’m writing.

Pigs don’t fly.

I have never been foolish enough to tell myself I’d remember to go back to an article, so I tried to solve this problem by making folders under my browser’s “Favorites” for each project I was working on. I even had one called “Hot at the Moment” for oddball things that interested me but didn’t apply to my work.

There were numerous problems with this system. Foremost among them was that the folders would quickly fill up with a confusing morass of links. I also found myself reluctant to spend more time on the computer reading than I was already putting in.

Enter Instapaper.

With one click on a button on my browser toolbar titled “Read Later” I can now save the text on any web page to my Instapaper account.

Instapaper automatically synchs what I save to my iPad via the Instapaper app. The app’s opening screen lists the title of each of the items saved with a few lines of text so I can easily find what I’m looking for.

Since the items are downloaded to the iPad, I can read them anywhere including bed, bath, or beyond. Ok, not bath. That really would be daring with an iPad.

It’s mostly free and easy.

To get started, create a free account on Instapaper’s website and follow the simple instructions to install the Read Later button on your browser.

The iPad app, which is good to go on your iPhone too, is $4.99.

No iPad but you’ve got a Kindle or a Nook? With a little finessing you can download what you’ve saved to either one. Go here for instructions.

No iPad, no Kindle, and no Nook? Where do you buy those leisure suits? Have no fear, you can read your saved articles on your PC or laptop too.

Isn’t it great? With technology, life just gets easier and easier.

Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:25 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

What Will They Want to Read Tomorrow? Anticipate Trends with “Top Searches.”

Books, E-books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing No Responses »
Oct 162011

George Bernard Shaw was an ardent socialist.

 

 

 “If you want to see how a society thinks, look at what it searches for.”

—George Bernard Shaw

Allow me to slightly rewrite Shaw’s wise counsel: “If you want to know what a society is interested in reading about, look at what it searches for.”

As writers (and publishers) of nonfiction books, magazine articles—even novels—it behooves us to be on top of whatever is about to break into the collective consciousness.

In other words, to be able to predict what a majority—or at least a large segment—of us are going to be interested in next week, next month, or next year.

 Easier said than done

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that, by the time I notice a trend exists, it’s already fading.

So how do you figure out what next will be hot?

Check out the “Top Searches” lists supplied for free by many Internet search engines. Most of them keep the lists updated and archives of past lists are even available.

The searched-for items that appear on each list are undoubtedly what people are interested in at the moment.

However, these subjects may be old news by the time you do your research and write about them, so look for subjects that are just beginning to show up here and there on these lists. Also check the archived lists to see what subjects have exhibited staying power.

Here are some places to start:

 Google Trends

On Google Trends, you can get a list of the 20 current hot searches or reset the date to see what was hot on any specific day going back to May 15, 2007.  

You can also do a keyword search that returns a graph that shows search volume and news reference volume.

When I searched on “Kindle,” the graph went back to 2004, which I assume was the first mention of Kindle by Amazon.com. It then flat-lined through 2005, 2006, and most of 2007, spiking when the first Kindles became available late in 2007.

After a lackluster 2008, search volume steadily climbed in 2009 to the present with a huge spike coinciding with the recent release of the Kindle Fire.

 Yahoo! Buzz

Yahoo Buzz lists its search engine’s current top 20 searches as well as the current top 20 “Movers.” Movers are terms that are currently spiking.

As I write this—on Sunday, October 16, 2011—Movers include “401k Plans,” “9 9 9 Tax Plan,” and “Bankruptcy Protection.” Hmmm. Wonder why.

 Menu choices across the top of Yahoo Buzz’s home screen deliver the current top 20 searches under the categories actors, movies, music, sports, TV, and video games.

Want to know what’s fading? Click on “Decliners” for a current list of the 20 terms that are most rapidly declining in popularity.

 Bing

Go to Bing Images to see the latest trends in what images people are searching for.

 Technorati

Technorati doesn’t have a great deal to do with Internet searches, but nothing much is more current than the blogosphere. Spend some time on Technorati to keep up on what is popular in the world of bloggers.

 By the way, George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Noble Prize for Literature and an Oscar. We should be so talented.

 Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 2:35 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Need to Add a Plot Twist? Watch This.

Fiction, Writing 2 Responses »
Jul 172011

Under the category of “Beware What You Wish For” comes this author-centric video in which the plot device is the plot device.

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

That was worth nine minutes, wasn’t it?
I first saw this on Kristin, the polite agent’s, blog: Pub Rants.
BTW, polite literary agents abound, it just seems otherwise since the self-impressed ones make so much noise.

