CuteWriting

Pictures May Boost Your PageRank My Success Mantra John Grisham: The Writer in Black Dialog Attribution: Why King Said So? List of Popular Idioms and Usages Part D Are You Using This At All? Semantics of Words: Using the Right Word Great Writers: Charles Dickens A Notification, Story, and Apology for You List of Popular Idioms and Usages Part C Stephen King: The Master of Horror Publishing vs. Vanity and Self Popular Idioms and Usages Part B List of Popular Idioms and Usages Part A The Main Reason Why Your Writing Fails Some English Errors to Avoid Why Superfluity Sustains How to Write Your First Draft? K R Meera Kept Me Allured Dangling Modifiers (Dangling Participles): Some Tips

Today, my PageRank has risen for the first time to PR1 (and this blog is less than 2 months old). And you may wish to see this post, made for a contest entry, in which I described about it . Here is a thought. Just a thought, and may be it is pure coincidence. But I would well appreciate your views on this. [Here is Google PageRank Update of rising PR to 4 ] Last night, what I did was writing an entry about how I could rise to second page on Google, and promote this blog to this level. I described everything I did in the last post made for Chitika contest, and as per their requirement, put a picture badge at the end of the post. When I looked at the entry, I was very pleased by its look. The picture badge was really nice on the blog, and I even mentioned about it in my mail to Chitika. So, I had a thought: why not add some more pictures on the post? I hunted around in Google for appropriate pictures for my posts, and found some author pictures, which I uploaded to the appropriate...

My Cutewriting is a rather new blog, less than two months old. But it has now 27 subscribers, as you can see from the chicklet from Feedburner on the left. It has so many backlinks from so many blogs, and some of these blogs are PR4 and PR5. And as the greatest achievement, my this little blog ranks on the second page of Google for the search term, “Good Writing,” which is of above average search volume. I am getting some search engine hits these days. Only very recently did I come up to the top of search results. This is an addition to this article (this part [in italics] is written after the article was published in the blog), I am adding now (1:18 pm April 30 IST). I woke up in the morning, and when I checked this site, I found it to be PR1. Wow! But I thought it was a fake PR (most of the time the Google toolbar shows the PR of any other open windows here). So, I went and checked my site’s PR in a website, which checks PR. Yes it is PR1 now. All these achievements within such a mi...

The first novel of John Grisham I read was The Firm, a story etched in a lawyer’s life. Something John plucked out from his own life. John Grisham , born in Arkansas , US, in 1955 is a former attorney and politician. Nothing more need be said about his launch of career as a legal thriller writer. His first work, A Time to Kill, after getting rejection letters so many times, got published in 1988, and was not at all a successful novel. Not even 5000 copies were in print it. And it just went unnoticed in the stream of best sellers at that time. However, the day he finished this novel, he had started his new work, based on an attorney inducted to a corrupt law firm, with connections to Mafia groups. This story, titled The Firm , came out to be the seventh best seller for the year 1991. That was just the beginning. More than forty weeks in bestseller list, The Firm made a fortune for Grisham and allowed him to quit his job as attorney to concentrate on full time writing. H...

Stephen King said, “ Somebody said , ‘blah, blah,’ is the best way to attribute dialogs.” In On Writing , Stephen King said that the best dialog attribution terms are ‘said,’ ‘say,’ etc. On Writing is King’s best-selling non-fiction on how to write better. When you read a novel or a short story, you usually encounter what characters speak, in their own words. For instance, Joe said, “I am here to know about it.” Steve said, “You will learn.” These are dialog attributions, which tells you who said a particular thing. They are very important in a work of fiction in order to show you what is happening in a scene. While it is so, we may encounter sentences like the following. Harry jerked out at last, “I can’t go.” Tim mouthed his reply, “Then I will do it.” In these sentences, the speaker does a certain action like jerking out or mouthing , and it is told to the readers by the author. When you read such sentences, you find it rather amusing at first...

Here is the fourth part of the series. I hope you read the other parts in the series , if not find it in the archive link list on the right side. Daisy Roots : Boots ( Cockney Rhyming Slang ). Dark horse : Someone who accomplishes something previously unknown. Date rape : Rape by an acquaintance in a social meet. Davy Jones’ locker : Bottom of the sea. Dead cat bounce : An automatic recovery from a financial crisis. Dead ringer : An exact duplicate. This came into existence from horserace. The ringer is a horse substituted for one to defraud the bookies. Designer dyke : A lesbian of glamorous feminine beauty. A diamond in the rough: Someone with good character but lacking social grace. Dickey dirt : Shirt (Cockney Rhyming) Differently abled : handicapped or disabled. This is a more acceptable and better term than handicapped. And can be used not to offend such people. Doesn’t know shit from Shinola: To talk about someone with no knowle...

