Archive for February, 2008
Announcing the Poetry Contest Winners: Finally, Sweet Relief!
After an extremely difficult selection process, our judges have convened, argued, read, reread, brewed coffee, read some more, slept on it, dreamt on it, discussed again in the morning and have finally made their decisions.
Now, without further ado, what we’ve all been waiting for, please join me in congratulating Wordclay’s Poetry Contest Winners!
Drum roll please…
In the category of the Wordclay Single Poem Contest:
The Grand Prize goes to Jamie Crawford for the poem, “Redemption.”
The Runner-Up Prize goes to Daniel Bristol for his poem, “Devolutionist.”
For a complete list of Finalists, you can now visit Wordclay’s Contest Connection or jump directly to the listed winners here.
All the Finalists, along with Crawford and Bristol, will be featured in the upcoming Wordclay poetry anthology, tentatively titled Best Modern Voices: Words for the New Millennium: A Poetry Anthology.
Mystro, drum roll again, please…
And in the category of the Wordclay Book of Poetry Contest:
The Grand Prize goes to Brenda Mirsky for her collection titled Spare Parts.
The Runner Up Prize goes to Katherine Marie Haaheim for her collection that begins with “A Study in Personification,” pending permanent title.
Both Mirsky and Haaheim’s books should be available within the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for them. Lucky for me, I get to curl up at home after work and read both of them. From what little I’ve read during my break, they seem like great collections, dare I say gems.
Kudos to the winners and everyone who entered! If you weren’t selected this time around, you should definitely consider entering one of our upcoming contests. The Short Story and Short Story Collection contests are next on our list, so keep an eye out for the guidelines on our Contest Connection Web page.
Even if short stories aren’t exactly your forte, there will be other contests as well, and it won’t be long before another Wordclay poetry contest comes around again.
This is Justin, blogcasting from Wordclay, signing off.
6 comments February 28, 2008
In the News: ReadWriteWeb Covers Print On Demand and Wordclay
In the words of Wordclay’s president Dave McCauley, “Now it’s all about the independent artists…” which, in actuality, sums up the entire DIY publishing mission in one simple phrase.
On Friday, Feb. 22, ReadWriteWeb published an article, Online Print On Demand Space Heats Up, in which their bloggers examine the recent explosion in POD technology and services within the publishing industry. Lucky for us Wordclay bloggers, McCauley not only possesses a remarkable insight into publishing, but a handy knack for expressing the complicated creative and business issues surrounding self-publishing in a straightforward and concise way.
(Note: It can never hurt to flatter the president of your company.)
But flattery aside, McCauley just so happens to be right as well.
In the ReadWriteWeb article, McCauley makes some pretty insightful observations about self-publishing and print-on-demand technology, likening DIY publishing to the upsurge of the indie music scene as well as examining the recurring costs of traditional publishers. (more…)
2 comments February 25, 2008
Poetry Contest Announcements Delayed: Forgiveness Please!
That’s right - the announcements of the winners in the single poem and book of poetry Wordclay contests have been delayed - and we apologize.
Really, we are sorry.
We’re throwing ourselves at the mercy of the poetry court here.
Angie and I put in a significant amount of time getting new Web pages and new content for our members ready for everyone, and when the day finally arrives, the judges are still struggling with selecting winners.
Currently, the judges are combing through the best of the best, and we should have the names of the winners, runners up and finalists by the end of this week. I would say, hope for Wednesday February 27th, but prepare for Friday February 29th. We should definitely know sometime in there.
The silver lining is that the poetry (especially that of the finalists) is superb, and at least it’s causing the judges some furrowed brows and forcing them to make some rather tough decisions. Take some comfort in the fact that the judges are obviously really devoted to selecting the best among the great poets who submitted.
And if you need the vent some frustration at the delay, post a comment. Us bloggers can take a few bruises, but mind you, only a few…
This is Justin, blogcasting from Wordclay, signing off.
16 comments February 25, 2008
“The panda says no!”
When typing a manuscript in MS Word or other word-processing programs, do you sometimes add a space after an opening quotation mark because you don’t like how close it is to that first letter? Have you ever noticed that sometimes the opening quotation mark then reverses itself, becoming a closing quotation mark, because of the program’s auto-formatting? And you don’t understand why? It’s that darn space.
Or those punctuation marks — like periods, question marks or exclamation points — when coming at the end of a line, and separated from their sentence by a space, are sometimes forced to the next line, alone and adrift? It’s that space, again.
Or when inserting ellipses, you type in “. . .” and Word doesn’t auto-format the spaces and periods into a single character (…), that you’ll find one dot at the end of a line and two dots at the beginning of next? It’s those spaces.
