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You are a budding,talented writer, and you’ve finally achieved your dream goal-you’ve just completed a short story.And because it seems so good,you’re confident of having it published.

However,to your utter dismay,you find your work is rejected!You are incredulous and start wondering what went wrong.Perhaps you feel dejected and start cursing the editor for spoiling your ‘good work’.But hang on!

Your work may have been good,
but was it good *enough*? Because,even if you have a ripping good plot,you’ve got to make sure your writing comes alive and hooks the reader’s attention right from the beginning!Here are a few tips that would hopefully help you do just that:

Your very first sentence must be dramatic,abrupt,exciting or unexpected,so it immediately grabs the attention of the reader.
For example,in a story by Jacqueline Rowling,the reader’s curiosity is piqued in the first line itself:

“Marigold started going wierd again on her birthday.”

It’s abrupt,simple and dramatic,and makes the reader go lame trying to get to the bottom of it.
Use this same technique when ending a chapter.It’ll help keep up the tension and compel the reader to turn the pages,eager to know more.

Eg.In Franklin W.Dixon’s ‘Hostages of Hate’,(in the popular Hardy Boys series)the author ends Chapter 9,with the line:

‘There was no time for thought as the truck jarred to a stop- and the roof of the tunnel thundered down on Frank!’

This powerful ending does indeed prompt the reader to turn to the next Chapter,eager to know what happens to Frank.

Write a ripping good dialogue!

Try to avoid meaningless or routine exchanges each time two characters meet.How exciting is it to read,”Hi Pete,how are you?” “Oh,I’m OK Gary.How are you?” Not only is this monotonous,
it’s also *boring*!Intersperse descriptive narration with your dialogue,to add more punch to your writing.

Eg. “Yeah,you’re right,”agreed Saman,pausing to take some change
out of his pocket.

Don’t overuse direct address.A character needn’t use the name of the other person each time he talks to him.It becomes totally annoying.

Eg.”Hey Gary,how was your football match?” “We won Pete!” “Did
you score any goals Gary?” “Just one,Pete.”

See what I mean?!

Invent memorable characters

A book possesssing solid and memorable characters is often an integral part of its success.If your readers can relate to the characters you’ve created,either in their imaginations,or in their real life,then well done!Otherwise,you might find the following tips useful:

Take time to develop and spice up your characters.In other words,get under their skin! Do pay special attention to this part of your writing process,and try not to leave it until you’re *absolutely* sure you’ve created great and memorable characters.However,don’t waste time dawdling,(remember time is
precious!)or you can tend to neglect other important aspects of your writing.
Think about your character’s behavior and mannerisms.Give them a sense of style;find a unique manner of speaking.Use emotion and body language to effectively convey what a character feels at particular times.

Show,don’t tell

This is one area where most writers tend to go wrong.(It’s happened to me too!)Editors often tend to judge a good story on the author’s ability to weave his/her story by showing,rather than simply narrating everything that takes place,or putting everything in black and white.You see,readers are bound to enjoy your writing more if they can ponder and figure out for themselves,what you,the author,are trying to convey.

For instance,let’s say that you wish to portray Jack Morton in
your story,as a mean and nasty person.Instead of writing
‘Jack Morton was a nasty old guy who was always snapping at every single person he met’,you could try describing him in the following manner:

“Little Rosemary’s ball bounced over the short boundary wall and into her neighbor’s garden.Running over to the wall,she leaped up on a box and leaned over.Old Mr.Jack Morton was tending his garden.”Please Mr.Morton,can I have my ball?” Her neighbor looked up,his wrinkled face wearing an ugly scowl.”No
you may not!”he roared.”Clear off and leave me alone!” The little girl ran back,tears streaming down her face.

See what I mean? Not only does this make the story more enjoyable,it also allows the reader to form his/her own
opinion about Jack Morton.

So the next time you’re writing that short story,do keep these invaluable tips in mind!

Sarah Sheriff is a freelance writer from Colombo,Sri Lanka,and regularly contributes articles both fiction and non-fiction,to local and international magazines.She can be contacted at
mailto:freelancepro@fadmail.com

Posters can be a great and inexpensive way to promote your
book. But don’t rush right out until you know the key items to
include on your poster.

