If you trust the reader to keep track of information, you can avoid a lot of repetition in your manuscript.

No matter how well you summarize the map with written description, you are still better off showing the map.

A quick summary of Stargate Atlantis episodes with Todd. (because nerds keep count…)

Now for links:

Jeanne Cavelos on searching for reputable agents

Developing writers often have a very hard time finding a competent, reputable literary agent.

Info on the Flat Man Crooked poetry contest

Info on submitting to Glimmer Train

Word Count tackles the business and politics of working for content mills aggregators such as Demand Studios.

I’ve called it the race to the bottom, and maintain there are better ways to break into the freelance business, and better business models for building a successful freelance writing career.

Genreality discloses the true financial numbers behind a NYT bestseller.

And forwarded from our siblings in the North Phoenix Writer’s Group,

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

• Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

• Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

• Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

• Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

• Start as close to the end as possible.

• Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

• Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

• Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

[Thanks to organizer Dharma Kelleher ]

Now You Know

Thanksgiving in the USA. I was busy. Learned a few things.

When re-roping a fly system, someone is going to have to get on top of the head-block and feed the rope through – unless you’re a lot smarter than we were.

There is no biography of Alvin Gentry on line that I found useful – so I wrote one.

A timely, topical entry for Examiner, such as this one on Phx camping stores Black Friday specials, earns me about $0.40 for an hour’s work. So I stick to relatively evergreen stuff like campground profiles.

At the in-laws, I have to seize control of the TV or it will be stuck on game show re-runs from the 70’s. Not kidding. There are two things I can put on the TV that will not generate controversy from the wide confluenec of family in attendence: Sports or science documentaries.

From Nova, I learned that there are two different dream cycles: REM and non-REM. REM cycles ted to be more creative, but also involve more negative emotions. Non-REM dreams are more positive, but more limited to actual memories.

From Scientific American Frontiers, I learned one of the few useful things to coem out of Biosphere was the Biosphere Diet, a high vitamin, low calorie diet born of desperation (their gardening scheme yielded a fraction of expected results), but which actually left the participants leaner and healthier than when they went in.

Oh, and when the Detroit Lions have lost, its time to serve the turkey.

A backlog of [writer] links:

Book Marketing Maven: blog ideas for your fiction-writing blog

Caren Gussoff shares 5 Truths about Editors

And some more opinion of the Demand Studios and ilk dillema:

Carol Tice’s 7 reasons not to write a $15 blog (a numbered list – just like a non-fic freelancer…)

Now You Know

Well, I’ve turned in my first 5 articles about drug side effects to Demand Studios. The verdict? It was worth it. The articles were easy to write (I recommend selecting familiar topics). Plus there was a quick turnaround between submitting an article and getting paid: a little over a week.

As for Helium, I haven’t yet been able to find anything of interest in the selection of articles they need written.

In a recent post, I reviewed Demand Studios as an opportunity for freelancers.  I don’t write for them now but do occasional title QA work.  They recently announced they will be providing health insurance benefits to freelance writers, copy editors and filmmakers who meet certain work requirements.

It looks like there are three monthly payment options to choose from.  Any freelancer including writers and artists know that it can be difficult to explain to some insurance companies that yes, freelancing is a “real job.”  They can of course shop around, but it’s good that Demand Studios has stepped up and is filling this need within the freelance community.

I stated in my previous post why I don’t write for them.  But I’ll reiterate that if I lost my job, Demand Studios would be the first place I would go to find immediate work with timely pay.  If my husband lost his job and we subsequently lost our health insurance, Demand Studios would be all the more an attractive option for me because of this development.

If you want to know more about this new benefit, visit the Demand Studios Options for Health Insurance page.

Here is my full review of Demand Studios.

Jezebel links to an offensive YouTube video on “How to Draw Asian Women”.

Yikes. How does something like this happen? Through eHow, that’s how.

Demand Media is the entity behind eHow. They came onto my radar after they sponsored a webinar on freelance writing that I participated in last week. It sounds like a pretty sweet deal. You apply to be a freelance writer, copyeditor, or filmmaker with them and they present you with a wealth of gigs, no negotiation necessary. You choose which ones you’d like to take, write your article or make your video, and they send you the fee. Sounds great, right?

A quick Google search of “Demand Studios scam” (so sue me, I’m a skeptic) turned up some interesting results. Namely, this article by Erik Sherman on the issues with Demand. I don’t know much about the business of freelance writing yet, but it doesn’t take much to start smelling something fishy. The comments on that post and the related post are telling. This is not something that anyone serious about establishing a freelance writing career would want to get involved in.

I also found this Wired article on Demand Media. It sheds some light on how this video might have came to be. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Demand model goes something like this: Demand decides which articles/videos to make based on an algorithm that includes search terms, keywords dictated by the ad market and existing articles/videos. An additional algorithm, a set of proofreaders and an editor refine the results for presentation to Demand’s pool of freelance writers. One of them bites, writes and submits the article, which is checked for plagiarism and copyedited. The final result is posted on a site such as eHow.com (one of several Demand-run sites). A similar process is used for videos.

