Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 199
June 17, 2012
A Book Review That Teaches The Author Something About Typos . . .
The review is of Notes from An Alien and the reviewer is an inmate in Maryland, U. S. A. who’s been incarcerated for 32 years and is serving a life term. Here is his review: “It started a bit slow, but I found it completely worth reading. I thought the concept of a living sentient [...]
June 15, 2012
E-Books, Libraries, Publishers, & Bottom Lines
I happen to live in the United States but consider myself a world citizen. The story I want to feature today is from the U.S. but its lessons can be extrapolated to other countries. Libraries in the U.S. are having many challenges in equitable dealings with traditional publishers. I feel other countries are watching and, [...]
June 14, 2012
Can A Blog Be Considered “Social Media”?
Is there a word for people who engage in activities that only gained popularity since they became adults? If you know of one or want to coin a new one, do let me know… I came to the topic for this blog post by noticing the current average of comments here—about 8 per post—and contemplating [...]
June 13, 2012
How A Book Is Born . . .
Are you a Writer, even if only what some folks call “aspiring”? Are you a Reader, even if your menu is full of “fast-food-reading”? Are you a Publisher, even if bankruptcy is staring you in the face? Actually, any reader of this blog, even those of you who got here by mistake but stuck around [...]
June 12, 2012
The Importance of Words ~ What’s Your Take?
Not everyone thinks words are important—ever known someone who uses about 100 words and is usually very hard to understand? How about the person who knows 20,000 words and totally confuses you? I’m an admitted “word-freak” but I feel I’ve learned some practical vocabularic restraint—I love to study words but I try not to use [...]
June 11, 2012
A Love Affair With Words . . .
A recent survey here showed that folks wanted posts on Writing first, then Publishing, then Reading—of course, words are used in all three :-) And, since my favorite word is “word”, one could expect that when I was growing up dictionaries and thesauruses were some of my best friends… Thing is, there are dictionaries and [...]
June 8, 2012
Most Common Words Writing Challenge ~ And, The Winner Is . . .
Blogs are a strange writing medium. Over time, the single posts become related to each other—through links, tags, and cross-referencing. Take the Writing Challenge Series: Post on June 10, 2011 – Writing Challenge ~ Use The 1200 Most Common Words To Write AStory… The Challenge is issued… Post on July 29, 2011 – First Response [...]
June 7, 2012
What Writers Tell Other Writers . . .
I’ve written before about Writing “Advice”—how it can help and how it can block one’s efforts… Perhaps, How To Write AStory? is good to read because it shows John Steinbeck writing a letter to his former writing instructor; plus, it will lead you to other posts about Writing Advice… Perhaps, this video of Neil Gaiman [...]
June 6, 2012
“A word to the wise ain’t necessary…”
That title is only the beginning of a quote from the comedian Bill Cosby. Here’s the full quote: “A word to the wise ain’t necessary—it’s the stupid ones that need the advice.” And, to be honest with you, our current world culture is full of folks who are in charge but are eminently stupid. Let’s [...]
June 5, 2012
Kids, Libraries, Reading, Writing, & Illustrating
Do you remember your first visit to a library? Did you read a lot as a child? Did you start writing early? If you wrote as a child, did you also illustrate your work? There are 19 other posts on this blog about libraries but not with the focus on youth this one has. Scholastic [...]