The Title and Author’s name

Make sure to have a bigger font than the rest of your poster to
bring attention to the title and author of the book. This may be
the only aspect of the poster they remember.

ISBN, Where to Purchase, Price, Pages and Cover

Be up front with where customers can purchase your book.
Including the ISBN number can also help with searching for your
book on line. Many times a customer will look for the price and
become annoyed at having to search for it and how many pages the
book contains. When having your book cover on your poster, you
want it to be as clear and sharp as possible.

The Facts

Be straight forward on what your book is about. Mystery may
entice a reader, but clear facts are more likely to progress to
a sell if your content is what the customer is looking for.

Reviews

It’s a good idea to show blurbs of your favorable book reviews
both customer and editorial.

Optional Items

A photo of yourself- Sometimes customers feel better buying with
a face in mind, but this sometimes can backfire.

Table of Contents- This part may become very long on your
posters so perhaps partial view of the TOC would be best.

Contact/Homepage- Your customers may have questions, please keep
in mind that this could lead to spam. Directing others to your
homepage would be a better option. Treat your e-mail as if it
were your phone number.

Don’t forget to make sure your poster is printed on good quality
paper with rich ink. Good luck!

Practice Makes Perfect

When my daughter began to play the clarinet, most of the notes she played were painfully off key. Soon the notes were more or less correct, but the melody was lacking as she took long pauses to place her fingers. As she practiced, she was able to play a few simple tunes, with only two or three notes, from memory. Now she can play more complex arrangements, she can read music and translate the little squiggles and bars into counts and beats and twinkling notes, her fingers can find the notes by touch and she is ready to perform to a small audience of family and friends. Someday, she may be able to perform to a larger audience.

If you have ever played a musical instrument, this probably sounds very familiar.

As a writer, have you taken this same approach to honing your skill? Have you learned the fundamentals of grammar and language? Have you applied the basics to practice writings: articles, essays, short stories, journaling, writing exercise? Have you read books, paying attention to the pace of the story, the character development, the integration of plots and subplots? Have you shared your writings with trusted family and friends, soliciting feedback?

No?

To be a successful writer, you must practice and hone your craft.

Please, don’t expect your audience to suffer through your learning curve. Write just for the sake of writing. You’ll gain competence and confidence and when you decide to perform in front of an audience, of agents, publishers or readers, you’ll be ready.

Try these exercises for practice:

1) Start by writing every day. A journal may be a good place for this. Sometimes it’s difficult to clearly articulate your thoughts, whether personal musings or story ideas.

2) Write personal essays. This is a wonderful way to capture special moments, memories and family traditions. Start your essay with “I remember the day…” or “Nothing reminds me of summer like…” or “The thing my Mother/Father/Grandparent taught me…” or “I learned the most about myself when…” I have written essays after family vacations, holidays or memorable events which I keep in a notebook for my children. This is the legacy I will leave to them. Sometimes, I add photos, ticket stubs, napkins, matchbooks or other items to the essays.

3) Write an article to share your experience as a writer. The best thing you can share with others is yourself. Even if you think you have nothing to offer fellow writers, I assure you: Your words will make a difference. There is someone who needs a word of encouragement, or a helpful hint, or maybe they just need to know they’re not the only one who struggles.

These are just a few ways you can practice writing. Don’t expect every word to a succulent treasure to be savored by a reading audience. Every word is not meant to be published: some will be thrown away or shared with a small audience only: your family and friends. However, these words serve a vital purpose. Someday soon, you will be presenting your work to large audiences, and they will appreciate every hour of practice spent.

About the Author

Lisa Hood is the author of “Shades of Betrayal” and “Shades of Revenge”. She has been writing for over 10 years and is presently working on her third suspense novel, “Shades of Jealousy.” She is also the Talent Liaison @ BOOKJOBBER.com. Other articles by Lisa Hood can be downloaded from http://www.bookjobber.com/articles.asp or mailto:lisa_j@bookjobber.com

Introduction

Writing skills are essential for succeeding in high school, college, and at a job. Writing is not just an end result, but also a process that helps us develop our ideas and think logically. Begin by brainstorming topics, collecting information, taking a lot of notes, and asking a lot of questions. Keep your notes and sources organized as you go.

