I think I've got the system working now, and if you've already signed up to receive it -- well, you'll be getting an email asking you to confirm that you want to receive the Writing Tips Newsletter. To confirm, you simply need to click on a link at the bottom of that message -- and you'll be taken to a web page telling you that you've successfully subscribed.

I've posted often in recent months about the puzzle of why anyone would register as a member of this blog. You don't need to register to be able to leave a comment. And no one will post to this blog but me and those I invite to be "guest posters/writers/whatever." But if you insist on registering for the blog, you're certainly welcome to do that.

You won't receive anything as a registered subscriber, except a confirmation email allowing you to log in -- and do, well, do really nothing in particular.

BUT: If you enter your email address in the newsletter signup form -- go ahead and do it; I'll wait right here -- you will occasionally receive one of my "once-in-awhile" newsletter with announcements about wonderful goodies you can find or even sometimes "win" as a subscriber to the newsletter.

So go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. Click the link you'll get to confirm that subscription. Then monitor your emailbox for future "once-in-awhile" newsletters.

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Making new effort to get newsletter going — look for confirmation email

In this case, I invite you to share any tips you have or experiences you've had recently regarding cross country moving adventures. If not cross country, at least several hundred miles. Specifically, have any of you used some of these new "POD" moving services and had either good or bad experiences with them? How about conventional movers -- or, even do-it-yourself experiences with the many rent-a-trailer/truck companies available? (I'm hesitant to use brand names.)

I'm asking all this as feedback for an acquaintance of mine on a forum I frequent regularly. He is preparing for a major move and was seeking comments, so I thought I'd see if we can get some comments here and pass the link along to him.

If you've recently moved, or are planning a move, leave a comment. I thank you and he may thank you, too. Meanwhile, if the weather where you are is hot and humid, as it is here, maybe you'll spend the day trying very hard to stay inside with AC and NOT move a lot. Ah, summer in the Missouri Ozarks!

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Moving experiences — got any to share?

• Good news writing requires a short, concise "lead," usually the first paragraph, that summarizes the key points of the story. Likewise, web copy should start with a concise statement of the article, story, or web page.
• Good news writing develops the content of the story quickly, following the lead. Well-written website copy also works quickly to get the information across.
  Good news writing relies on short paragraphs, often of one sentence each. Web copy, too, should be structured in short paragraphs to capture and maintain web visitors attention.
• Web copy, by nature, must be brief. Web pages which stretch on screen after screen die a quick death to the mouse click as the visitor moves on the another website. Likewise, whether for print or broadcast media, news copy has become a series of "briefs" or short articles for the reader who generally is ready and willing to move on.

Learning to write concise, well organized, short copy will help you whether you are doing news writing or creating websites.

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Writing website copy is similar to news writing

Let me say up front, I am NOT talking about writing legitimate articles and/or advertising for publication on the Internet. I am talking about a sort of "machine generated" conglomeration of words that people eager to make money are buying and using to build websites.

Here's an example of what I mean. I was absolutely dumbfounded, at a link I clicked on sometime back, on what I thought was a reputable site. The link sent me to an article titled "A Day in the Life of an Affiliate Marketer." Good title, I thought, and something I would like to know more about. Then I read the first three paragraphs of the article, which I quote here:

"Before we begin, lets discuss what we hope you will learn through this article. Then we can begin to piece it together for you.

"If you're fatally interested in eloquent about associate Marketing, you poverty to think beyond the basics. This informative item takes a earlier look at equipment you poverty to know about associate Marketing.

"Being in the affiliate marketing dealings is not that hard now with the internet at your disposable. We hope that the first part of this article as brought you a lot of much needed information on the subject at hand."

Is that writing? Is that anything resembling effective, useful marketing? No, of course not. There is a wide variety of software still being sold which will generate such stuff. In most cases, it works by finding supposed synonyms for words within an article and generating a selection of several "articles" with the synonyms plugged into each article.

My best guess would be that the article I quoted from has been filtered through such software, probably more than one run-through, and has been turned into idiotic, meaningless junk.

