The winner of the Alphasmart NEO giveaway is: Megan Payne!!

Thank you everyone who submitted their comments and entered to win. I will be doing move giveaways in the future so stay tuned!

Jen

This is a guest post from Joe Pawlikowski of BBGeeks

It seems the whole world has a smartphone these days. Maybe you think it’s high time to get one. Maybe you already have one, but feel an upgrade is in order. After all, the low- and mid-range smartphones of two years ago aren’t of much use nowadays.

Yet the market for smartphones might seem overwhelming. There are so many choices out there. How do you start narrowing them down?

Let’s start with the most basic element: our personal needs.

Writers use smartphones in different ways than other people. So shouldn’t we examine the proper smartphone from that vantage point?

Here are a few factors a writer should consider when making a new smartphone purchase.

1. The Ability to Write

It might sound too simple and obvious to be a writer’s first consideration, but the ability to actually write plays a significant factor in a smartphone’s use to a writer. This isn’t to say that you’ll be penning the latest chapter in your novel or your next feature profile on your smartphone.

It’s to say that a smartphone is first and foremost a communications tool, and the most important factor in communications is clarity.

If you have trouble typing clear messages on an iPhone’s all-touchscreen keyboard, perhaps it’s not the smartphone for you. You might need an Android device with a slide-out keyboard. If that keyboard is too wide for you, it might be that the BlackBerry is the best smartphone for you.

Just remember, communications come first. If you’re not comfortable typing, you’re going to have a more difficult time communication.

And if you’re not communicating well, why have a smartphone at all?

2. Note-Taking Apps

Savvy writers carry around notebooks and writing implements wherever they go. With so much potential material out in the world, it would be a shame to see something and not capture it.

A smartphone can easily replace your pocket notebook or tape recorder. In fact, it’s the perfect tool to do just that. You’re carrying it around anyway.

Thankfully, every smartphone platform has apps that will allow you to write simple notes and record audio. That means you can conduct an impromptu interview and get it all on tape. Similarly, you can jot down any loose idea or observation on a simple memo app.

As an added bonus, you’re less likely to lose or forget your smartphone than a notebook, since the smartphone is an expensive and versatile gadget.

Again, this reinforces the importance of typing ease. The last thing you’d want is to make multiple mistakes when typing and be unable to decipher your message hours later.

3. Battery Life

If there’s one glaring imbalance in the cell phone world, it’s battery life. Manufactures keep creating more powerful hardware, and developers create apps that use more and more battery life. Yet we’ve seen little in the way of battery life innovation.

For the practical smartphone user, such as a writer, battery life matters more than a fast processor or powerful apps.

A dead phone is a useless phone; it might as well be a half-pound paperweight. You won’t always have access to an outlet for charging — and there will be plenty of instances where you forget your charger. It’s important, then, to find a phone that consumes as little battery as possible. Both iPhone and BlackBerry are known for quality battery life. Android? That one’s a bit tougher.

Other Considerations

While the ability to write, take notes and have  good battery life are the three primary smartphone aspects a writer should consider, there are others as well.

These additional factors are less important, though, so they can be used for tie-breaking purposes:

• Camera—in a way this goes along with note-taking, since a picture can record a scene in the same way that notepads and audio recorders capture ideas. All smartphones have cameras; the consideration here is for quality. It will depend on how you plan to use the camera.
• Social Apps—many writers realize the importance of creating connections with audiences. This includes both your current audience and potential readers. Social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter can help forge these connections. Thankfully, the major smartphone platforms all have Facebook and Twitter apps to make things easy.
• Games—because we all need a distraction from time to time.
• Useful Apps—this one is a bit tougher, but think of it this way: You’re going to pay the same monthly fee no matter what smartphone you get. Why not get one that provides you with more useful features than the others. Again, this is why iPhone currently reigns. It has more useful apps than other platforms.
• Ease of Reading—good writers read more than they write. Finding a smartphone on which we can most easily read is a big perk. Most smartphones today are adaptable — they can fit text on the screen in many ways. Still, it’s best to check out many smartphones and see which one makes for the most comfortable reading.