When developing a topic,one should look for patterns and relationships, try to draw conclusions, try discussing one’s ideas with classmates, teachers and parents. A new os diffrent perspective can help shake up ones thinking.

How to get Started

The first step towards writing a quality research paper is to organize what is to be written. It is always nice to develop an outline to help to stay on track as we write, identifying the main points and what is to be the conclusion. The introduction should give your reader an idea of the essay’s intent, including a basic statement of what the essay will discuss. One should always keep the basic outline of a simple easy first and follow it , further changes can be made as required but the basic layout is followed always. The following are the parts of the basic layout of an essay or a research paper:

-The Introduction
-The Body
-The Conclusion

The introduction should give the reader an idea of the essay’s or papers intent, including a basic statement of what the essay will discuss. The body presents the evidence that supports the writers idea. Here concrete examples should be used and generalities should be avoided as much as possible. The conclusion should summarize and make sense of the evidence presented by the writer in the body (The Keys to Effective Writing, 2005).

These are the steps to be followed before writing any kind of paper or essay. After these basic guidelines are followed ammendments can be made according to the nature of the research paper and according to the different writing styles. Writing College research papers

College courses demand many different kinds of writing that employ a variety of strategies for different audiences. During college, it may be required to write long essays or short answers in response to examination questions or one may be asked to keep a journal, write a lab report, and document the process one uses to perform research. College writing or writing college research papers, also called academic writing, is assigned to teach the critical thinking and writing skills needed to communicate in classes and in the workplace. The quality of one’s writing depends on the quality of the thinking one does about his topic or his assignment.

The whole writing process is divided into three steps namely prewriting, writing, and rewriting or revising phases.

-Prewriting: In the prewriting phase one ponders over the questions like what he has to write about, what are his feelings about the topic to be written, how is the topic to be approached, how to organize the materials and the audience who will be reading the paper.

-Writing: In this phase the plan is implemented by working out the details and fine-tuning thoughts.

-Rewriting: In the phase of rewriting or revising, the material or paper written is reviewed and techniques to for improving it are applied.

During these steps, there are some phases, which also take place before the final draft of the research paper is ready. The first phase would be understanding the assignment or research topic, which has been explained as prewriting earlier. Understanding the assignment or the research topic includes thinking over the fact that what kind of research topic it is and what is the main purpose of the research topic. Then in this context comes the issue of using systematic techniques such as the use of classic strategies, these strategies are ways to develop or organize a research paper, these include definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and process analysis.

Another important factor is looking at the topic from a multiple perspective, when a topic is viewed from multiple points of view; relationships which have not occurred before are visible. This approach invites the writer to look at the topic as an entity, as a process or a part of a process, and as a system or part of a system (The Writing Process, 2005).

Doing exploratory research is included here with the prewriting techniques because library research often is a way to generate ideas. As we review the literature on a subject or read in a particular area, we may note ideas that will help us get started with the writing. Analysis, the basis of many other strategies, is the process of breaking something into its parts and putting the parts back together so that one can better understand the whole. When we focus on understanding something better by comparing and contrasting it to something else, we identify and analyze the similarities and differences. Synthesizing information, all the opinions and research in support of the thesis or research paper are incorporated together. The relevant facts, statistics, expert opinion, and whatever can directly be observed with your own opinion and conclusions to persuade the audience that the thesis is correct is integrated. Synthesis is used in supporting the thesis and assembling the paper. In applying the strategy of evaluation after synthesis, first, the criteria to be used to evaluate the subject will be established and then applied to the specific parts of the subject that is being judged, and conclusions would be drawn that whether it meets the criteria.

The final draft is what we hand in as the completed paper. Before turning in the final draft, we should read what we have written all the way through at least once more. a black pen on the final paper. Choppy sentences, poor or nonexistent transitions between paragraphs, grammar and spelling errors, and other characteristics of a first draft should all disappear

Bibliography

The Writing Process, 2005. Retrieved on October 5th 2005 from: http://www.umuc.edu/prog/ugp/ewp_writingcenter/writinggde/chapter2/chapter2-20.shtml

Evaluating Internet Research Sources. Retrieved on October 5th 2005 from: http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

Fawad works as a staff writer for Term Papers Corner www.termpaperscorner.com They Provide high quality custom term paper www.termpaperscorner.com/custom_term_paper.html, custom research paper www.termpaperscorner.com/college-term-paper.html, custom essay and thesis writing service to students and professionals.

