Freelance writer and blogger, Yohana Petrovic contacted me with an idea for a post describing four tools that can help you become a better writer. Enjoy!

The best free tools to improve your writing skills!

The art of writing is a combination of language, technical skills and creativity. The language and technical aspects of your writing include elements such as grammar and proofreading. However, grammar is an area from which you can learn every day. The command over grammar is like the electricity powering your computer: you will need that power every day to create polished content.

The creativity aspect of your writing includes the major element, which is your uniqueness – ‘your style of writing’. Hence, there are categories such as fiction writer, resume writer, copywriter, content writer and so on.

If you have just begun your writing career, then give it a minimum of 3-6 months to understand…

Frankly, I’m surprised this is even asked anymore. And yet, I did encounter the question a few days ago. I consulted Author Marketing Ideas,  Vox.com and, of course, Author Earnings for some interesting statistics on ebooks.

EBooks are on the rise right now. Having an eBook allows you to offer your audience a new way of reading your book. Nowadays it seems just about everyone owns a tablet or some kind of eReader and prefer to read on these devices.

from vox.com

The healthy state of the book market owes a lot to ebooks, as the trendlines are negative for print. The data about e-book sales and print sales are never fully clear, but we do know that total book sales in 2013 was almost $15 billion, according to the Associations of American Publishers. That’s a 14% increase since 2008. E-books accounted for $3 billion. If we took…

Merry List-mas! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but before everyone stops reading blogs for Christmas, there is time for a top ten.

So, in the spirit of one of my favourite posts from the last year (10 Reasons Why Being A Writer Is Like Working In Middle Management), here’s a seasonal take on the writing life.

10 Reasons Why Being A Writer Is Like Being Santa Claus

1.   Most people don’t believe in you. You’re not even sure if you believe in yourself.

2.   Your greatest work is done alone, or in remote locations.

3.   You work for free.

4.   You have a long and illustrious cultural history, but people are always questioning your future.

5.   You’ve worked bloody hard for a very long time to get where you are. But as soon as people hear of you, they think you’re an overnight success.

6.

With the release of my poetry collection, ‘A Poetic Proposal’, I have been pondering, musing if you will, on why it is that we write poetry. Reflecting further upon what I consider a rather interesting question, I came up with a few reasons why it is that I like to write poetry.

We will get on to some of those thoughts shortly. I figured that there must be as many different reasons for writing poetry as there are poets out there. What is it that motivates us? Is every poet different or are there commonalities that can be observed? What is it that gave each of us that first initial spark, that push to write poetry?

Not satisfied with just my own thoughts and opinions I decided to garner those of some of my favourite, blogging poets to help me answer this question. It was very illuminating to discover…

Exciting stuff! The prestigious Indies Unlimited published a guest post by me a couple of weeks ago, titled “My Golden Rules of Writing.” I’m republishing here under a new name, to separate it from my previous Golden rules post. It’s nothing you haven’t read before in this blog, but it’s a fresh spin on things.

I was particularly intrigued by a comment made: “different people will get different things [from the post] … some folks may see it as satire, while others may be appalled.”

As such an interpretation hadn’t occurred to me, I wonder what you make of it.

Anyway, here it is: my Indies Unlimited guest post, in all its glory! 🙂

My Golden Rules of Writing

Writers seem to fall into one of two camps: Those who love following the rules and those who love to break them. My view? The rules taught in workshops and classrooms only matter to…

I came across a blog post referring to an ethical author code. This, I believe, is an excellent way to show your readers, potential publishers and fellow writers that you consider these principals to be correct and worthy of upholding. Displaying the logo will enable everyone reading your blog to be in no doubt of your responsibility to your craft and those who come into contact with you.

Will you adhere to the code?

Do you think it is a good idea, requires revision or unrealistic as a goal?

Ethical Author Code

Guiding principle: Putting the reader first

When I market my books, I put my readers first. This means that I don’t engage in any practices that have the effect of misleading the readers/buyers of my books. I behave professionally online and offline when it comes to the following practices in my writing life:

Courtesy

I behave with courtesy…

Nook Press has come out with a Print-On-Demand (POD) service.

Note that this isn’t like Amazon’s Createspace — Barnes and Noble isn’t going to put your paperback up for sale online or in stores. It’s more like an alternative to Lulu.

I fed Castle Falcon into the system to see what I would get. Like Lulu and Createspace, you upload PDF files for interiors and covers.

The purchase price is lower than for Lulu books. My hardcover dust jacket version would cost me $16.42 at Nook versus $22.55 for the Lulu version. A Nook casewrap version is $14.92 versus $19.55 at Lulu. A Nook Press 9×6 paperback is about $10.00, compared to $6.80 if I order a copy of my Createspace version, so they don’t beat Amazon’s price for author orders. They barely beat Amazon’s $11.69 retail price. There don’t seem to be any quantity discounts.

I don’t know what the binding…