Of course, everyone will have his or her personal smartphone quirks. These are just the most important aspects, coming from a technology freak who also writes.

For those who already own smartphones: which factors played most heavily into your decision? Would you reevaluate if you were able to choose again today.

About the Author: Joe Pawlikowski writes and edits several technology blogs across the web, including the BlackBerry site BBGeeks.

Image courtesy of Phil Roeder

You probably read that headline and thought—what? A word processor? Who even uses those anymore?

But what you might not realize is word processors are amazing tools, especially for writers who procrastinate.

Word processors allow you to do one thing and one thing only: Write.

They are distraction-free, which makes them one hell of a tool for getting your writing done. What a great way to get your first draft out of your head and down on paper.

I just happen to have the perfect one. It’s an AlphaSmart NEO*.

And I’m giving it away to one lucky reader.

All you have to do is answer the following three questions in the comments below:

1. What’s the biggest creativity challenge you have right now?
2. What’s your biggest health goal for this year?
3. What’s one problem relating to your writing, creativity and/or health that could use solving ASAP?

POST YOUR RESPONSE BY MAY 15, I’ll be randomly drawing the winner from all entrants that night.

What’s An AlphaSmart NEO?

It’s a cool word processor. Here are the features:

• It runs on battery power—and you can get up to 700 hours of use before having to replace the batteries.
• It’s wireless—since it runs on battery, you can take it anywhere you want to write
• It’s easy to upload the text to your computer—once you’ve written on the NEO, you can hook it up to your computer and transfer the text over for second drafting.
• You can change the font size and line count—custom settings allow you to write however works best for you

Why Would I Want To Enter To Win One?

Because you’ll get the following benefits:

• A distraction-free way to write—NEO’s sole purpose is writing, making it pretty much impossible to do much else while you’re using it. That’s what makes it the perfect tool for a procrastinating writer!
• Portability—since it uses battery power, you can travel with it like you would a laptop, only NEO is much, much lighter than a laptop and doesn’t heat up either.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and good luck!

*This AlphaSmart NEO is circa 2008; it was given to me as a gift, but I had just purchased a new laptop. I only used this NEO twice; it’s in perfect condition and works great. The newer models are pretty much exactly the same as this one.

This is a guest post from Jane Smith

As a procrastinating writer, you probably know full well that it’s not necessarily the scepter of “writer’s block” that is keeping us from our writing goals, although some may call it that. Writer’s block is more of a pervasive inability to put words on paper, a stunting ennui that may last either a few days or several years.

Most of the time, the biggest roadblock is just getting yourself to sit down and start. You have the words in you, it’s just procrastination that’s got you by the shirt collar.

For me, ritualizing the writing process is an incredible way to get you started.

Here’s what I do, though there’s a million different rituals you can dream up that suit your lifestyle:

1.    Have A Hearty (But Not Too Filling) Meal An Hour Before You Begin

Personally, I write best early in the morning, a couple of hours before I head out to my day job. I always have a hearty breakfast—eggs, bacon, etc—before beginning, with lots and lots of coffee. I try not to think about writing during my ritual breakfast.

After finishing my meal, I go out to the back porch, and enjoy the rest of my coffee, watching the birds and my dog play in the yard. I savor the peace and quiet.

2.    Read A Few Poems Out Loud Before Getting to Work

For me, the hardest part about sitting down to write is getting into “the flow.” While the “flow” is a pretty nebulous concept, for me it has more to do with the sound and rhythm of writing. And poetry is all about sound and rhythm.

Get out your favorite poems and recite them to yourself in the best poet-y voice you can muster. It helps and it’s pretty entertaining as well.