I’ve long groused to relatives and friends that I ought to be
able to take cell phone photos on my phone provider and send
them to my family members, who each use differing cell phone
providers - but you can’t do that because the providers want
you to switch to their service to be able to send photos
taken on that phone. But what if you also need to send them
to someone who can’t change cell providers?

I wanted to get a Motorola iPod ROKR phone when they
announced that they’d be making them available, so I could
listen to my iTunes songs while connected to my phone. I
didn’t get one because only one cell phone provider has them
and I wasn’t willing to switch providers. How absurd! Did
Cingular beleive all iTunes or iPod users would jump ship
from their cell providers to run over and buy that phone?

So back to Larry Page and Google Video … As I said, I have
an iPod and want to be able to download those Google Video’s
to my iTunes (both computer and iPod) and play them there.
While Page suggested that it was possible to do that (on
non-copy protected videos), I’ve seen comments suggesting
that the Digital Rights Management (DRM) used in Google Video
is different from that in the iPod / iTunes DRM.

I imagine that Page brought up DRM because they were
compelled to copy protect many of the copyrighted videos they
would sell through the new service and Apple wouldn’t make
their iTunes / iPod DRM standard available or interoperable
with Google Video DRM. Sony Play Station Portable (PSP) has
the same issue (love that rootkit Sony) with DRM and Page
mentioned PSP in his speech as well.

So finally, I’ll get to my point about freely available
web content. I established the Free-Content list in 1999 to
make articles of writers online available to publishers
online for use in ezines, newsletters and on web sites.
Authors have always only asked for one thing in exchange for
that use - a link back to their web site.

We authors do this to increase our reach, our visibility and
our web site rank. As publishers we do it to increase our
valuable content and offer our readers more than we are able
to produce ourselves - to broaden available viewpoints beyond
our own limited views and to increase search engine rank. How
interesting that FREELY available content does so much for
all three parties - Author, Publisher, Reader can all find
(on the search engines) material we are interested in, view
related advertisements (from Google Adsense) that may very
well be of extreme interest to reader, support the publisher
(and the advertiser, and Google) while that link back to the
authors site increases their visibility in search engines.
What an amazing feedback loop.

So back to Larry Page and his plea for standards and
interoperability … He stated plainly that standards would
lead to inventions nobody could foresee or that no one person
could dominate or control. I agree emphatically and believe
that Free web content has the same beneficial effects on the
web due to those things mentioned above. I believe that the
“Creative Commons” open content licensing agreements benefit
all in the same way open standards of DRM would benefit video
and music content producers if you take the power and control
out of the hands of Sony and Apple and CBS and Cingular and
Motorola and put it in the hands of the content authors.
Why hasn’t Creative Commons taken hold as strongly on Video,
Music and the visual arts as it has in writing and textual
content?

Larry page missed an opportunity there. Maybe a conscious
decision NOT to support Creative Commons was made. Maybe it
was too controversial to discuss with CBS’s Moonves on stage
beside him and hundreds of consumer electronics executives
and representatives in the Consumer Electronics Show keynote
audience. None of those company execs would support open
standards if it meant they lose control of their content
(profits).

The geeks in attendance (Page, in his comments, included
himself in that group) would all LOVE to be able to swap
Google Videos between their phones (Verizon Vcast - which
won’t allow it), iPods, Personal Computers (both Apple and
Windows boxes), Sony PSP’s, Microsoft Xboxes and any future
standards-based players. But it is not to be unless and until
those competing companies see a way to share in the profits.

Google is sharing profits from their Adwords advertising with
Adsense for publishers while providing one of possibly the
greatest services (free search to find content). There will
emerge methods and inventions to share profits if
manufacturers and service providers let go of their
proprietary DRM and approve standards of interoperability
among electronic devices.

I might attempt to sell this article to the New York Times who
might pay me for the three hours it took to write - but I’d
rather it is seen, used and my voice is heard more widely.
I’ve been published & paid by the NY Times for photographs
but they are not available anywhere to my knowledge now.
I would love to see them available online instead of the old
delicate, yellowing newsprint tear sheet I have of those photos.

