Occasionally, the fact I sign my name as the fairly androgynous ‘Ali’ leads people to assume I am a man. This belies the fact that however peppered with links to my online endeavours my email signature may be, most recipients of my missives can’t be arsed clicking them.
Continue reading “Should You Choose a Pseudonym?”
I was doing a bit of research t’other day for an article on The Edinburgh Reporter about the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Awards Showcase, and was struck by how few of the winners had an easily accessible social media presence.
Continue reading “Should Writers Use Social Media?”
Every so often, someone comes along and tries to change the way we do things.
This is particularly relevant in the world of the written word. When some genius decided to go from cave paintings to papyrus scrolls* there was uproar in the publishing industry. Nobody had done it before and so nobody could envision doing it differently, but now we wouldn’t read our ancient Egyptian texts any other way. Similarly at the time of William Shakespeare, nobody gave a toss about fixed spelling (Bill spelt his name in several different ways) but these days we’re always getting ourselves worked up about kids using text speak instead of proper English.
Obviously we’ve had a lot of chat about the digital revolution on this blog, what with the Great Kindle Challenge and asking almost all interviewees for their thoughts on eBooks and such. But what is the next evolutionary step in reading experience? I’m glad you asked.
Continue reading “Foreshadows: Changing the way we read”
I have written about the difficulties of conflicting advice for writers on a number of occasions, but one thing that always crops up everywhere is that you cannot write unless you read. You have to do this all the time, widely and critically, fiction and nonfiction, books, papers, magazines and even blogs.
But why?
Continue reading “Do Writers Need to Read?”
My name is Ali and I’ve been blogging for ten years.
Continue reading “How to Blog”
12 Books in 12 Months 
How to write blog comments
I mentioned this is because if I was going to say something I’d want it to add value to the discussion, or at the very make me appear pithy / wise / hilarious to other readers…. But also conceded that I love getting comments on my blog regardless of what they say, because the important thing is someone stayed long enough to read an entire post. People often get here by accident – sometimes looking for Glempy, Sandra, or Michelle; other times because some of my tags are a bit facetious.
Still, I’m rarely inundated with chat in the comments section and I reckon this is partly down to the fact that lurking readers do the same thing as me – read (or skim), go ‘I see. Well, I have nothing to add,’ and move on. But help is at hand! From now on you will always have something to add – just choose from one of my top ten pithy and insightful blog comments*, listed below. Copying and pasting has never made a blogger feel so validated.
Continue reading “How to write blog comments” →
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