Hi all, this is a blog notification . Are you really using the resources available to you through this blog productively? The title page of this blog itself proclaims what its aim is, and how I have envisage it. This is purely meant to cater to those aspirant writers who wish to improve their writing and language skills. Though I am posting here what I think would be apt for clarifying most of the doubts aspirant writers might have, I have no idea what specific doubts, troubles, etc., you might have. For that, as I always say in almost every post, please comment on. Unless you comment, I have no means to know what you need, dear friends. So, be agile and keep commenting your doubts. Read the posts, and if you found anything needing clarification, post your comment right away. I am very agile in answering your questions and definitely will answer them ASAP. And if you need any particular topic to be addressed in one of the posts, make a request through the comments. I nee...

When you write, how many of you choose the right words to use? The stats are appallingly low. Semantics is a science and branch of linguistics that deals with the actual (literal) meaning of an expression or the implied (figurative/contextual) meaning. For instance, when they say a particular thing, garish writers tend to be more garish, incorporating such forms of usage widely not applicable to the terms used. Here is an example… “When the sunrays pierced my innards, I discovered it extremely difficult to slip my feet forward. When the scorching wind steam-bathed me, I felt being pushed back hard. And when the cackling noise terrified me, I sensed an acceleration on my feet.” When I wrote this little paragraph, I intended to give you the worst example of word usages possible. However, after finishing it now, I see it can have a totally different outlook. Look at the first sentence. The italicized words are used in an absurd way. Sunrays cannot pierce your in...

Charles Dickens is the greatest English novelist and the second greatest writer in English (second only to Shakespeare). And Oliver Twist is the greatest English novel by far. Hope you read my previous entry about Stephen King . Born in 1812, in Portsmouth , England , Charles John Huffman Dickens, became the most famous writer in his time (Victorian era) with the publication of Oliver Twist. His best feature is his storytelling method of precise and complete descriptions, etched with detail. For instance, I would like to point you to this first paragraph of Oliver Twist, by far, my most favorite work of art. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to, inasmuch as it can be of no possible con...

It’s a crime not to publish regularly when you have a blog. And it becomes extremely unforgivable when you have this many readers reading your blog’s RSS. So, all, please accept my apologies for no updation in the last two or three days; here is the reason for that. One more thing: This is a notification post, and not connected to the general topic of the blog. I have labeled it as a Blog Notification . Here onward, dear readers, I will have all the notifications for you under this lightweight banner. I am here in India, and the only countrywide Internet service available to us is from the Indian government-affiliated company, BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigham Limited) . Since it is the only company offering Internet service in our area, I have no choice. If there were other companies available, I would gladly have switched . It was until evening last Friday, April 18, that I was getting Internet connectivity without any fault whatever. Suddenly in the evening, when I tried to connect, I got...

Here is the third part of the list of popular idioms series. Here are some from the letter C. Hope you read the first and the second part of this series. Call a spade a spade : To speak straight forward. Joe’s courage to call a spade a spade created him a lot many enemies. Canteen culture: Old fashioned attitudes of racism and misogyny. Carte blanche: Freedom to choose what you want to. This is similar to blank check . Catch 22: This is a famous satire classic from Joseph Heller. The slang meaning is total failure. Caught by the short and curlies: Held fast by an enemy into a position not easy to escape from. Caught with your pants down: Caught unawares. Cherry ripe: Means pipe. It’s a Cockney rhyming slang . Chew the cud: Spend time chatting. China plate: Mate or friend. Another Cockney rhyming slang. Chinless wonder: Refers to a member of British nobility. Chip on his shoulder: To nurture a grudge. Chop and change: To change continuously....

I have here the new section in CuteWriting with biographies and achievements of greatest writers who can influence you. Here is the first entry on Steve. Stephen Edwin King (60) is perhaps the most popular and most respected creative writer in the US today (perhaps in the whole world). Not anything we speak of creative writing today is complete without mentioning his name. The first of King works I read was Pet Sematary . Please read my little experience here . I then read a number of novels by him and soon lost count. And never did he disappoint me one bit. King is the most prolific and most renowned horror fiction writer in history. Brief Bio Born in Portland, Maine in 1947 (the year of India’s independence), he was a born writer . He kick-started his career early at school, where he contributed to his school newspaper, The Maine Campus . His first short story was 'The Glass Floor ' in print in 1967 . His first novel, Carrie (a classic in horror fiction and most read wor...

You, assuming you are an aspirant writer, can find many ways to write and publish your work. Still, only a minimal percentage of people actually publish anything . Most of them are ejected in that review process of the publishing god, editor. You can submit anything, but only those gems with the perfect contours get selected for publication. In such a scenario, comes into play two new industry players— vanity publishers and self-publishers . So, now the publishing types are three in number: vanity publishing, publishing, and self publishing. While in normal publishing you write a book, submit it for review, and if selected the publisher prints and distributes the book with their money, in vanity publishing the process is different. Here, the writer opens his wallet and finances everything from printing to distribution to marketing . And if the book is successful, the writer can earn some of the cash he spent, otherwise her wallet remains open letting more of his money seep . The name v...