by Michael Cristiano

Not being able to write is a sad fact of life for a writer. There’s laundry to do, there’s food to cook, there’s sleep to be had. Worse, I have this pesky illness that eats up a lot of my time. I toil day in and day out to keep it at bay and under control. Sometimes, it creeps into my evenings, just when I think I’ve escaped. Worse, the horror of it all often keeps me awake at night and the dread fills my dreams with terror and sadness.

Oh, I’m not sick… I have a 9-to-5 job.

I recently reached my 1000th follower here on CrapPile, and ever since it started to take off a few weeks ago people have been amazed at its growth and begging to know what my secrets are. I always answer that they’re not really secrets, just plain ordinary blogging techniques that just seem to work right for me. Luck also has a lot to do with it, I think.

But now that I’ve surpassed the 1000 follower mark and did so two days shy of my month of blogging, I want to share somethings that I did that may or may not work for everybody but that I feel helped my blog grow as good and as fast as it did.

1) A Good Title

I wrote and entire post on this pointer before, but I strongly feel that an interesting, catchy title will help draw readers to your blog. Before…

I’ve been a little busy the last few months and have revisited some of my favorite posts. I hope you enjoy this one. Most of the concepts I write about are simple. I just never really gave them a lot of thought before I started writing my novel.

When writing, remember less is more. Stay away from qualifiers. They weaken your prose, and the result is the exact opposite of what your were trying to achieve. I know why you use them. I’m hooked on ‘very’. Other people are hooked on the word ‘too’. If you are resorting to qualifiers for emphasis, odds are, you are using the wrong word in the first place.

These qualifiers are the words your English teacher dreaded seeing, such as very, too, really, and sort of. When you overuse these words, your writing will seem lazy, as if you haven’t taken the time…

We here at The Library Ladies are occasionally approached by readers with questions and suggestions about things that we could write about on this blog. While it’s true that reviews and reader’s advisory are some of the main points that we like to make here, we also try to keep up with current trends in the library world. Something that is becoming more and more prevalent within literary circles and realities is the concept of self publishing. Some authors decide to take the route of publishing and promoting their work on their own, and with more and more services cropping up it is becoming more and more common. One question raised is how do libraries factor into this newish trend? How can self-published authors get their books into libraries?

Okay, honesty time! I am neither a cataloger or a selector at the library that I work for, so this is…

After I opined strongly about Trump’s abominable behaviour toward Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, I began to wonder how the people of Canada viewed the incident.  I asked Canadian friend John if he would write a guest post for me, and he graciously agreed.  Thank you, John!

Trump’s Treatment of Trudeau – A Canadian Perspective

By John Fioravanti

For many months since the inauguration of Donald Trump, I have watched him behave poorly as he played to his base of supporters. I am dismayed that his enablers in the GOP party in Congress refuse to exercise their constitutional duty to oversee his decisions that are often based on ignorance of the facts and outright lies. I don’t think Donald Trump has many supporters or admirers in Canada.

Figure 1: President Donald Trump at the G7 Summit 2018

To be honest, I am a supporter of Canada’s Liberal Party, which is…

The Federal government is in the process of revising the Copyright Act. If you don’t think that matters to writers, think again.

I’m always surprised to see blank stares on writers’ faces when I launch into a speech about copyright. Some of them aren’t clear why copyright really matters. Others aren’t sure what copyright even is. Fair enough—it’s not the sexiest topic in the writing world. But even if you don’t notice it, it’s fundamental to our business.

Here’s why. I am a non-fiction author of six books and a magazine writer. To earn my living I sell the right to use my work, either to publishers who pay me advances and royalties or to magazines who pay me fees to publish my articles. For most of my twenty-five-year career, this revenue has constituted most of my income.

Simply put, copyright law is what makes it possible for me to…

At our last Churchill Writers session, we started off talking about our perfect writing days, when the muse is our best friend and the writing flows like chilled mojito down Papa Hemingway’s throat. Then, of course, chat turned to how we keep our writing going when things are not so good.

We came up with this list – feel free to add your own:

• Keeping a journal can limber up the writing muscles and clear the mind before you start on your novel. Liz Lochhead has described it as like skimming the top of a good broth before it’s served.
• Congratulate yourself as much on a good session of wool-gathering or writing exercises as on producing pages. It’s all needed.

• A trick I learned from journalism is to get a rough draft down, quickly, last thing before bed if need be, so that you have something to work on…

(https://en.wikipedia.org)

“There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they can grow up in peace.”

                                                                             Kofi Annan

(https://en.wikipedia.org)

“If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.”

                                                                            Pearl S. Buck

(https://pixabay.com)

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”

                                                                            John F. Kennedy