Let your Script breath... Let a script breathe? Come on. A script isn?t human (not before your shoot it) so how can it breathe? Think of it as a child, your child. You must have at least nine months of pregnancy to have a child. There is no instant child. The same is with a script. There is no time limit when you write it unless you are professional and someone hires you to write it. For a freelance writer it can take months or years to have one ready and even then it i...

Writing business letters is a forgotten art. The Internet has made us lazy writers. With a few keystrokes, we can kick off a short e-mail without thinking much about content, much less formatting. Have you ever reviewed your own e-mails and discovered misspellings, incomplete sentences, formatting mistakes, and grammatical errors? Usually we think nothing about how our lazy writing negatively affects our e-mails; other people e-mail us the same type of junk all the time. But,...

How many times has a boyfriend or husband dismissed a movie you wanted to see as just another ?chick flick?, refusing to go, and dragged you to see an action film instead? It seems that any sort of entertainment that is created specifically by women for women has a stigma attached to it, and is often disregarded as superficial fluff. This is not simply true for movies anymore, but for books as well, with the fairly recent emergence of the genre ?chick lit.? These books oft...

I write e-books for a living. It's my bread and butter. Right now I'm on a lovely summer holiday... in a country other than my own... courtesy of the $49,613 just one of my e-books generated in a span of three months. But let the truth be known - I despise reading the darn things on the computer. Okay perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't like reading 'certain' e-books on the computer. And once I give you my readers perspective, you'll see why most bookstore b...

The year 2005 saw 172,000 new books released in the United States, according to Bowker, the world?s leading provider of bibliographic information. The number of new titles dropped about 10% from the record high of 195,000 in 2004, but 172,000 titles is still quite a few books. Dee Power, the co-author with Brian Hill, of "The Making of a Bestseller," puts this number into perspective. If the books were shelved side by side one would need two and three quarter miles of shel...

When you read your newspaper, or pick up the colorful sheets of advertising that come to your mailbox, what do you think of? If you consider the material aspect of this printed matter, you probably think about the paper; how heavy it is, and if it?s recyclable. But there is a greater element to consider in your reading materials, and without it, there wouldn?t be anything but blank pages. Ink has been the crucial element of the printed medium ever since its genesis, and has n...

When was the last time you gave your readers a reason to devour your writing? If you suspect you aren't capturing your readers as you should then you need to work on your introductions. As the old saying goes: You never get another chance to make another first impression. This is even more true for introducing your essay or article than it is for introducing yourself. If your introduction does not capture the attention and interest of your reader then you have likely lost ...

It appears that today everyone is a writer, and we all have the same dream. We all hope to someday be published. So as writers, where do we get started? I suggest joining writing groups first and start seeking feedback that can help your career as a writer. It is most likely that your closest friends and family are telling you that your writing is the greatest thing since Steven King?s, and maybe it is, but it doesn't hurt to get some feedback from your fellow writers. ...

The Internet has changed a lot of things within the business world, including business correspondence. Where once traditional, formal business letters were normal, quick business emails now rule the day. The ease and informality of the Internet often makes it seem we can write business e-mails poorly and get away with it; yet, it?s actually the contrary. Because email is so accessible, people receive that much more of it and disregard anything less than perfect. Your business...

Mr. David Davidar began his career in journalism and is founder of Penguin Books India. Currently, he is Publisher of Penguin Canada and also is author of the novel, The House of Blue Mangoes. How did you first get started in the publishing business? Twenty years ago I was working in Bombay and there was a colleague I knew who had done a publishing course at Harvard. And she said, ?Why don?t you go there and check it out?? So I came to the States, and I did the course, ...