I am far from an expert on punctuation but encourage the authors out there to take a greater interest in the use of punctuation and how it’s typed into a Word document. I found a plethora of online resources helping with punctuation rules, specifically APA rules, but here are a couple:
http://www.docstyles.com/apacrib.htm
http://www2.smumn.edu/deptpages/~tcwritingcenter/APA/APA_Punctuation.pdf
And, though she’s a British author and some of the rules detailed in the book may not be strictly applicable to US authors’ work, check out “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” by Lynne Truss, if only for the stickers that come with the book (a punctuation repair kit), including one that declares, “The panda says no!”
Add comment February 21, 2008
The Art of Science Fiction: Challenges Writers Face in the Sci-fi Genre
Imagine a hover car zooms past you at 200 mph and you almost drop your handheld video phone and almost spill your reconstituted neo-soy latte all over your gravity boots. With a scene like that all we can do is imagine. 
We’ve all had similar experiences though. Maybe you were stepping out into a street and an Explorer zips by at 55 mph and you almost drop your iPhone and spill your regular soy latte all over your new All Stars. You place yourself in the 2055 world and you’re awed by the sheer freshness of everything, but you can still gather how a person similar to you might feel when the hover car comes ahovering past – the trauma, the frustration, your whole life flashing before your eyes.
This is very crux of science fiction: creating an exotic, yet real and futuristic world while simultaneously portraying believable characters that not only have real human problems, but are quite familiar with the futuristic world around them, having been raised in it after all. How can you mention that cutting edge cybernetic implant if your characters would never think to mention it, being that their cybernetic implants are about the equivalent to our can openers today? (more…)
6 comments February 19, 2008
Yahoo! Tech Blogger Reports Wordclay is Fresh with Deep Roots in Publishing
Blogger Robin Raskin provided an insight into the do-it-yourself world of online publishers this week on Yahoo! Tech. Among the mentioned sites in the post is our very own self-publishing valentine: Wordclay. Needless to say, we’re thrilled that Wordclay broke through the thick tangles of the ever-growing Web and popped-up on the radar of such a notable blogger.
Raskin’s article, Wanna Be a Paperback Writer?, captured a benefit of Wordclay that no other online publishing site possesses: offline book publishing knowledge and experience that’s baked in to the site.
Let’s face it, with the book publishing technology available today, anyone can be a “publisher” (or claim to be) and simply print books. So, what’s the big deal about Wordclay? (more…)
Add comment February 14, 2008
Top 10 Writing & Publishing Blogs: Literature on a Need-to-Know Basis
As efficiently (dare I say effectively) as the Wordclay bloggers post, of course we can’t cover every single writing and publishing area. Maybe if we were chained to our desks, worked non-stop, hopped up on a coffee-drip, without bathroom breaks, and typed for a decade straight, maybe then all our readers would be satisfied.
Imagine our poor writers!
But writers and authors shouldn’t have to wait that long (and Wordclay bloggers shouldn’t have to suffer such cruel and unusual punishments either).
Essentially, you want useful information without all the marketing ploys and incomprehensible techno-babble that would likely help you about as much as a lobotomy would.
Here’s our solution: provide our readers with a list of the top 10 comprehensive blogs out there for your friendly, neighborhood lay-writer as well as lay-author.
Maybe you can’t find your answers at Wordclay, and you aren’t in the mood to submit a question. Or perhaps you just have some downtime and want to bone up on the publishing industry. What then? Where does a writer go for a little inspiration these days?
Look no further, my friend.
Welcome to the publishing blog hall, where at least one site has your answer. (more…)
8 comments February 12, 2008
To Serif or not to Serif…
For this particular post, I’m crossing my fingers for quite a bit of feedback because I have a question that I’m hoping you all can help answer and clear up my confusion.
What type of font do you prefer, serif or sans serif?
I know it’s a loaded question, because there are so many different ways to use fonts within a single book, let alone for different types of genres or publications. I guess I’m mainly asking (more…)
2 comments February 7, 2008
Breaking Digital Bread: An Author’s Introduction to Social Networking
When it comes to social networking sites, everyone seems to have an opinion. Are they extravagant time wasters? A revolution in how we interact? The end of the world as we know it? As is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of all of the clamoring voices. Weave through the hyperactive proponents and the knee-jerk naysayers and you’ll figure out for yourself how sites like MySpace and Facebook can help you in your writing career.
For my part, it seems that social networking ties in pretty nicely with the goals of writers. (more…)
1 comment February 5, 2008