© Copyright January 17, 2006 by Mike Banks Valentine

http://www.google.com/press/podium/ces2006.html

The link above leads to the transcript of the Consumer Electronics Show Keynote
speech by
Larry Page of Google, in which he makes a public plea for
“Standards” in consumer electronics and software
interoperability. He does this as a prelude to introducing
Google Video to the public and introduces Leslie Moonves of
CBS to announce availability of CBS shows and NBA basketball
games on the new video service.

I publish this article under creative commons 2.5 license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
http://Publish101.com Besides, the New York Times
definitely wouldn’t link to my site, then they’d suck the
editorial into their walled garden and ask $3.95 for anyone
to read it after it was online for a week or two. No thanks.
http://WebSite101.com is viewed over a million times a year
and I’ve made more via Google Adsense by freely publishing
the articles I write on that site (and distributing the articles
freely for others to use) than I was paid by the Times for use
of those pictures. Free web content is profitable! Go figure.

Hobbies feature strongly in my personal portfolio for
enrichment, and I have several: writing, watercolour painting,
and an enduring passion for researching the period of transition
from silent to talking pictures.

Currently I am combining all three in an endeavor to produce a
manuscript for an illustrated book notionally entitled The
Hollywood Revolution: 1927/29.

(Quirky, yes, I know).

To test the water I created a 30 minute radio drama on the
topic, which has been accepted by a major broadcasting network
for late night scheduling in 2006.

In the resource box below you will find the address for the
website that contains the complete outline on which I based my
play.

If you know the era, you will know the names; but even if you
are unfamiliar with both, the text should still evoke a few
chuckles…

What was so special about Hollywood in 1928?

The movie revolution was underway and history was in the making.
The unexpected box office triumph of ‘The Jazz Singer’ had sent
tremors of fear ripping through the industry and expedited at
breakneck speed a reluctant transition from silent to talking
pictures. Careers were at stake; fortunes were being made and
lost; sound tests were in and many big time stars were on the
way out.

What’s in it for you if you read my outline?

1. At worst, it will show you how to take any creative idea and
produce an outline for a book, play, sitcom, soap; whatever. It
all starts and ends in the mind and the sooner you open it, the
sooner you will reach your objective.

2. At best, my outline might just spark off some creative
thoughts of your own by thinking out of the box to begin with
and then fleshing out the bones of an idea that’s been lurking
in your subconscious for who knows how long.

3. It might also help you develop an ear for dialogue…

Jim Green is a bestselling author with a string of niche
non-fiction titles to his credit. You can read the outline for
his commissioned radio play ‘The Sound Tests: Hollywood 1928′ at
http://sound-tests.1st-creative-writing-course.com

* Use stories during public speaking engagements to illustrate points and state the point in addition to telling the story. Always make your story relevant to the subject at hand.

* Select stories to match the intelligence, experience, occupation, and age of the audience as well as the nature of the occasion. You don’t want to talk over the heads of the audience members and you don’t want to bore them with stories that are too simple.

* Space stories at intervals to provide a change of pace and to reemphasize your message. Remember from Chapter 5 the listening pattern you want to create in the audience.

* Tell about your troubles, stupidity, or ignorance. People like you when you use self-effacing humor because they see themselves mirrored in your weaknesses.

* Eliminate inconsequential detail. Use the fewest number of words that convey the message in an interesting fashion. Writing the story out will help you see words that can be eliminated without hurting the story.

* Keep your humorous stories short during your public speaking engagements. The size of the laugh is inversely proportional to the number of words used to get to the punchline.

Rule: The longer the story, the funnier it must be. You must make jokes and humorous stories believable up to a point. Use factual, specific details that the audience can relate to, i.e., say the brand name like Lots-o-Suds rather than a laundry detergent. The more truthful and specific the story sounds the more your audience will get caught up in what you say.

* Specify the location of a joke or story. If your story takes place in a restaurant say, “I was at Jerry’s Sub Shop in Rockville, Maryland, the other day.” This gives the audience something concrete to think about, which makes them more involved mentally.

* When crafting a story, use people, places, and things the audience knows. When the audience is familiar with the elements in your story, they will become even more involved. As soon as you mention the company cafeteria, their minds race to the cafeteria to meet you and find out what happens. However, don’t use humor that is too inside. Only a few people will understand it.

