Category Archives: Resources

Do You Need Help Creating Interesting and Unique Titles?

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer May be Helpful

By Annette Rey

CoSchedule (https://coschedule.com/) is a site that offers software that helps businesses get organized. The site also states they have a program that can help you save time, publish more consistently, and grow your blog traffic.

Like any business, they are in business to make money, so their software has a price.

But I discovered they have a free tool on their site called Headline Analyzer. This can be of use to writers to improve their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) results in creating productive titles for their blog posts. The Analyzer reveals some interesting details and some fun facts about your input.

Let’s take a look.

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Conduct First-Hand Research for Writing Inspiration

Places to Experience and Enjoy

By Annette Rey

My last post suggested you break the monotony in your life and get out of your house to collect new experiences and material about which to write. You can take this new knowledge and adapt it to a fiction piece, poetry, haiku, or create an article about the experience that you may query a magazine to publish.

I promised in my next post to list opportunities, many of them free, that may also be available in your area. You will be surprised at the variety of offerings that can get your writing juices flowing.

Here is the info.

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BULLETIN! Writer’s Digest Has Not Breathed Its Last Breath

What a Relief!

By Annette Rey

In March I informed you of Writer’s Digest’s parent company filing for bankruptcy. It was open to speculation whether another interest would find value in purchasing WD.

It’s all been rather hush-hush until now. In the November-December 2019 issue of WD, the Editor-In-Chief speaks.

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Challenge to Writers: Jump Into a Blissful Research Break

Boy, Have I Been Having Fun!

By Annette Rey

Any time away from your daily grind job is fun, right? Well, I have been recently blessed with a relief in my workload. I am spending that time enrolling in free, educational, one-day events around town (at colleges, nature centers, libraries, and churches)*.

These are marvelous opportunities for writers. Waves of new information enter your head and the creativity part of your brain lights up. I will be sharing these experiences with you, encouraging you to search out the same types of opportunities in your part of the world. You will be amazed at what is out there to stoke your writer’s imagination to help you break through anything you may think is writer’s block.

Take a look.

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Science and Writing

Love Them Both!

By Annette Rey

You can break writer’s block by combining another subject you love with your primary desire to write work that flows. To this end, science facts will get me writing.

On 3/30/19 I posted Will Writer’s Digest Die?, an article informing that F&W Media, the publisher of Writer’s Digest, has announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy and unless another interest buys the magazine, writers of the world will lose a valuable resource.

What do these first two paragraphs have to do with one another? Read on.

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Searching for Great Characters

By Annette Rey

A Research Book

I often direct writers to unusual resources to find real-life personality flaws to apply to their character creations. Your readers will relate to these more believable characters because they are sure to have met someone like them at some time in their lives.

Life Code by Dr. Phil is one of those resources.

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Will Writer’s Digest Die?

Please, No!

By Annette Rey

F&W Media, the publisher of Writer’s Digest and more than fifty other magazines, announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to plummeting subscriptions and advertising revenue.

I invoke the little boy’s words as he looked up into the face of his hero, a beloved baseball player accused of throwing the 1919 World Series in the infamous Black Sox Scandal, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

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Annual Library Book Sales

Help Beat Writer’s Block

By Annette Rey

Beat that blank page! There are lots of ideas out there to spark your brain, to pick up your pen, to place your fingers on the keyboard. Here is one of my favorite ways that works for me.

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Colorful, Catchy Narrative II

Radio Noir

In 2017 I posted one of my favorite articles on the gumshoe/street punk/police detective interactions on serial radio programs in the 1940s (read it). Not everyone owned a television set yet and home radio entertainment was a family event. Everything from sci-fi, comedy, horror, family, and mystery shows flowed into the ears of eager listeners.

I have Sirius radio in my car and listen to Radio Classics as I drive. I get a kick out of how the world was viewed then. And I admire the great writing of the programs I hear.

If you want to know how to give images to your work, to give your reader visuals of your story, listen to old radio broadcasts.

Following are great samples from one such program.

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Writers, Go to Your Library

Six Reasons to Digitally Connect to Your Local Library

By Annette Rey

I love books – books I can hold, books I can smell, pages I can turn. I even take joy in categorizing them and lining them on shelves. I enjoy looking at the titles on their spines, and they seem to watch me from their lofty perches as I remember discovering their delectable secrets that revealed themselves as I lightly tiptoed, and sometimes hungrily dashed forward, through their words.

I didn’t think I could enjoy reading books on an electronic device, but the ease and convenience of acquiring reading material won me over. There are other reasons to give this a try, specifically as related to retrieving books from your local library through apps designed for any device.

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