Open Journalism For All - News, Documentaries And Information Services

The sensible old Chinese sentiment has a key gist; the tale illustrated the fact that we all acknowledge an occasion much more when it is viewed. By the way of video production or videography it is achievable to record a sequence of occasions.

Nowadays in countless organisations presentations, video footage is regularly used. By using video production it is achievable to deliver the necessary message to various different potential customers to help tempt them. Online Video production at this moment is utilised for countless different reasons; however, more than a few online promotional videos and brand related presentations are usually developed in order to attain specific company targets. If you are searching for corporate video production companies in London then talk to Vidify.

Audio video productions are currently in style and as a consequence are used in nearly any kind of industry activity. Video agencies at the outset typically interact with a particular client or a company that looks to produce an online promotional video a presentation or an assortment of video clips. The entire occupation of video production is commonly carried out by a number of freelancers; yet there are one or two creative agencies around at the moment.

Participation of music composers, cameraman and script writers can also be very common when creating audio video presentations. What’s more, advertising agencies and public relations firms have only recently become involved with video publishing and distribution.

Writing is something that everyone can enjoy! Writing is freeing and fun and exciting, if you really let your imagination go writing can take you to places that you have never been before. The world would be a sad and empty place without good writer to cheer it up!

If you are having trouble starting to write all you need to do is sit down and do it. Do not worry about writing well, just write anything that comes to mind. This kind of free flowing thinking is a great way to get the old writing muscles working. You can always go over things and edit later, or just throw out that bit of writing but it will get your imagination flowing like it needs to in order to be a successful writer.

It is also a good idea to forgo the idea of using a computer or typewriter. Try writing by hand at first. Things tend to flow out much better when you are writing by hand. This is the perfect way to deal with any blocks that you are running into when you are writing.

You may also want to take some time to pick up some great online writing tips. The internet is the perfect resource for just about anything including writing. You can learn from some of the best writers in history if you use the internet the right way. They have all kinds of great tips posted online so start looking them up today.

If you need to do some research for your writing then you will want to take a trip to the local library. The library has books on any and every subject in the world so get some ideas or info there when you are stuck.

Writing anxiety and writing block are informal terms that are used to denote pessimistic and anxious feeling about writing. Researches showed that the majority of students exhibit unusually strong apprehension about writing. This debilitating condition forces students to avoid majors, jobs, and courses that require writing.

In fact, having some level of writing anxiety can help you concentrate, really your thoughts together, and devote all of them to writing. However, in excessive quantities it can become a hindrance; here is where the actual problem lies.

Some experienced writers claim that this feeling has the situational character and is not pervasive in person’s writing life. Others say that writing block and anxiety show up only during our most stressful deadline-driven periods, and stay until we find the way to show them the door.

Writing anxiety encroaches upon a writer, who doesn’t know what to write about, or simply doesn’t know where to start writing, and is usually accompanied by (1) continuous procrastination of the writing tasks, (2) becoming nervous because of the impossibility to write anything at all, (3) quickening heartbeat, and sweaty palms.

All in all, every writer, at least once in his life, experiences moments, which create anxiety. Surely, there is a great deal of variations among individuals; however, there are some common experiences that writers can find stressful.

Writing anxiety can be a result of a great variety of social, academic, and personal factors. Some of them are:

• Writing for readers that have previously been overly critical and demanding to the writer’s work.

• Working in limited or unstructured time.

• Adjusting to the new forms of writing that causes some troubles to the writer.

• Being preoccupied with college life and social issues.

• Professors that may seem intimidating and relentless.

• Fear to failure.

Such circumstances can increase the stress level of the writer and become an awful distraction. The good news is that there are ways to restore writing equilibrium and get down to writing. Here are some practical steps to help writers unlock their writing talents.

I. Brainstorming and organizing your ideas

Brainstorming and organizing your ideas are as important as the process of actual writing. As a matter of fact, it provides a guaranteed solution to overcome the writer’s block. This strategy is very simple.

You begin with a blank sheet of paper or a computer screen. You write your topic at the top, and, then, write everything you can about it. While brainstorming different ideas, you don’t care about grammar and editing, you simply brainstorm various approaches to the subject matter under consideration.