* Emphasize the adjectives and verbs in your stories to make them sound more interesting. Try it. Look around where you are right now and describe anything you want. Really put punch behind the adjectives and verbs and see how your description comes to life. Use specific and interesting verbs and adjectives. Say I was exhausted, not I was tired. Say, her head was nodding and drooping, not her head was down.

* Learn your stories. In a normal speech if you forget the exact thing you wanted to say, you can improvise and go on. But if you leave out an important detail in a story or if you accidentally give away the climax too soon, you have a mess on your hands. I tell a story at least 30 times in private before I’ll test it in front of an audience.

* Use true facts from your own life. This makes it easier for you to tell the story because you lived it and you can learn it faster too. Also, someone else can’t steal your story as easily if all the facts have to do with your life.

* Use appropriate emotional language to hook the listener. (Refer to this website’s “Emotional Lanquage”
article for reference.)

* Construct a humorous story so that it concludes abruptly with a climactic word. Don’t utter another syllable or sound after this climactic word. You might squelch the laughter you worked so hard to get.

Exception: Some stories get laughter all along the way. More of these stories are used by humorists who are expected to be funny all the time.

* Work out different lengths of the same story to fit different time segments. (Yes, I’ve snuck a Don’t in the Do’s section.) Don’t memorize your stories word-for-word. This way you won’t feel forced to say every word, every time you tell the story. You can change the length of the story easily by adding or subtracting detail. Super Trick: Have a quotation ready that makes the same point as your story. If your time is shortened, you can cut out a story and replace it with a quote.

* Slant your story to the intended audience. When telling a story to a group of executives you would probably want to use different language and emphasis than if you were telling the same story to a group of secretaries. Change nonessential elements of the story to make a better connection.

* Use terms like Imagine this, Have you ever had an experience where … Let me take you with me to … to draw the audience into your stories.

Copyright © 1998 - 2005 Advanced Public Speaking Institute

Tom Antion provides entertaining speeches and educational seminars. He is the ultimate entrepreneur, having owned many businesses BEFORE graduating college. 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. This is why he delivers his speeches laced with great humor and hysterical jokes. Tom has addressed more than 87 different industries and is thoroughly committed to his clients’ needs. http://www.antion.com

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Virginia Beach, VA 23452
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http://www.GreatPublicSpeaking.com

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Poetry begs for emotion, in the wording by the poet and in the
mind of the reader. Yet many wonder how to create emotion in
their writing. One way to enhance emotion is to use poetic
devices.

Poetic devices, when used with imaginative language, help create
that needed emotion in poetry. Let’s look at alliteration and
see how its usage can aid create emotion.

“What in the world is alliteration?” the student of poetry asks.
“It sounds like something that would make me itch or something.”

Not at all, but it might tickle your ears. Alliteration,
generally, is the repetition of a beginning sound (a constanant
beginning sound usually} that occurs close enough to each other
to catch the eye and ear.

Little boy blue, come blow your horn from Mother Goose is
an excellent example of alliteration, all those lovely b’s close
together.

“Fine and dandy,” the student asks, “but where is any emotion in
that?”

Just give me time, and I’ll get there. Ish, some people are so
impatient.

Now if we take some alliteration and mix it together with
language portraying the mood or emotion we want, voila!

Like gaudily wrapped gifts gathering dust in the back of my
mind, memories tease me mercilessly.

The lines above invoke a sense of playfulness, maybe a bit of
happiness, by using the words gaudily wrapped gifts and tease.
But they also leave a lingering sense of sadness with the words
gathering dust. Both emotions, though, are strengthened and
joined with the use of alliteration: gaudily, gifts, gathering;
mind, memories, me, mercilessly.

Let’s look at some other examples.

Dull, drab day, you dump piles Of sorrow on seemingly somnolent
life.

The emotion created by those two lines is depression or sadness.
Again the alliteration makes the emotion stronger.

“Okay, I think I’m beginning to get the picture,” the student
admits.

Then let’s look at one more example, shall we?

Gaily, giggling girls cluster together as if birds tweetering on
branches of trees.

Here we have happiness showing through the alliteration.

Alliteration is just one method, one device, that can be used to
enhance emotion in our writing. We can read, learn, and practice
until we have improved that imagery.

