Things are gonna be changing around here…

Three blogs are too many blogs.  Plus there is the constant pressure of coming up with content for all three of them that is specific to the niche that I’ve established for each of them.  Grist for the Muse: Writing ideas and inspiration; The 15-Minute Writer – Finding time to write and time management techniques and tips for writers. And this blog: Flash Writing – Devoted to providing content that is for writing anything less than 1000 words long. These are all very narrow focuses, and I’m finding that I have a lot to say that exists in between these niches.

The best writing blogs give you a glimpse into the writer’s mind and life and lets you get to know him/her. The have good days and bad days. They have opinions. They rant. They rave. The express their doubts and fears, as well as their successes. But none of my blogs have that kind of energy right now.  At times I dread looking at them because I know they are defective and diseased, but yet feel I need to nurture them even though they are clearly rabid and need to be put down. So I’m putting them down.

Good writing blogs are about two things: The writing life and making money with it. So the new focus of Flash Writing moving forward: Write Fast. Make Money.  I’m not promising that I won’t change focus or change my mind on the other blogs.  I will keep them online for a while and redirect them here to this site, as well as take the best content on them and republish it here

Flash fiction is interesting to me, but I’m not sure that I can become a definitive destination site for writing all things that flash. There are other sites out there that do a much better job of this.  FlashFiction.Net for example does a great job providing resources, interviews, stories and other articles surrounding flash fiction… But as I’ve always said, the principles of Flash Writing can be used for any writing project, so I’m going to build upon this concept and focus on growing one site well instead of three sites poorly.

I have content that fits none of these niches that will be of interest to writers everywhere, so I want Flash Writing to be that destination from now on.  So go there for your Writing Topic Tuesdays and Provocative Phrase Fridays, Muse Reviews and all of the other content you've been seeing on Grist for the Muse over the past several years.

To head over to Flash Writing click HERE.

Provocative Phrase Friday – Don't talk with your mouth full +11 other writing prompts

Provocative Phrase (Writing Prompts) for Friday, March 2, 2012:

Courtesy of Kaptain Kobold via Flickr

• Don't talk with your mouth full…
• How is Michael doing?
• No one spoke…
• You got to get…
• I live alone, quite happily, with the…
• You lose sleep…
• He stands in the…
• Then there are the…
• Do you care about being liked?
• You done a lot of work…
• Can you help me?
• Why would she let them…

Provocative Phrase Friday – People said it wouldn't last +11 other writing prompts

Here are your provocative phrases for Friday, February 10, 2012:

Courtesy of  Leonid Mamchenkov via Flickr

• People said it wouldn't last…
• I lost it.
• I hate seeing…
• Don't worry if…
• Do you have room…
• No one has what I have…
• There's nothing left to do…
• She gets paid to…
• He was grungy…
• We got a few minutes…
• Somehow it all works…
• In the last few years…

Writing Topic Tuesday – The Petty Annoyance Edition

The number one way to make money in the world is to find a problem and solve it.  Most problems are too big to solve alone or with a small group of people. For example, providing an adequate supply of fresh water for everyone that needs it; solving hunger in our country (let alone the rest of the world); vanquishing the causes and consequences of drug addiction; or finding alternative fuel sources that are cheap, clean and easy to produce.

Courtesy of miguelb via Flickr

So we focus on the little problems. The petty annoyances that irritate us, but often not annoying  enough to do something about it.  Annoyance: Do you want to turn off your lights without getting out of bed? Solution: The Clapper. Annoyance:   Running out of shelf space for your CDs and DVDs? Solution: The MP3 and MP4 formats.  Annoyance: Tired of waiting for catsup to slide out of the bottle?  Or the mess involved with getting jelly out of the jar with a knife? Solution: The squeezable bottle.

Today’s edition is going to focus on petty things that annoy me. It will be challenging to use these annoyances as writing topics, but not impossible:

• Peanut butter that sticks to knives when you dip them in and gets everywhere
• Pistachio nuts that have no crack to easily open it
• Cats that get their claws stuck in fabric all of the time and when you try to extract them, you get bitten or scratched
• Getting email from a site that you once subscribed to, but is too complicated to figure out how to unsubscribe, so you just delete the messages unread
• People who are bad at communicating and you feel bad about telling them so
• LinkedIn when it has a suggestion for someone you might know, and when you try to connect to them, it demands more information or an email address to finish the connection.
• Microsoft Word – for being a pain to format when using an outline or numbering on a document (always messing up the numbers and indentation of lines)
• Dogs that snatch the top piece of bread off of your ham sandwich (even though you put the sandwich in the middle of the table) while you get a book from the other room.
• Bad Rolling Stones songs
• A speaker phone that hangs up if it is even slightly jostled
• Ignored emails that obviously require a timely response
• Junk email for golf equipment that seems to evade your spam filter, even though you’ve blacklisted several addresses similar to it and the sender has the SAME SENDER NAME AS THE ONE YOU BLACKLISTED.

Provocative Phrase Friday – I was really sick... +11 other writing prompts

Here are your Provocative Phrases for Friday, February 3rd, 2012:

Courtesy of Rich Seymour via Flickr

• I was really sick…
• This is not…
• Here's how they did…
• What’s it do for me?
• At home with some spare time?
• There's not one question…
• In my hotel room…
• We think we love…
• Why, yes I am!
• What's next?
• It's just a matter of when…
• I can attest that…
• I said nothing.

Muse Review – How to Create Non-Fiction Book Ideas That Sell by James Thomson

So why is the book only 4 stars instead of 5? A couple of reasons: First, the book is ambitious, too ambitious and it starts moving beyond the premise on the cover of generating non-fiction book ideas and spills into details about the writing process and the publishing business which is all good information, but it feels rushed and incomplete, as if the writer combined content from 2 or 3 books into this one book.

As a person always looking for new ways to generate writing topics and ideas, I’m always on the hunt for more resources.  As one of the first titles I downloaded on my Kindle Fire, How to Create Nonfiction Book Ideas That Sell was full of many ideas that I had not considered before and the book also took advantage of one of the major features of eBooks: providing links to other resources on the web, which is perfect for a book of this nature.

Although the book is geared toward self-publishing audiences, any writer can benefit from the tips and techniques discussed within it.  Thomson provides spot-on advice for writers about selecting topics to write about, how to identify possible trends that might be an excellent opportunity for writing and publishing a book, and how to tap into your own interests and experiences to find content.

I particularly like the Quick Idea Formula; Slant Your Book Ideas for Success, and Questions to Ask Yourself About Book Ideas sections in the book.  The Appendix with all of the links to other resources is worth the $.99 price alone.

As a result the flow of the book is somewhat chaotic and in several places becomes repetitive, often repeating the exact same phrasing from earlier in the book.  The book could use a massive developmental overhaul to eliminate these redundant sections and maybe reorganize the sections to help improve the overall flow of the book.  Thomson might even consider taking the Judging Ideas, Taking Action and maybe the Enhancing Ideas section and expanding each of them into a separate book.  The book would also benefit a wider audience if it was available in print or other eBook formats

But these issues are minor and most readers are not going to care. The content is excellent, the links very helpful and the advice wonderful.  It is well worth the purchase price (right now as a Kindle eBook on Amazon, for 99 cents), and I’d pay much more for a book with this excellent content.  If you have a Kindle and want to write non-fiction or are struggling with coming up with writing ideas in general, buy this book.  You won’t regret it.

Rating **** (Buy on Sale/Discounted)

About Ratings: ***** -- Well Worth it at Full Retail Price; **** — Buy on Sale/Discounted; *** — Buy Used; ** — Borrow It from the Library; * — Waste of a Good Tree