When you are completely out of ideas, you look at the list of the jotted ideas, and reconsider your topic, cutting down the ideas that stray away from it.

Then, you organize these ideas and find the central idea that gives a decent place to start the first draft, and states an essential truth about your topic. Since you have found the leading idea, try to arrange all the other points in the logical order that you’ll use in your essay.

II. Free writing

Free writing is one of the best ways around the writer’s block. Free writing is a non-stop writing designed to uncover ideas that has no rules and forms to follow. Focused free writing involves writing on a particular topic as a means to discover what you already know or think about it. It helps you write when you don’t feel like writing, loosens you up and gets you moving.

You write down the topic at the top of the page. Then, you set your clock for five or ten minutes, and put your pen to paper. The main idea is to write for a short, specified period of time, keeping your hand moving until your time is up. Remember that you are not allowed to stop, even if you have nothing to say, write first that occurs to your mind in the act of writing. And one more thing to remember is that you don’t form any judgments about what you are writing. When the time is up, you go back over the text, and identify ideas that should carry over your text.

III. Clustering

Like brainstorming and free associating, clustering allows you to start writing without any clear ideas. To begin to cluster choose the word, which is central to your assignment, write this word at the middle of the paper. All around it place the words that occur to you when you think about this word. In such a way you write down all the words that you associate with this concrete word. You write it quickly, circling each word, grouping them around your central word, and connecting the new words to the previous ones.

Clustering doesn’t have to be logically built and well-structured; it allows you to explore new insights without committing them to a particular order.

Hope that these options will help you handle your writing anxiety and forget about this mental deadlock once and for all!

Linda Correli is a staff writer of http://www.CustomResearchPapers.us/ and an author of the popular online tutorial for students “What Teachers Want: Master the Art of Essay Writing in 10 Days”, available at http://www.Go2Essay.com/ Visit Linda’s web log at http://custom-research-papers.blogspot.com/

The Basics of Plot. Although you will obviously be familiar with
the concept of ‘plot’, most people don’t actually think in a
plot-like fashion. As you write a book, the logical, compelling
step-by-step sequence that makes up a good plot almost always
starts life as a single good idea plus a jumble of images and
thoughts without any coherent structure. To create a bestseller
with a plot to die for, these almost random images and turning
points need to be assembled into a solid plot. Indeed, if
possible, they need to be assembled into a sequence that the
typical reader will assume to be the ONLY valid order!

When writing a novel, the most effective way to order your
turning points is the ‘plot card’ method. In its simplest form,
this involves buying a stack of 3 x 5 cardboard index cards and
jotting down one plot point on each of them. You can have as
many of these as you like. Doing it with paper and pencil is
feasible, although if you want to be professional about it,
software is a better route. the ‘PlotCard’ ™ online system
offered by www.GetPlotted.com is about
the best you’ll find, with facilities to order cards, assign
visual clues to them (such as icons for ‘inciting incidents’,
‘black moments’ etc), preview them in the form of a synopsis and
so on.

However you decide to do it, when you have enough cards, lay
them out in the sequence that seems most ‘natural’ to you. (If
you are using the www.GetPlotted.com Plotcard
system, use the little arrows to move the cards around, and
preview it regularly to see if it really does make sense as a
sequence of events). You can use blank cards as placeholders for
chapters that are currently blank (for example, how does your
hero find out about the villain’s weakness? Use a blank card and
fill it in later). Don’t be surprised if new ideas spring into
your mind as you address these blank cards. It’s perfectly
normal for a blank card to turn into 3 or 4 more as the story
grows and expands. The GetPlotted system allows you to add as
many cards as you need - just click the ‘new’ button, and use
the arrows to position it wherever you like. If you are using
paper and pencil, insert a blank card and move the rest up (or
down!).

You will also start to realize as you add plot points to your
novel that some of your original ideas may now be substandard,
and can be deleted. Don’t be afraid to do this! A good plot is
lean, and gets where it’s going in a direct fashion. If deleting
plot cards scares you, remember that you can always add them
back in whenever you like. On the GetPlotted system, a good
place to store these ‘dead’ cards is your ’scratchpad’. It can
hold over 150k of text - so don’t be shy. If you are stuck with
pen and paper, put defunct cards in a separate box in case you
suddenly decide to reinstate them.