Here’s what I think happened: “how to draw Asian women” was a popular enough search term to wind up as an algorithm result. However, this wasn’t drawing Asian women in the cartoon sense of the phrase, this was in the dating sense, as in “how to attract Asian women”. I’m not going to go into the the politics of Asian fetishes, but I suspect that dating Asian women is a much more popular search than simply depicting them on paper. Somewhere along the way, the proofreaders, editors, or filmmakers took “draw Asian women” in the literal sense, with the result we have here.

I could be wrong. Then again, this could be a good demonstration of what can go wrong when you crank out media based on algorithms, underpaid/inexperienced labor, and an utter lack of common sense.

Well, today was not a successful schedule day. I didn’t even attempt it today! Since the hubby was home, I was able to sleep in a little since he took the boys to school. So, my day got off to a late start. I didn’t get much of anything accomplished today. I had so many ideas but so far I have had no time to complete them.

We took the twins and Jacob to Josh’s grandma to visit. She doesn’t get out much since she can’t drive. It was nice for her to be able to see them. It was also nice to get out of the house! It seems that doesn’t happen as much anymore.

We also made a trip to Walmart to get formula. Our local Walmart just started accepting WIC and you could tell because it took at least 15 minutes just for them to figure out how to ring it up. I am more than willing to wait though because we would never make it without WIC for our twins!

I have spent the rest of my afternoon working on my blog and visiting TrekPay and Irazoo for the day. I am trying to get all my points in each day! I know its not much but it adds up in the long run. I really need to work on Demand Studios this evening and try to make some real money! I have spent way too much time on the WorkPlaceLikeHome and WAHM forums today. I am just always trying to find more ways to earn money from home.

But now it is time to start supper and feed the twins (again!). I hope to work some more this evening but I guess that will be up to Emma and Eli. I know there is always tomorrow but I hate it when I get nothing accomplished!!

Well I have successfully been working with Demand Studios for over a week now and so far in my spare time I have made $79.70. I would like to have made more than that by now but I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to it yet. My position with them is Title QA. It is quite simple but can get boring after a while!

I have been visiting Trekpay daily and racking up the points. I am up to 181 just this week! It is an easy way to earn a few extra bucks for doing very little. Check it out!

Other than that I haven’t made it real far on my other jobs! I am really hoping to kick it into high gear this week. I will keep you updated!

As usual, it has been forever since I last posted. I have a good excuse. I lost my blog. It’s complicated, and it will make you savvier bloggers laugh at me.

I’m still proofreading for Demand Studios. I enjoy it and hopes it lasts forever.

We went to the mountains a couple of weeks ago, and it was perfect. We went for the fall colors, but we ended up seeing a different color, white. It snowed. In North Carolina. In October. As a cold weather person, I was in heaven. The combination of the snow and leaves was great.

Lots of books and movies news. Vamp time. I’ve read the Twilight Series. I’ve read the Sookie Stackhouse series. Now I’m reading the Laurell Hamilton vampire series. Will the bloodsuckers stop haunting me?

To be read: a new Monk book, Georgia Nicolson book(fabbity fab in her UK speak), Uncle John Bathroom Book I got at a used book sale, and a Kathryn Lilley book where the heroine deals with weight issues.

DVD news. I broke down and got the first season of True Blood on DVD. I don’t usually get TV series on DVD, but I don’t have HBO, and I loved the books. The show is wild in a fun way. I also got Grease 2 in the Walmart bargain bin. Not as good as the original, but it has catchy songs. Let’s bowl, Let’s bowl. Let’s rock n roll.

To cap off my perfect mountain trip, I found Shag the movie. Thanks to Austin Powers, the word shag makes people giggle, but in South Carolina beach music, it means dancing. It came out 20 years ago, and it is about four girls going to Myrtle Beach in 1963. It has great music including  the song Rock and Roll(It Will Stand) by Johnny O’Keefe  I had forgotten about  and was thrilled to rediscover. It was choreographed by Kenny Ortega who choreographed my favorite movie, Dirty Dancing.

Speaking of DD, it was sad when Patrick Swayze died. DD was a big influence in my teen years. An article about a Swayze Memorial in Lake Lure, NC brought back memories of how I, as an awestruck teen, went to the camp in Lake Lure where DD was filmed. I also went to Mountain Lake Resort in Virginia where DD was filmed. Time of My Life is a perfect title for Swayze’s autobiography which is on my library reserve list. RIP Patrick.

Another sad moment over the summer was when Guiding Light ended. It was also a big part of my life. Roger and Holly. Philip and Beth. Jonathan Randall. Soaps get a bad rap, but I have many happy memories of GL.

Now I’m getting ready for the Winter. We have a Xmas trip to Williamsburg, Va, and of course the holidays. Maybe we’ll see snow in Eastern NC, but  at least I’ve seen the fall snow.