You should know this: Such software is frowned upon by Google and most major search engines. These search engines would hope to find websites which add value and information to their databases for real human beings to find, read, and benefit from.

As a writer, I would challenge you to keep those goals in mind for the new year: Make sure what you are writing and putting on your website is 1) well done, and, 2) of value to your readers.

Don't string words together into verbal garbage like that example above and call it writing. I know you know better.

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Pitfalls of writing for the Internet — stay FAR away from some ‘writing’ software

"Oh, I'm a writer of course, but I really don't care whether my stuff gets read. Just writing it is satisfaction enough for me."

Fair enough, I guess. I understand people who write diaries, journals, private "sketch books" and outlines, recipe cards, and on and on -- documents they are doing privately and never expect them to be read. Indeed, every professional/published writer does such things, and may often use these efforts as inspiration or background for published writing.

But I truly don't understand people who express a desire to write, yet feel no need to have readers. Or at least, I've known such people who certainly would NEVER make an effort on their own to go out and bring readers to their work.

The beauty of the Internet is that many, many people who desire to write can do so at little or no cost. The next step, however, must take place if you wish to write and to have others read what you've written: You must make an effort to get your writing read. That's called MARKETING.

Nothing wrong, that I can see, with marketing your writing. On the high end, you may actually make some money from your writing, which is why we use terms like "professional" for successfully published writers: They write, they publish, and they earn money from the publication of their writing.

On the low end, a bit of marketing at the very least will gain some audience for what you've written. You may not make a dime from the writing, but you will know that something you put into "print" (or blog) made a connection to someone else.

One of the current means of marketing websites involves what has become known as "social bookmarking." I'm just coming to social bookmarking, and I hope personally that it will gain me more readers. As I learn more about it and more about doing it, I'll keep you posted.

Now get busy and write something today that will make us all proud.

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Get serious about what you write and do everything you can to be read

You can find out all about AlphaSmart and their wonderful set of tools -- they offer a fancier version of Neo called "Dana," I think -- with a quick look through your favorite search engine (maybe, uh, say, G**gle?), so I won't take time to put a link here.

Neo, the model I currently own, is a simple, practically indestructible "portable keyboard" that really does just one thing and does that well: It makes it quick and easy for you to enter text. About that "practically indestructible" comment. I know a guy who takes his Neo everywhere and always gets the attention of other writers at conventions and seminars with it. He has been known to illustrate the durability of his by suddenly knocking it off a table top while explaining what it does. That's a great attention getter -- and so far he's never had it even crack -- but I wouldn't recommend it.

Got a novel throbbing through your veins and crying to see the light of day (along with all your other mixed metaphors)? Grab your Neo, stick it in the briefcase/backpack, and take it with you. Spend time at your favorite coffee shop, library, or whatever, and WRITE.

One of the niftiest features of the Neo is its incredible battery life -- lasts, they claim, around 700+ hours on a set of 3 AA battaries. Yup. That's seven hundred and more, in case you find the numbers hard to believe. Match that with your laptop.

Once you've gotten your rough draft done (the Neo hold approximately 100 pages worth of text, with 8 files you can store them in), hook the little keyboard-that-can to your computer via a USB cord, and you can transfer the text into your computer's wordprocessing software to format, edit, and have a ball.

I highly recommend this humble little tool. I've seen forum posts by regularly published writers who own them and couldn't live without them. Take a look around the AlphaSmart site for yourself. I think you'll love the little Neo as much as I do.

Oh, yeah, did I mention eBay? You can generally search eBay and find one or two of the 3000's or Neos on sale for a terrific price. (AND -- if everything you try fails to find you an affordable 3000 or Neo -- you can always come back here and buy one of the fine pens or other writing sets from the merchants I advertise here. It's all right to do that. Really.)

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You want a tremendously useful writing tool? Find yourself an AlphaSmart ‘Neo’

After all, very few bloggers (myself included) are experts in their area. Most bloggers write about things they have passion for, sure, and hopefully some degree of experience in or knowledge about. I've done writing and editing professionally, both in real-world publication settings and in the less formal freelance mode. I enjoy writing and editing, so I started this blog about it. But I've certainly never claimed to be an expert writer or editor. I enjoy sharing my experience and thoughts about the whole range of writing, and I especially appreciate learning from you good readers who leave comments from time to time.