3.    Use A Few Different Methods for Physically Writing Your Work to Keep Things Fresh

Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery. Or writing equipment. If all you ever do is write on your computer, try using pen and paper instead or even pencil and paper. You could just as well acquire a typewriter from an antique shop.

By trying out different methods, you’ll see how much your writing changes when your physical tools have changed. It’ll breathe new life into your work.

These are just a few ways that I get my inner writing machine started. As you can see, rituals are always very personal, so you can adjust your own accordingly. Start with some that I’ve suggested and create your very own rituals.

Even if they aren’t necessarily effective, it still makes writing more fun!

What are your writing rituals?

About the Author: Jane Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. She writes about free background checks for Backgroundcheck.org. Questions and comments can be sent to: janesmth161 @ gmail.com.

Image courtesy of matryosha

I QUIT MY DAY JOB!!

To celebrate my exit from the corporate workplace, I’m offering my eGuide, Butt-In-Chair for $9.95! That’s 50% off the regular price.

But hurry… discount ends March 31 at 11:59 p.m.

If you want to get on the right track and make writing a constant, deliberate act, pick up your copy of Butt-In-Chair today!

This is a guest post from Angelita Williams

You may have read a host of rationales and tips for improving and/or changing your writing style, but I’ll bet that most of them used your writing itself as the starting point.

Have you ever considered that you may be able to influence your writing by changing your reading habits?

Even if you aren’t directly inspired by the books you’ve read, you should know that you’re constantly drawing from their content on some subconscious level when you write.

You Write What You Read

When you’re enjoying a particular work of fiction, your creative mind tends to latch onto that author’s writing style, word usage, and methods of characterization. If you’ve been reading Victorian romance novels, for example, I’d be willing to bet that you’re writing would have an ornate flourish to it, paying particular attention to detailed descriptions of setting.

Alternately, I’d bet that a current reader of Hemingway or Faulkner would have an understated, minimalistic strain in their prose.

So if you’re unsatisfied with the state of your writing, certainly give it an honest appraisal, but also take a good look at the books you’ve been reading recently. They could very well hold the key to your writing woes.

The Books That Get Under Our Skin

Your reading habits could also be affecting your writing beyond mere stylistic influences. If you’re reading a moving story, it could affect your entire mindset as you write. A particularly wrenching and sad love story could be making your more glum than you give it credit for, and the consequences might be evidenced all over your recent drafts.

Think about it for a second: if you see a well-done dark and gloomy film at a movie theatre, its atmosphere stays with you long after you’ve gone home. Imagine what a book that you’ve been reading for days and days on end does for your psyche.

And this problem isn’t limited to sad novels: if you’re trying to right a particularly grave and serious work of fiction, you might want to forgo any P.G. Wodehouse novels or light beach reading because their levity will probably bleed into the mood of your work.

In an ideal world, you would keep your extraneous reading to a minimum while you’re writing, but for most writers that’s an unrealistic rule to live by.

Read to Your Advantage

You can also tackle your use of inspirational reading as a means of experimenting with new genres and narratives styles. In other words, if you want to try your hand at writing science fiction, what better way could you start than by picking up a classic novel by Isaac Asimov or Anne McCaffrey?

Reading is one of the best tools in your writing arsenal, and the sooner you understand its potency, the better off your writing will be.

How do your reading habits influence your writing style?

About the Author: This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.

Image courtesy of Jayel Aheram

This is a guest post by Bridget Sandorford of CulinarySchools.org

Banishing writer’s block isn’t just about using writing prompts and timers to get yourself back into the swing of writing. The type of writer’s block that those methods help to solve is more about having the motivation or the ideas necessary to make it work as a writer.

When you need to calm your mind or to focus on a single idea, those methods typically backfire because they just send you into a frenzy of writing without purpose. Instead, using physical movement can help to alleviate this type of writer’s block.

Take Short Walks

When you need to calm your mind, a quick 10-minute walk often does the trick.

