Category Archives: Writing

Clients from Hell: the Clueless Client from Hell

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The Fraud Triangle

The Fraud Triangle

Occasionally one comes across a Client from Hell that you’re actually grateful for: assoholics who self-identify only seconds into the first interaction save the writer a great deal of time in the long run. First, it enables you to refuse to work with the person. Secondly, should you decide to go ahead, it enables you to triple the price before formulating the proposal.

Client: Hello! I am a much-anticipated brand new author and would be most humbled and honored if you would market my new book.

Me: I am happy to market anything you’d like. Just go ahead and purchase a service from me and I’ll get started.

Client: I was wondering if you would also be posting reviews to my book’s Amazon page? I am trying to increase my book sales, so I really need Amazon reviews.

Me: I don’t do fake reviews. I am happy to actually market your book and come up with a formal marketing plan for you.

Client: Why no reviews?

Me: Because if readers see that you have a bunch of fake reviews on your book, it will mean that they will a) not buy your book, and/or b) launch a war against your book because it has fake reviews. It is not in your best interest to go that route and I work on things that will actually build your reputation, not destroy it before you’ve had a chance to establish one. I’d be happy to build an honest marketing plan with you.

Client: That’s redundant. I have a marketing plan.

Me: Oh?

Client: Yeah. I will be getting someone to write Amazon reviews.

People get the marketing plans they deserve, sometimes.

Information Wants to be Invoiced

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Duane Lester confronts his plagiarist

Duane Lester confronts his plagiarist

Duane Lester is a blogger. Duane Lester knows his rights. And when he found out that this Missouri paper had printed a blog post of his as an original article, verbatim and without attribution or permission, he knew just what to do. And he videoed that shit.

I know RSS stands for “really simple syndication” but it does not mean you can take anything with an RSS feed and print it, verbatim, without permission or payment, in your newspaper, no matter how podunk it may be. Blog posts are writing, covered by copyright law, and if this had been me I’d have gone considerably more ballistic to Mister Bob Bull Shit and his Lois Lane sidekick, who should really know better. Bob’s the one with the money, and she’s the one with the brains, I’d bet.

The most important comment on this youtube, which has had 48,000 views, is this one:

One relevant item in Duane’s attitude is: he never changes subject, never stops repeating that they reprinted his work w/o credit or payment, never falls for the argumentative traps of “being from somewhere”, “copies being passed around”, “40 years older” or whatever. Keeping straight to the point helps. Not being sidetracked helps. Pursuing it steadily, keeping CALM eye contact, helps. Kudos on that.

SrAtoz

Congratulations to Duane and to SrAtoz. You give us heart!

The Flame: Call for Stories

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Got this off Facebook, and very interesting it looks, too. Want to make your TV debut?

TheFlame

TheFlame

FLAME NEWS:

Last 2011 holiday season THE FLAME CHRISTMAS SPECIAL aired on Shaw TV and was watched by a whopping 70 000 viewers. It was such a tremendous success that we’ve partnered once again with the good folks at Metro Vancouver to produce a 2012 edition of THE FLAME CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!

WE ARE NOW accepting true story pitches that revolve around the Christmas/Holiday season for this television show. Whether your story is traditional, secular, multi-cultural, funny, confusing or poignant… We want to hear them!

HOW TO PITCH YOUR STORY:

1. For the purposes of this television broadcast format, all stories for this show must take LESS than seven minutes to tell. No Exceptions!
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

2. All pitch submissions must encompass the entirety of your story arc for it to be considered. We need to see the beginning, middle and end of your true tale from start to finnish. 500 words or so will suffice.

3. We are scheduled to shoot in early November in front of a live audience, so make sure that you are available. We ask that you understand that space is very limited for this project and unfortunately we only have room for a few. So dig deep and bring on your best holiday season stories!

4. Before you pitch your story, please take a few moments to watch a few of the holiday stories that were featured in last years ‘Christmas Flame’ to give you an idea of what we’re looking for.
Just click the link below and enjoy!

www.metrovancouver.org/mediaroom/videos/Pages/Video.aspx?bcpid=888483788001&bckey=AQ~~,AAAAtIJh4TE~,Ey0zR91VLds2WQTBHsEly2uYPZzBI2pw&bctid=1314788892001

Tend The Fire

Joel Wirkkunen & Deb Williams
~Producers of The Flame~

Send your story pitches to: joelwirk@telus.net

 

Face Up to Facebook

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Face Book

Face Book

It has begun.

We’ve gotten a notice that our beloved (well, we’re being generous) Facebook Group is scheduled to be Archived. This means basically the four or five pictures we’ve got will stay and pretty much everything else will be gone. Sooper.

And we cannot convert it into a new style group, because there hasn’t been enough recent activity. And that means for our future plans, you will have to either keep checking the blog, buy raincoaster and Ian drinks at the Heather (and we all know how expensive that can be, right?) or wait for a hand-delivered message on parchment, and who has parchment lying around handy anymore, seriously?

You see where we are going with this, right?

Please, please, for the love of the printed (or pixillated) word, go to our Facebook Group and comment, like, or share something.

WE ARE NOT FUSSY: YOUR COMMENT CAN EVEN HAVE TYPOS AND GRAMMATICAL ERRORS OR EVEN BE IN ALL CAPS AND THIS ONCE WE WILL NOT MAKE FUN OF YOU.

Pet Peeve (Part of a Series): Mis’-Use of the Apostrophe’

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Sweet Mother of God: thank Heavens someone is still willing to take on this topic!

I don’t buy the argument that dialogue won’t sound believably kid-like if it’s actually grammatically correct. Read any book by Natalie Babbitt or E.B. White or Norton Juster, and you’ll be reassured that good grammar wielded well is invisible and takes a back seat to story and character every single time. Whereas I can’t even finish an easy reader in which a talking animal says “I’m taller than her.” No, you’re not!

Head here for the article ‘Apostrophes Don’t Mean, “Here Comes an S.” ‘

Cover image

Cover image