Most new authors tend to try and run before they can walk -
using flashbacks is a common attempt t at this, and trust us,
you probably won’t write ‘The Usual Suspects’ first time out!.
Until you are comfortable with the process, it is best to stick
to standard chronological order, no matter what the actual
timescale of the story. As they explain on www.GetPlotted.com, it’s
important to continually address the ‘why’ of the story. In
other words, avoid randomness. If your hero has to be an
ex-football player, why? Is it just because you think it is
‘cool’? Or will he need to throw something 120 yards at the end
of the book in order to save the day? What is the REASON?! Same
thing applies to scenes - if there is no ‘why’ answer for a
card’s existence, why is it still in your plot? As we said
before, don’t be afraid to chop.

You will know when your plot is finished. That is the point at
which it seems to you that there is no other possible
arrangement of cards that is better, and where every single card
serves an essential purpose in moving the story on. When this
happens, you are ready to actually start writing. We’ll leave
that one for another day though!

Rule number one - You must write ezine articles and submit them to publishers and content sites.

Rule number two - You must include a resourcebox that gives you profits, subscribers, link popularity etc or what ever you want from your resourcebox.

Tips how to get good response from Your resourcebox:

***1. No more than 7 lines:

Longer the resourcebox, it is difficult to scan through. Afterall most people first scan documents, articles to get an outline of what is about. So try keep less and only important bio in the resourcebox.

If you have 10 web sites, don’t be temptated to keep all web site urls in resourcebox. Bad way of advertising. Select one free give away product, one flagship product and keep those two urls in your resourcebox.

***2. Give something free:

DON’T try to sell products through your resourcebox. Try to grab the details of the reader like email address. If you have his email address, you sure can do follow up him.

***3. URL issues:

Try to avoid these-

• forget to keep urls

• long urls

• direct affiliate links with out some cloacking

• misspelled urls

• broken urls

• nothing but urls in your resourcebox

• hyperlinking to your url with ‘Click here’ word. Try to expose your url.

***4. Link popularity:

Keep only urls in the resourcebox. Email links don’t improve your web site link popularity. So if you want to keep your ezines subscription link, keep your web site form link like yourdomain.com/subscribe.html. Not myezine@domain.com?subject=subscribe.

***5. Take care of words:

• Don’t use all capitals

• Avoid hype words

• explain your product in 2 - 3 lines

• Always include benefits

• If possible use the word ‘free’

• misspelled words

About The Author

Radhika Venkata - Subscribe to ‘EbookBiz Magazine’ which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

http://www.ebooks-world.com/freetosell.shtml

Webmaster Resources: List Your product, ezine or web site free!

http://www.webmasters-central.com/

Even as I wrote the title for this article, I got confused. Is “proofread” one word or two? I thought it was two, and my spell checker didn’t have a problem with that, but when I double-checked myself with a popular on- line dictionary, I was able to catch my mistake. Proofread is in fact one word, “proofread v. tr. To read (copy or proof) in order to find errors and mark corrections.”

I’m not a grammarian or editor by any stretch of the definition, but I do get some practice through proofreading my own writing as well as my clients. One of the value-added services I include in my business coaching packages is email support where I’ll do a quick proofing of my clients’ ad copy or important documents. So while I’m not a qualified copy editor/writer, I have noticed some common mistakes that slip past the typical business owner’s own proofreading.

Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:

1. People will skip over your copy if it’s hard to read. The human brain will avoid things that are perceived as difficult. It’s that simple. So the most compelling reason to proofread with a fine-tooth comb is this: If you want people to read your copy, you must make it easy.

2. Mistakes stand out more than the good copy that surrounds them. It’s sort of like having a large food stain on your shirt. Most people will notice the stain, maybe even wonder what you had for lunch, and few will notice how lovely your shirt is otherwise.

3. Do it yourself, but also get a second opinion. Most small business owners are tight on cash, so hiring a professional editor (+$30/hour) isn’t always feasible. Ask your coach, your partner, or a friend to read over your materials, particularly if they’re going off to a paper & ink printer where mistakes can be costly.

4. Take a break from writing before you proofread. When you’re writing, all the content and ideas are already in your head. If you go straight into proofreading, there’s a natural bias toward reading your intended meaning into the copy, instead of scanning it for errors.