Here’s my mission: Completely install a customer example photo
gallery found here http://www.cardprinting.net/. The basic
process starts from Adobe Illustrator CS or Corel Draw 12. This
is the format we save all our customer’s work. There are aprrox.
300 files I need to access, export and create a fully
navigatable photo album.

Here’s how I did it. Instead of opening each file in its native
program I tried opening CDR and AI files in Adobe Photoshop.
Guess what? It works with the ai files but not the cdr files.
Why is this important? Because 90% of my files are in ai format!
Illustrator only allows you to open 1 file at a time, Photoshop
allows you to open as many as your computer’s resources can
handle. At the same time Photoshop converts each vector based
image to a bitmap, which is required for the web. Now, you could
create a course of ‘actions’ to complete this more efficiently,
but I want to remove or retouch some undesirable from each
image. I am a ‘perfectionist’ so I want these images looken good
AND loading fast for the web. Personally I find Adobe Photoshop
and Macromedia Fireworks offer the best export filters for the
web.

So now I have 300 images looken good, properly cropped and
optimized for the web. What is the best way to create a Photo
Album from so many images? Again let’s refer to my favorites for
this, Macro Media or Adobe? I work with both for different
projects and really can’t pick a favorite here! They are both
excellent applications for this. Macromedia Dreamweaver has a
function found under commands>create photo album, shown here
http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo.htm.
You will need Fireworks installed for this to work. Go ahead and
fill in all the text fields that are required information shown
here
http://www.weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.
htm.

It is important you take the time to craft your words carefully,
especially in the first field as this text is written into every
html file generated. Check the appropriate format, rows and
columns etc. Check the box for file names on or off and check
the box on for, ‘create navigation page for each photo’.

OK that’s it you’re ready to fire away, click OK. Amazing, eh?

Well I am kind of busy right now working on my next project. In
my next post I will talk about the same process of creating a
web based photo album using Adobe Photoshop for the entire
process.

In the previous 5 lessons of this series, we have only been
considering public domain works that are in text form.

But did you know there are music works in the public domain? And
that there are movie clips in the public domain? And that there
are works of art that are in the poublic domain?

And yes, you can use these and not have to pay any royalties!
Read on.

Have you ever watched any movies on the Turner classic channel?
Many of the movies shown are old classics dating back to the
early 20s or 30s. Ted Turner offers these movies on his channel
and makes millions without having to pay a cent in royalties!
What he has done is simply take these old movies and broadcast
them on his channel.

You can be the Ted Turner of the internet by offering old movies
that are in the public domain as downloads from your site. Don’t
worry. It’s all 100% legal. You can also put them on CD or DVD
and sell them. Amazing! Did you know there are sites doing this?
They put old movies on VCDs and DVDs, brand themselves as a
classic movies site and sell their products.

What about old songs? Same thing. You can create an album of old
classic songs in MP3 format and allow your customers to download
them from your site. This MP3 download is legal. How about
collecting old love songs and writing them on to a CD and do a
Valentine giveaway Plenty of possibilities. Here’s an
excellent directory on finding free sheet music.
http://www.freesheetmusic.net/

For more sources of finding, not just text, not just music but
also pictures, jokes, classics, religious material, photos,
images, video, poetry that are in the public domain, visit
http://www.InstantAuthors.com/pdresource.htm

Please remember that although the songs themselves are in the
public domain, a specific performance of the song by an artiste
is NOT in the public domain. If J-Lo does a re-make of an old
classic song, obviously her performance of the song is her
copyright. And you cannot be distributing her MP3. Of course,
you can also do your own re-make of the song with your band and
you can own all copyrights to your version and sell it to rival
J-Lo’s release. You can sell the audio or video under your
own copyright.

Did you know there are also classic paintings and artwork that
are in the public domain? What can you do with these
masterpieces? You can use these images and create posters,
postcards, banners and graphics with the art piece as a
backdrop. Those who have a way with words might also want to
incorporate inspiring verses on the poster. And there you have
your very own one-of-a-kind beautiful masterpiece products to
sell!

You can also work with copyright-free images, software, audio,
technology, religious material, poetry, classics and more.

Where do you these material? I have created a list you can
download. ~ visit http://www.InstantAuthors.com/pdresource.htm