But I also blog about subjects as diverse about bikes and biking, hiking and outdoor living, buying and collecting all sorts of stuff -- and even tips for buying tents and camping gear and ideas for rv camping enthusiasts. I have less expertise in all those areas than in my writing. But I truly enjoy all of those things and have had some experience in the past at each. The beauty of blogging is the way you can combine a passion (collecting, for example) with virtually unlimited Internet resources, and put together something useful and fun -- a sort of "learn as you go and share that learning with others" approach to building a website.

So make sure you blog about what you love, about those passions that amaze and entertain you, even if you don't know all that much about the subject. You can learn and share with others as you go.

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Tip: Blog about what you love, even if you don’t ‘know’ much about it

I'm guessing from the frequency with which it happens that many people really don't understand the difference between "then" and "than."

The correct usage in that sample sentence should be:

"I would rather run screaming from the room THAN see that misuse again."

Using "then" instead of "than" happens so often that many people think it's correct, standard English usage. But it's not. Why not? Because one is a conjunction, the other is an adverb. They are NOT just variant spellings or pronunciations of the same word.

THAN is the conjunction and it is used in clauses of comparison:

"He wrote 1,000 more words today than he did yesterday."

THEN is an adverb of time:

"He then celebrated such great writing with an extra cookie and a long nap."

Got it? See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

And, yes, I really would rather run screaming from the room than see that misuse again -- but I know I will.

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If you’re like me, then you’ve seen too much of then and not enough use of than

I have never belonged to a writers' group, help group, critique meetings, whatever terms you wish to use in the offline world. I have taken a couple of creative writing courses, both when I was still in school and once as an adult. I attended an interesting and useful weekend writing seminar many years ago that was put on by a very successful mystery writer, Lawrence (Larry) Block. Many years ago, I hung around and gained "honorary housewife" status with a really fun group of people in the very old days of Prodigy online forums called "Housewife Writers." I still maintain e-mail contact with a member of that group from time to time. (Peach, you out there?)

What about those of you reading this? I brought the subject up because I just visited a very interesting website, "Litopia Writers' Colony." And in response to a comment on one of my earlier posts, I made reference to "Helium.com," a sort of writers' hangout I did some work with about a year ago.

I have mixed feelings about writers' groups, mostly based on the few I've looked at online and based on comments I've read from a couple of published authors. My feeling is 1) I certainly could use honest, helpful critiquing of my writing, and, 2) most of what I've seen and heard about writers' groups is that it's often too much like "the blind leading the blind."

But I am very open to the idea of writers' groups, and I certainly don't want to prejudice anyone reading this against writers' groups. In fact, I expect to dust off a writing sample I've got somewhere in this disorganized hard drive and take it over to "Litopia Writers' Colony" and knock on their sign-up door.

So let us all know what you're experiences have been. Do you belong to a useful, helpful writers' group? For the convenience of us all, an online group would probably be most interesting. Let us know your experience and your thinking on the whole matter.

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Have you found value in writing groups, either online or offline?

I had a conversation awhile back with a young woman who admitted that she rarely went on the Internet except just enough to take care of what her job requires -- that her husband was quite a "techie" at using the Web, but she was frightened and frustrated about the whole thing.

Her job was banking, not writing, but her attitude is probably just as common among many writers.

At a minimum, writers ought to have one or two good reference tools bookmarked or saved as a favorite in their browsers. I would personally recommend Merriam-Webster Online as an excellent dictionary site, for starters. And another a very interesting site that offers a ton of links to good resources is Reference Desk. I think Reference Desk used to be much better in its free version, having become somewhat cluttered with ads these days. Another very good location for reference links to about anything you might need as a writer is LibrarySpot.com.

Check these out. Perhaps you already have good online reference and research sites, but these might be of interest to you.

I wish you happy and successful writing for the new year. Now get busy and write something to make us all proud.

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Do you use Internet reference tools? What are some of your favorites?