5. Get it off the computer screen and print it out. This step is essential for printed materials so you can check the actual size & layout for readability. It’s also helpful for when you’re tired of the glaring screen. Try printing your copy with double spaces and using a colored marker for notations.

6. Spell checking with your computer isn’t enough. Many words sound similar but have different meanings, and spell check won’t catch it. This is especially true if English is your 2nd language. An accent or slang can be charming when spoken, but can look incompetent when written.

7. Read your copy out loud. This is a great way to double check your sentence structure. If it feels awkward to speak, it’s probably just as awkward to read.

8. Choose fonts that are easy to read. For paragraph text, use fonts of at least 10pts. Stick with basic fonts like Arial or Times New Roman that most computers or internet browsers can display properly. If you want to have fun with stylized fonts, save them for your headlines.

9. Keep your alignment tidy. Left alignment is always easy to read. Center alignment looks best for short bits of text, but looks terrible with bulleted lists or long paragraphs. If you want text in the center of the page, but that still looks neat, try using left alignment but then increase the line indent.

10. Use a consistent capitalization style. There are 3 basic capitalization styles: ALL CAPS; no caps; and First Letter Caps. Switching styles within copy looks jumbled and confusing. It’s ok to have a different style in the headers vs. the text, but all headers should be the same, just as all text should be the same.

11. Hyphens that result from line breaks should be avoided. Adjust your text box size, move a graphic, try justifying the alignment, do whatever it takes to get rid of any hyphens that cut words in half because it disrupts flow and makes your copy hard to read.

12. Use bullets, lists, and blank rows for easier reading. Most people skim instead of actually reading every word. Break up your text into bite-size pieces for stronger impact. Another way to make reading easier is to limit your paragraph width to 65 characters/line (about the width of this article.)

13. Punctuation should support your ideas, not distract. Commas are a way to express your thoughts in sets, such as this idea, that idea, and that other idea. Without punctuation what you get is a run on and on and on some more sentence. (See what I mean?) Also, use exclamation points sparingly, if at all. Exclamation points can be tacky!!! Try italics instead.

Most people will forgive the occasional typo, especially with informal communications like email. But if you’re trying to make a favorable impression as a way to build your business credibility, do whatever it takes to get your copy proofread first. Remember, it’s not just what you say, but how you say it that counts, and that goes double for whatever you put into writing.

Copyright 2006 Jaya Schillinger

Jaya Schillinger is a certified life coach & small business consultant with over 20 years of business ownership & management experience in the fields of personal development, health, and beauty. Get your complimentary consultation at http://www.InspirationInc.com or visit Jaya’s Blog at http://www.inspirationalbusiness.com
©2006 Jaya Schillinger, Inspiration Inc.

People are making a fortune on pamphlets. If you go into an airport you can purchase a pamphlet for around $6.95, and it probably cost under fifty cents to produce. It blows my mind to think that little folded up booklets are the sole reason that some people are rich today. It’s crazy.

I know a woman who is selling one of these little books on how to design cool business cards. Her pamphlet consists of 100 tips and a bunch of folded white paper. Her price? Five bucks a pop. Pamphlets are great because the production cost is cheap and they can be sold in bulk to companies who will give them away as a goodwill item. They are also an impulse buy based on cheap price and good information. Be sure to focus more attention to your bigger sales. Pamphlets can be given away if they are distracting customers from your more expensive packages.

A friend of mine has a book, not a pamphlet, but not a textbook either. He sold the rights to his creation, and did not even have to print or ship it; they handled everything. A couple hundred thousand copies later, he has a big chunk of money in his hand and he hasn’t lifted a finger since he wrote it.

About the Author

Tom Antion provides entertaining speeches and educational seminars. Tom is the author of the best selling presentation skills book “Wake ‘em Up Business Presentations” and “Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing.” It is important to Tom that his knowledge be not only absorbed, but enjoyed. Tom has addressed more than 87 different industries and is thoroughly committed to his client’s needs. http://www.antion.com

Freelance writing is as much about selling yourself as it is
about writing. With this in mind, we asked some of the employers
who use our site, and others like it, just what it is that they
look for in a freelance writer. Here’s what they told us:

1. Employers won’t go looking for the information they need

“A lot of the freelancers who replied to my advert just sent me
their quote and nothing else,” says Angel, who advertised for a
freelancer in July. “There was absolutely nothing to set them
apart from all of the other writers who responded, and I’d have
had to contact them with questions to try and get the
information I needed out of them. Needless to say, I didn’t
bother. I employed one of the writers who took the time to tell
me a bit about herself, and why she was right for the job.”