Sometimes creative people can become anxious when preparing to do their work. Instead of writing, you may find yourself staring at your screen fretting about the work that you have to do.

Walking will give you the chance to put all of those thoughts in some type of order, determining what work is most important and how you will proceed when you return to your computer.

Do Jumping Jacks

Doing some type of intense cardio for a short burst can help to focus you when there are too many ideas floating around.

Jumping jacks aren’t the only choice. Jogging in place for 30 seconds or even sprinting across the room, as silly as you may feel, can help. The idea is to force your focus to move from the many writing-related ideas in your head to your body.

Once you’re done, the writing ideas should settle, leaving only one or two occupying center stage in your mind.

Stretch Your Body

Sitting in front of a computer for hours on end can makes your backs hurt and muscles get tense.

When you have a muscle twitch in your leg or slight pain in the small of your back, you won’t be focused on your writing because you’ll be thinking about the pain. When you hit this point, your writing suffers because you are only focusing on it for a few seconds at a time.

The best answer is to stretch.

Take 10 minutes and really stretch out all of your muscles. Stand up and touch your toes or do slow lunges. Lift your arms over your head and then stretch them to each side.

Get rid of those niggling physical aches and pains so you can return to your writing feeling refreshed.

About the Author: Bridget Sandorford is a grant researcher and writer for CulinarySchools.org. Along with her passion for whipping up recipes that incorporate “superfoods,” she recently finished research on culinary schools in Illinois and culinary schools in Orlando, Florida.

FOR MORE ARTICLES ON THE TOPIC OF
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE, VISIT INKYBITES

Image courtesy of Tobyotter

Just wanted to let you all know that I launched InkyBites.com! I’m still working through some issues, but the site is live and ready for you to dive in. Have fun!

–jennifer

This is a guest post by Brittany Lyons

Each year novel writers have the opportunity to write a 50,000 word novel for the National November Writer’s Month Competition. Sadly, short story writers usually can’t enter this competition because it requires them to write one long piece rather than an anthology of several short pieces.

However, this year Lulu.com is offering an alternative contest for short story writers so that they can also challenge themselves to finish a project in November.

Lulu.com started the short story competition because many writers fail to write 50,000 words during the course of a month even though they start off with good intentions. Instead of letting all that creativity go to waste, Lulu decided to shorten the length requirement to 600 words and focus on quality rather than quantity.

The end result was a contest that story writers of all backgrounds, from those with PhDs to high school students, could participate in with a better chance of succeeding.

Unlike the traditional NaNoWriMo competition, Lulu’s competition offers prizes to all writers who complete their project. All participants get a coupon for 20 percent off of their next Lulu.com purchase.

In addition, participants who finish a short story and submit it to Lulu end up creating an eBook out of their story that they can sell in the Lulu store and on partner sites such as iBookstore.

Lulu has also assembled a panel of judges who will read all the stories and announce three winners in mid-December. The first prize winner gets $500 in cash, a Nook eReader, a professional review of his or her story and publicity from Lulu. The second prize winner gets a free Nook eReader and the third prize winner gets a $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble.

Contest Steps
If you’re interested in submitting a story to Lulu’s contest, here are the steps you should take:

1. Download Lulu’s eBook template and plug your short story into it.
2. Create an account at Lulu if you don’t already have one and upload your completed story to Lulu before Dec. 1.
3.  Create a simple cover that includes the title, author and description of the book and use Lulu’s site to convert the story to an eBook.
4. Submit the link to your eBook to Survey Monkey to get your 20 percent off coupon

That’s it. Four simple steps and you’re done.

Thanks to Lulu’s contest, short story writers are not forced to write longer works than they are used to just to say they accomplished something in November. These writers now have their own contest that provides them with a finished project to sell at the end as well as a shot at some money.

Besides the monetary rewards this contest helps short story writers get in the habit of writing regularly enough to complete a project in a month, which is a skill that will last past the end of the competition.

What will you enter into Lulu.com’s contest?