Just a write thought.

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 10:31 am Tagged with: , , ,

Emulate James Lee Burke's Strong Imagery to Show Not Tell

Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing 3 Responses »
Jul 102011

Burke's writing is as rich and multihued as a Louisiana bayou.

I’m a fan of James Lee Burke. I thought I’d read every Dave Robicheaux novel he’s written, but just yesterday I found a jacket-less hard cover copy of Crusader’s Cross mixed in with books I’d picked up somewhere and had been meaning to get to. It was like opening a discarded wallet and finding a hundred dollar bill.

Burke is strong on imagery and thrifty on words.

Here, in Cross, is how he tells us what  Dave Robicheaux and his brother Jimmie’s childhoods were like:

Before breakfast, my mother would return from the barn smelling of manure and horse sweat, a pail of frothy milk in one hand and an armful of brown eggs smeared with chickenshit clutched against her chest. Then she would pull off her shirt, scrub her hands and arms with Lava soap under the pump in the sink, and in her bra fill our bowls with cush-cush and make ham-and-onion sandwiches for our lunches.

Jimmie and I both had paper routes in New Iberia’s red-light district. We set pins in the bowling alley and with our mother washed bottles in the Tabasco factory on the bayou. My father hand-built the home we lived in, notching and pegging the oak beams with such seamless craftsmanship that it survived the full brunt of a half dozen hurricanes with no structural damage. My mother ironed clothes in a laundry nine hours a day in hundred-and-ten-degree heat. She scalded and picked chickens for five cents apiece in our backyard, and secretly saved money in a coffee can for two years in order to buy an electric ice grinder and start a snowball concession at the minor league baseball park.

Our parents were illiterate and barely spoke English, but they were among the most brave and resourceful people I ever knew. Neither of them would consciously set about to do wrong. But they destroyed one another just the same—my father with his alcoholism, my mother with her lust and insatiable need for male attention. Then they destroyed their self-respect, their family, and their home. They did all this with the innocence of people who had never been farther away from their Cajun world than their weekend honeymoon trip to New Orleans.

In three short, image-filled paragraphs Burke shows us, rather than tells us, his family was poor, hardworking, and dysfunctional.

Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, Burke’s frugal yet rich style is worth emulating.

Just a write thought.

 

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 11:24 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

Four Reasons Writers & Publishers Should Be Thankful

Books, E-books, Fiction, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing 1 Response »
Nov 242010

As unemployment in the United States hovers near nine percent this Thanksgiving, people who write or who publish have at least four things to be thankful for.

One: A writer or publisher can never be replaced by a computer anymore than a barber can.

Two: Some writers (and their publishers, obviously) are raking in the dough, perhaps you can join them.

For instance, Forbes magazine somehow gathered a list of the 10 best-compensated authors in the world for the one year period June 1, 2009 to May 31, 2010:

  1.  James Patterson ($70 million)
  2.  Stephenie Meyer ($40 million)
  3.  Stephen King ($34 million)
  4.  Danielle Steel ($32 million)
  5.  Ken Follett ($20 million)
  6.  Dean Koontz ($18 million)
  7.  Janet Evanovich ($16 million)
  8.  John Grisham ($15 million)
  9.  Nicolas Sparks ($14 million)
  10. J.K. Rowling ($10 million)

It is interesting that all in this top 10 are fiction writers. Nonfiction writing is easier to make a living on, but I guess if you are planning on getting on the Forbes Top Ten list, you’d better write fiction.

Three: Writing well is job security.

Even if you too aren’t on this list, but still have a day job and can write to boot, you have lots to celebrate. In the office of every business I’ve been in, from the wholesaling of wine to the publishing of books, there have been those few who are sought out by coworkers for help writing something, be it an important e-mail or an employee manual. Good writers are generally clearer thinkers and better communicators. People with these skills are, or at least should be, the last to be laid off.

Four: Content is king.

As the huge multi-national corporations battle it out over what e-reader the masses will use when reading and how that which they do read will be delivered, the demand for written material is certain to wax not wane. Printed books may be in less demand in the future, maybe even long-form prose will be, but people will not stop reading and someone has to supply the content. That is where writers and publishers come in.

An aside: Never say die.

According to a Christian Science Monitor item, Google has counted the books in the world. There are 129,864,880. When I read this, I felt the same profound insignificance I feel when I look up at the stars on clear summer nights. Then it dawned on me, while I’ll never create a star, I can write a book. Ego restored, I sat down to work on my novel.

Just a write thought

Posted by Stephen Blake Mettee at 1:51 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
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