Coming Soon

More than just traditional writing, Weird Ink also focuses on a lot of writerly peripherals. As this month's Writer's Digest notes, blogs are one way for writers to reach out to their readers - put a more human "face" on the authorial name - and I know a thing or three about blogging. But blogging is just one, very obvious, subject we'll be delving into in the coming weeks.

I'm also going to get into great detail about researching online. Most people tend to think that Google is the end-all, be-all of search engines (and I'll admit that, to some degree, even I am guilty of this) and rarely use any others. The real truth is that search engines are a whole industry unto themselves - a cottage/niche industry within an industry (the web). Many of the more popular "search engines" really aren't search engines at all - they're subject directories and/or portals. And one of the very first tricks to successful web research is knowing the difference.

In fact, one of my online hobbies is collecting and organizing specialty search engines in my Bookmarks. Hey, it may not beat surfing porn, but it's certainly more productive. Doing research through one of these search engines (or combining them with larger, more general search engines or as part of some other strategic search method) is sure to land you more, and more accurate, information quicker.

There are many other writing peripherals which we will touch upon along the way, including acting, illustration, book cover choices, self-publishing, blogging as online journaling and creative uses for blogs (such as blogging "in-character"), creative exercises, and much, much more.

Of course, we will also deal specifically with the subject of writing - structure, form, grammar, language, genre, formats, just all that - but as I am always trying new things and applying them to writing, illustrating, web design, and other activities, I figured I'd go on and throw some ideas out there and see if they generate any responses.

If you see anything here that you'd really like to hear more about, or if you have anything you'd like to suggest that I didn't mention above, please feel free to comment and I'll get on it.

Thank you, won't you?