5½ Timeless Commencement Speeches to Teach You to Define Your Own Success
by Maria Popova The great and terrible truth of clichés, why success is a dangerous bedfellow, and how disappointment paves the way for originality. It’s that time of year again, the time when cultural icons and luminaries of various stripes flock to podiums around the world to impart their wisdom on a fresh crop of graduating seniors hungry to take on the world.
The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet
Here are the most useful websites on the Internet that will make you smarter, increase productivity and help you learn new skills. These incredibly useful websites solve at least one problem really well. And they all have cool URLs that are easy to memorize thus saving you a trip to Google. Also see: The Best Android Apps
How to Publish on Smashwords
Publish your ebook to Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive, Flipkart, Oyster, Scribd, Baker & Taylor's Blio and Axis360 (libraries!) and more Earn 60% of List Price from Major Ebook Retailers and 85% Net at Smashwords.com
New Year's Resolution Reading List: 9 Essential Books on Reading and Writing
by Maria Popova Dancing with the absurdity of life, or what symbolism has to do with the osmosis of trash and treasure. Hardly anything does one’s mental, spiritual, and creative health more good than resolving to read more and write better. Today’s reading list addresses these parallel aspirations.
Writing Software
We know some very experienced scriptwriters who bash out their scripts using Microsoft Word. But we highly recommend using scriptwriting software for your Frenzy script. (Trust us! It will save you time! And it's easy to learn!)
Platforming Books — by Craig Mod
Physical + Digital If you buy the physical edition, let us know and we’ll send you the digital bundle for free. And, of course, if you’ve purchased a physical copy in the past, we’ll happily send you the bundle, too. Just mail us: support@prepostbooks.com
Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
By Maria Popova If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we’ve been right on course with David Ogilvy’s 10 no-nonsense tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968) with six tips on writing, originally set down in a 1962 letter to the actor and writer Robert Wallsten included in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (public library) — the same magnificent volume that gave us Steinbeck’s advice on falling in love. Steinbeck counsels: Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps.
Free Software for Writers
Dozens of software applications are available and marketed to writers, yet many of these programs can be both expensive and difficult to use. While standard word processors serve the needs of many writers, some writers require more adaptable and agile solutions. For writers unwilling or unable to spend hundreds of dollars to invest in the multitude of purchasable programs, there is a plethora of free, user-friendly programs available for download. Q10 is a free, highly customizable, full screen word processor. This program includes live stats, word count, auto-correction, auto-save, timer alarm for timed writing sessions, and optional typewriter sound effects. For writers who are easily distracted or crave a simple, effective word processor with no frills, Q10 is extremely simple to use.
Self Publishing and Free Distribution for Books, CD, DVD
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Why I Write: George Orwell's Four Motives for Creation
by Maria Popova “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery.” Literary legend Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, remains best remembered for authoring the cult-classics Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but he was also a formidable, masterful essayist. Among his finest short-form feats is the 1946 essay Why I Write (public library) — a fine addition to other timeless insights on writing, including Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers. I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited.
10 apps for distraction-free, productive writing
Using technology for more productive writing sessions If you are a writer or even just responsible for blogging on your company website, chances are that you use your computer. The downside to using a computer? Constant distractions. From blinking icons, to Facebook notifications, and everything in between, it can be hard to focus on the task at hand.
How to extract text from images: a comparison of 10 free OCR tools
Printing text to paper is done every day; on some occasions however the reverse is needed – getting the original text back from a scanned image or photograph, for further editing and use. This conversion is named Optical Character Recognition or OCR for short, and it can convert scanned books and documents into editable text, to get editable text from PDFs created via scanning, or even get text from screenshots and images. There are a variety of tools available for character recognition and some of them are free to use. This article will help you find and choose between several free OCR tools. Note: this article was last updated on June 18th, 2013. This update added a host of additional tools that offer free OCR functionality, many of these we found through reader comments, so thank you for helping us make this article better.
