Enlaces sobre el Arte de Escribir

Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction: "We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor. The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn't help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from"

Lessons About Writing From Ray Bradbury: 'Ray Bradbury gave a talk to a bunch of students at Point Loma Nazarene University‘s Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea in 2001. He gave some interesting advise to would-be writers, which I will take the liberty of quoting and paraphrasing here. Even so, watch the whole video, it’s well worth it!'

29 Tips for Bad Writing on Afghanistan: 'When writing about Afghanistan – whether an op-ed, a simple newspaper article, a long form magazine article or an analytical report- there are some simple things to keep in mind in order to keep standards as low as they currently are. The same applies for lectures, presentations, seminars and radio or TV reporting. Here goes...'

Lessons for Software Developers from Heinlein: '"The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat." Robert Heinlein wasn't really a programmer, of course. But in his writing career he said or wrote several things (in his own voice or that of a fictional character) that can help any software developer improve her code... or her career.'

How to Write a book: I’m going to jump right to the punch line. I’m going to start by telling you exactly what you need to do in order to finally write that book you’ve been promising yourself for the past three years. Are you sitting down? Good. Don’t write a book. Even better, stop thinking about writing a book. Your endless internal debate and self-conjured guilt about that book you haven’t written yet is a sensational waste of your time. My guess is if you took all the time that you’ve spent considering writing a book and translated that into actual writing time, you’d be a quarter of your way into writing that book you’re not writing. So, stop. It’s the only sure-fire way to begin.

Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen. "How to make engineers write concisely with sentences? By combining journalism with the technical report format. In a newspaper article, the paragraphs are ordered by importance, so that the reader can stop reading the article at whatever point they lose interest, knowing that the part they have read was more important than the part left unread. State your message in one sentence. That is your title. Write one paragraph justifying the message. That is your abstract. Circle each phrase in the abstract that needs clarification or more context. Write a paragraph or two for each such phrase. That is the body of your report. Identify each sentence in the body that needs clarification and write a paragraph or two in the appendix. Include your contact information for readers who require further detail."  — William A. Wood, September 8, 2005

You Should Self-Publish : One of the traits I value most about myself is my ability to change my mind about something as more data becomes available. Well, the data is in. And I'm reversing one of my long-held beliefs about writing. For many years, I said DO NOT SELF-PUBLISH. I had many good reasons to support this belief: 1. Self-publishing was expensive 2. The final product was over priced and inferior 3. Self-pubbed were impossible to distribute 4. Most self-pubbed books weren't returnable 5. Chances were, the reason you had to self pub was because your writing wasn't good enough 6. Most POD houses were scams; I had ample evidence to support my opinion. Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors and Absolute Write all had detailed tales of authors being screwed. I'd done enough local signings with self-pubbed authors to see how epic their failures were. I was a judge for several self-pub contests for Writer's Digest, and saw firsthand the dreck being released.Yep, I was pretty confident that traditional publishing was the only game in town. Then, in 2009, I became aware of the Kindle.Even though I began to experience some success self-publishing my ebooks, I still believed in traditional publishing. For all of its flaws, signing with a Big 6 house was still the best way to make the most money and reach the most readers.So now it's December 2010, and I'm selling 1000 ebooks a day, and I'm ready to change my mind on the matter.