Shortlisted for Flash Fiction Prize

A month or two ago, on a whim, I wrote a one-page story and entered in a contest run by Fish Publishing.

Fish Publishing is an independent publishing company based in the West of Ireland. It has been running writing contests since 1994 with the goal to discover, encourage and promote new writers.

The one-page story contest (also called "flash fiction") was established in 2004. The goal for each writer is "to create, in a tiny fragment, a completely resolved and compelling story in 300 words or less."

The 10 winners and the top prize will be announced at the end of the month, but the short list of 114 (out of 1,500 entries) was announced today and my story, "Rebellion", is on it!

Style Guide for Web Writing & Yahoo!

Yahoo is stepping up to fill a huge void in the world of online writing. Their new The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World is now available for pre-order.

I've ordered my copy. Do you have yours?

Why we need a new style guide for the web

The existing guides weren't written for the online world.

The Chicago Manual of Style is really for books. The AP Stylebook is really for newspapers. PR people

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Websites Are Like Museums

Talk to anybody who spends time (and makes money) online and they'll tell you — writing for the web isn't like writing books or speeches or newsletters or anything else. Web writing is special.

Talk to museum people and they'll tell you the same thing — about writing exhibits. Exhibits are special, too.

The funny thing is that exhibits and websites have more in common than you might think.

How Do Museums Teach Kids & Grown-Ups At Once?

Imagine you're walking into a big natural history museum. You walk into the first gallery and look at the

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How I Spent My Recession Vacation

Like many freelancers and small businesses, at the end of 2008, I had some free time on my hands. I'd just moved from the Washington, D.C. area, where I had a network of colleagues and clients, to the St. Louis area, where I didn't know anybody — just in time for the economy to go kerpluey.

Instead of moping or scrambling for business, I put my energies into expanding my skills. I focused on learning more about search engine optimization and writing for the web. I'd always spent time reading great business books, but this time I was more focused.

Websites for Web Writers

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Dashed Off

I think I see more confusion and problems with dashes than almost any other punctuation mark these days (with the possible exception of the ongoing serial comma wars). Part of the problem is that Microsoft and html both make it really hard to get hyphens right.

So here a quick guide to dashes in common word processing and online writing situations.

Dash v. Hyphen

(-) A hyphen connects two words. Like obsessive-compulsive. (Why did I choose obsessive-compulsive to illustrate this nitpicky punctuation point? Uh, no reason.)

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