About the Author: Brittany Lyons aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

This is a guest post by David Lazar of CometDocs.com

Everyone knows the old saying that “reality is sometimes stranger than fiction,” and this is why there are a lot of successful writers out there that base their stories on real life events that they have either personally experienced or have been informed of by others.

Looking to real life is one of the best ways to get an idea for a new story. Whether it is an event that has occurred in your personal life, a story you heard from a friend or even something that you might have seen on the news, real life events can inspire you to write and provide you with a good foundation for your next story.

However, it is important to know that, unless it’s an absolutely spectacular story on its own –– which is usually not the case –– there is a lot that you as a writer need to do in order to turn your recollection of a real life event into a fantastic work of fiction.

You’ll find that most stories based on real-life events are embellished and changed not because the writer felt uncomfortable with telling the story as it really occurred, but because, usually, the story just isn’t that interesting in its original form.

Here are some things to think about if you are looking to write quality fiction inspired by real-life events.

1.    Decide Whether Your Topic Is Worthy
First of all, you need to decide whether something is interesting enough to turn into a compelling work of fiction to begin with. More importantly, you need to see whether this real life event is a good enough basis for a good story – whether it has the potential to be turned into something interesting. Sometimes writers tend to be way too faithful to the original story when trying to write fiction stemming from real-life events.

Just because something really happened does not mean that you cannot embellish. In fact, embellishments are recommended. Sometimes the hardest part of taking a real story and turning it into fiction is being able to let go of the truth.

2.    Turn Everyday Events Into A Narrative
Even if you are telling the story of a person who has had a very interesting life, you need to be able to turn this story into a flowing and exciting narrative, because no matter how interesting someone’s life is, a day-to-day account of what they do is not really going to result in a real page-turner.

One of the hardest things about telling a real story is to try and fit the most interesting and dramatic events into the form of a narrative, making it a true story, with a beginning, climax and resolution, not just a journal of an interesting person’s everyday habits.

3.    Create the Details
No matter how great the story, it will not write itself. Even if the basis of the story is very exciting, you still need to work very hard on getting the details just right in order to keep the story interesting and to keep it moving along as a strong and entertaining narrative.

The problem with real-life stories — especially if you heard them on the news or from a friend –– is that they are all told in short. Fiction needs to be a detailed account, because you need to assume that the reader has no background or prior involvement with the story.

The trick is to write while being fully aware of the fact that you are writing for someone completely detached from the situation, with no prior references to the story. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and make sure that you build the story in detail and as thoroughly as possible.

4.    Develop A Real Plot
A fun or interesting story that you heard someone tell is essentially an event –– not a plot. The hardest part is determining whether or not this event has enough potential to become a good work of fiction. No matter how cute or funny you think the story is, it might not be able to carry a story.

Look at the event and identify everything around that event –– what led to it, what resulted from it, who was involved, how they were affected –– and then decided whether or not this has the potential to be turned into an interesting plot.

Can you imagine seeing a movie being made based on this event or does it seem like more of a sketch in a comedy show? If you see the potential to turn it into a feature film, then it might be a good candidate for becoming a strong work of fiction.

5.    Make Your Narrator Compelling
The point-of-view can make or break the story. The most important thing you need to decide on is who you want to have narrate the story. A lot of times, people tell a story as themselves, but remove their character from the plot, which tends to disconnect the reader from the story.

If you cannot develop the characters fully and are not able to tell the story whole-heartedly without including yourself as a major actor in the story, then don’t write in first-person. Writing in the third-person might give you a fresh perspective and more freedom to explore the characters, their relationships and the plot in general.

Remember, real life is interesting, but there is always room to make it a bit more exciting when trying to write a good work of fiction.

What tips do you have for turning real life into fiction?

About the Author: David Lazar is a regular blogger at CometDocs.com. With a background in journalism, he enjoys writing about and following a variety of topics, including creative writing, news writing, careers, technology and new media.