2. Employers won’t ask the same question twice

If an employer asks a specific question: “what’s your writing
experience?” say, or “who have you worked for before?” they
expect an answer. Strangely, not all freelancers give them that
answer.

“I advertised for a proofreader,” says Jason. “One freelancer
responded with a huge spiel telling me what a wonderful writer
he was. That’s great, but I wanted a proofreader. Rather than
emailing him back and asking about his proofreading
qualifications, I chose one of the people who’d answered my
question the first time.”

3. Employers appreciate courtesy

“A few weeks ago I was looking for a freelance writer,” says
Samantha. “I posted an advert on a number of different writing
sites, and said that I would send a written brief to anyone
interested in the project, to allow them to give me a quote. I
was shocked by the responses I got, particularly the number of
people who just emailed one line saying ’send me the brief’. I
mean, is it really so much effort to write a proper email,
giving your name and addressing me with mine? Does ‘please’ take
too long to type? Apparently so. Needless to say, those kind of
emails didn’t get a response. I wasn’t just looking for someone
who could write well: I wanted to hire someone who’d be easy to
work with. I don’t want to work with someone with no manners.”

4. Your writing matters - even in a query letter

“One freelancer proofreader asked me a question via email,” says
Jason. “She ended the question with four question marks. She
didn’t get the job.”

5. Employers aren’t always looking for the cheapest possible
quote

“Some of the quotes I received were really shockingly low,”
admits Angel. “I just thought that if someone is willing to
write an article for $10, they must really be struggling for
work. And if they’re really struggling for work, they must not
be very good. I went with someone who charged what seemed to be
a reasonable rate: she wasn’t the cheapest I found, but quality
was important to me.”

ESSAYS ON AUTOBIOGRAPHY: NUMBER 1

Preamble:

Nearly seven years ago I wrote my first essay on the nature of autobiography. It was some two years after completing my initial draft, the first edition of my own autobiography. I am now working on the 5th edition of that autobiography some twenty years after the inception of this project. I trust this 5th edition will be the final one. I am overwhelmed with a sense of complexity, with feelings of indifference and with a vision of the magnitude of the task at hand. I think I could find the motivation to pursue this 5th edition if I could get a clear sense that the work I am doing in the field of autobiography. I certainly hope that this work will be of quite practical use to my fellow-man in the decades and even centuries ahead. This very notion seems presumptuous and this presumptuousness militates against the pursuit of the goals I began with when I set out to write this autobiography twenty years ago.

Since I find the study of autobiography more interesting that the writing of my own I continue writing these essays. Today I read an article on autobiography and what follows is based on that article. My intention is simply to write a summary of the relevant parts of that article with the long range aim of drawing these ideas together into some meaningful whole.

Even as a retired person with far less on my plate than during my thirty years of employment, life still takes me into corners of activity that keep me away from the kind of academic pursuits that this brief essay involves. My wife’s illness, my class in creative writing at the Seniors School, family duties and obligations of home and hearth however minimal, a necessary amount of physical activity to keep a sound mind in a sound body, fatigue after ten or eleven in the evening and an endless assortment of odds and ends have kept me from continuing this simple task. So it is, a day later I approach this essay with continuing enthusiasm.

Errors, omissions, even lies, are part of the fiction or imposture that is autobiography. The creative writer turns to autobiography out of some creative longing that can not be satisfied through fiction. Such a writer finds some peculiar closeness and intensity of effect. It is difficult, in writing autobiography, to keep history and fiction distinct. Nabokov says that the tracing of images into intricate harmonies is what autobiography does. Writers also try to repossess the realities of the past from what appears to be a sterile and fictive world to which he has sacrificed himself. The historiographical transaction that is autobiography does not contain the total freedom or imaginative response of, say, poetry or fiction. Unreliability is an inescapable condition of autobiography. The reader can watch the writer wrestle with truth.

