Disney’s Alice in Wonderland remake is opening in theaters this Friday, and it’s no wonder with the high anticipation and success of James Cameron’s Avatar that other studios are rushing to make their films available in 3-D IMAX. However, the difference between the critically acclaimed Avatar and the lack luster Alice in Wonderland (I saw an early screening on Monday) is that James Cameron filmed Avatar with 3-D in mind, whereas Tim Burton added small 3-D flourishes as an afterthought. As in film, similarly in writing, all aspects of a work have to be integrated from the beginning.

Many people have women in their lives who are close to them, but for whatever reason this particular lady is like a closed vault when it comes to dropping hints about gifts she might like. However, if she likes to read, there are several gifts that can be deduced from just knowing this one personality trait:

Recently I had the opportunity to catch up with my dear friend, Vince Poscente, New York Times best-selling author of the book Age of Speed. Vince shared his insights on editing, self-publishing, the book industry, and writing a great book.

I'll be covering Austin City Limit's Music Festival all weekend. Read all the articles and real-time tweets at rumbum.com

At some point, either on a road trip or on a wrong-turn detour to somewhere, out of love for fake cheese, or just lack of better options, most people have eaten food from a gas-station convenience store. As a cost cutting measure, most of these places conveniently provide utensils, a napkin, and perhaps salt and pepper in one sealed package to prevent people from mindlessly grabbing by the handful more than they need. Also, in case someone needs both a fork and spoon, but to avoid the cost a supplying both, these establishments offer the “spork”—part fork, part spoon, but mostly not as good as a real fork or spoon.
 
“Spork-ing” also happens in the business world. Job descriptions posted with vague titles searching for a jack-of-all-trades who is probably mediocre at each skill. In the publishing industry, and self-publishing specifically, spork-ing aspects from production to marketing is rampant and usually results in an inferior product.
 

As the Internet continues to evolve and influence our daily lives, writers, designers, and business owners must also keep pace with these changes. In an interview I conducted recently, I spoke with Mark Roma, CEO of Mark Roma Designs in Austin, Texas. Mark explains how important it is for businesses to advance with the times as the focus on the Internet shifts towards dynamically changing content.

Most agents don’t accept unsolicited submissions as a way to avoid having their office consumed by manuscripts of varying degrees of quality with no way of immediately telling them apart. However, this doesn’t mean that novice and unconnected authors can’t get their foot in door. So that agents don’t receive full manuscripts (and consequentially thousands of pages of paper), they accept one-page query letters that succinctly tell them about the book and why the author is qualified to write it. The agent’s interest in seeing the full manuscript or the first 30 pages is determined by their interest in the query letter. However, even some of the best writers don’t know how to write a captivating query letter.

There is one required text for the creative writing workshop:
The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri
ISBN: 0-671-21332-6
 
It is available both used and new on Amazon.com.
 
There is no assigned reading for the first class, but please have the book by Sept. 6th.
 
 

The Creative Workshop/Instruction beginning on September 6th will be held at
 
Pacha
4618 Burnet Rd
Austin, TX 78756-3026
(512) 420-8758
(Click the link for directions)
 
 
 
 

Let’s assume that a company has traffic flowing to its website and receives a fair number of daily visitors, but not that many hits. This could mean that paid advertising is getting an audience to a site that is not holding their attention. There are three major factors that cause people to navigate away from a website: (1) slow load time, (2) bad content, and (3) poor graphics. Twenty-five percent of the reason a business loses traffic could be attributed to poor content. How do you know if you’re a victim?