The Week in Words (June 26)

At the Editor’s Desk

This week I finally started on a novel I’d been talking about for ages. And I talked to many people for many hours. And I learned way more about CSS than I ever wanted to know.

The Consortium

After about a week of researching various art grants, I met with an accountant Wednesday to figure out what I need to do to get incorporated and registered as a nonprofit. Turns out what I need to do is “pay this dude $1,800 and have a lot of patience.”
That’s not stopping me, though. I also met with several of my artists about projects we can start on now to get things moving in the right direction, and I’m taking my first halting steps at playing Mr. Manager. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

The Girl Who Stayed the Same

The Girl Who Stayed the Same is now one or two scenes away from the end of Act I, and it’s been a pretty intense week in Paris. I had two very different scenes this week that were each challenging in very different ways. It was fun.
Once again, you can follow that story on my private series page at the Creative Copy Challenge, or just wait for the e-Book coming to digital purveyors near you in February 2011.

SEATAC

SEATAC, my new sci-fi title, finally has a Google Doc to call its own. Well…it’s actually had a Doc for a while now, but that was prewriting. Now it’s real.
Two days of work to come up with 400 words of real….

On Unstressed Syllables

This week we covered two major topics: markup languages, and the blogstory style of Julie Roads.
Sunday I introduced the Technical Writing series on markup languages by telling the story of the college mission trip that crippled my faith. It was all about labels.
Then on Monday I took labels a step further, with a look into how markup languages (like HTML) can be used as document authoring tools.
Then Tuesday I got specific, telling you how to apply heading tags (and which tags to use) in WordPress. Blog better.
On Wednesday, Courtney learned another important lesson about trusting her brain when she forgot it was Wednesday already. See? That’s why you need a scribblebook. If you’re still craving the article you missed, just go back and reread last week’s. It really was that good.
Thursday I introduced the Creative Writing series on the blogstory style by introducing the blogstory master (or…mistress?) Julie Roads. If you were reading along, you got to know that name quite well.
On Friday I told you why I thought she was so special. It’s not just that she’s a great blogger, but that brought the fundamental value of story her blog, and perfected the mix. If you’re not already reading her blog, you should be.
I wrapped that up today by talking about you. Well…no, not really. I talked about Julie some more. And about me. But it applies to you! Because Julie got as good as she is by choosing a writing style she loved and practicing perfection. You can do the same thing, no matter what type of writing you do.