It is important for the critic to understand the organizing principle or purpose behind the work. For the conscious shaping of a life, an informing purpose, exists behind the work. A voyage of genuine self-discovery is an essential component of such a work. This voyage takes place in a narrative past juxtaposed with a dramatic present. Confession, apology and memoir exist side by side as various contradictory and often unstable selves battle it out.

I have been married for 37 years. My wife is a Tasmanian, aged 58. We’ve had 3 children: ages in 2005 are 39, 35, and 28. I am 60, a Canadian who moved to Australia in 1971, and have written 3 books–all available on the internet. I retired from part-time teaching in 2004 and full-time teaching in 1999 after 30 years in classrooms. In addition, I have been a member of the Baha’i Faith for 45 years. Bio-data: 6ft, 225 lbs, eyes/hair-brown, Caucasian. See my website for more details at: http://bahaipioneering.bahaisite.com/ and go to any search engine and type: ‘Pioneering Over Four Epochs’ for additional writings.

Introduction

Travel writing is part reporting, part diary and part providing
traveller information. Travel writers create their art using a
multitude of different styles and techniques but the best
stories generally share certain characteristics, notably:

1) Clear writing style, without affectation, used by a writer
who knows the point of the story, gets to it quickly and gets it
across to the reader strongly and with brevity and clarity.

2) Strong sense of the writer’s personality, ideally
demonstrating intelligence, wit and style.

3) Use of the writer’s personal experiences, other anecdotes and
quotations to add life to the piece.

4) Vivid reporting - the ability of the writer to convey to
readers, using as many of the senses as possible, the travel
experience through the use of words alone.

5) High literary quality and the accurate use of grammar and
syntax.

6) Meaty, practical and accurate information that is useful to
the reader.

Be Fresh

Give your story a fresh point of view and, if at all possible,
cover some out-of-the-ordinary subject matter. Be creative in
your writing. Strive for the best and strongest use of English
and the most original and powerful metaphors and similes.

Be Personal

Take your own approach to a location you’ve visited, an activity
you’ve tried or an adventure that thrilled you. What was it that
really excited or inspired you? Identify it and get it across to
your readers.

To stand out from the crowd, your story must have a personal
voice and point of view. Remember that most places you write
about will already have been written about before. Your
challenge is to find something new and original to say.

Be Funny

Travel writing should mostly have a light, bright, lively, and
fun tone. Travel, the process of leaving the familiar to go to
the foreign and unfamiliar, is often rich in comedy and comical
events. Incorporate comedy into your writing where appropriate
and don’t be afraid to make your readers laugh. Also don’t be
afraid to incorporate mishaps into your pieces. These can be
just as worth reading about, maybe more so, particularly if they
also incorporate an element of comedy or humour.

Be Surprising

Surprise your reader. Give the reader something out of the
ordinary; something that only someone who has been to the
location would know. Do this by trying unusual activities,
meeting new people, and getting involved in strange scenes as
you travel.

Be Balanced

Travel writing must blend your personal observations,
descriptions and commentary with practical information that is
useful to your readers. The precise balance depends on the
outlet you’re aiming your story at but rarely should a good
travel piece comprise more facts than description. Two-thirds or
even three-quarters colourful description to one-third or
one-quarter facts would be a reasonable guideline to start from.

Be a Quoter

Work in quotes from visitors to locations, or participants in
activities. Let them express their thoughts about how they feel
about a place or activity. Quotes lift stories.

Think Like Your Reader

You need to develop as clear an impression as possible of what
readers of the publications you’re targeting want to read, their
travel aspirations, how they like articles written and what
information they want to know. You want to be able to think like
your reader. Only then will you be able to identify how you can
help your reader. Only then should you start writing your
article.

The Big Picture: What is the Main Point You Want to Get Across
to Your Reader?

Good travel stories have a definite, central theme and it will
greatly improve your writing if you can identify the central
themes of your articles before you try to write them. Decide at
the outset what main point about a location or activity you want
to convey. This is the “big picture” and you then work your
impressions and facts around it. Identifying the big picture
early on will also help you structure your piece sensibly and
help you decide what information you need to include and,
equally importantly, what you can and should leave out.