Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Ghostwriting in Music: I Write The Songs That Make The Young Girls Cry For Somebody Else

Did you know that Mozart was a ghostwriter? He used to ghost write music for the wealthy patrons of the arts. There is a long history of ghostwriting and music. In 1939 Patrick Standford was a ghostwriter for various symphonies and films.

In the movie business, music ghostwriting is fairly secretive. It is considered unethical by many people but it is very common. In the very early days of movies, a composer named David Raskin worked as a music ghostwriter for Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was credited as the score writer.

In pop music, musical ghostwriting is also a factor. At times an experienced songwriter is brought in to help with either inexperienced songwriters, or somebody that may be suffering from writer's block. Sometimes a ghost writer will write lyrics and music in the style of a musician and still get little or no input from the person credited on the music sheet. Sometimes a ghost writer is credited as an associate or similar innocuous term.

More commonly, they just do not appear anywhere-they are a true ghost. Sometimes legal action takes place when a musical ghost writer tries to claim royalties- usually after song becomes a hit. Sarah McLachlan got into a dispute with a musician who claimed that he had a significant contribution to her debut album, "Touch."

In hip-hop, ghostwriting is growing every year. In fact, it does lead to some controversy. Purists do not like it, and point to the use of it as an example of "bad capitalism." This is because of the perception of rapping as "expressing yourself" and that writing for someone else is not pure "self-expression." Some rappers like Chuck D of Public Enemy, Inc. think that is a mistaken view because not everyone is a gifted lyricist and not everyone is equipped to be a vocalist. He says a rap song may require more talents than a single person has.

Most ghost writers have confidentiality clauses, or they might appear in the liner notes, and in some cases they are allowed to discuss their participation out the open. You might see a credit in the liner notes for "vocal arrangement," which might mean it was a ghostwriter. A few years ago there were hip-hop ghostwriting services which appeared online, and provided artists with rhymes for free.

Ghostwriting has a long tradition in music, from Mozart to today's hottest rappers. As long as the song is a hit, the person that penned it will have a job.

Joe Ditzel is a ghostwriter, SEO consultant, and really bad golfer. His articles on ghostwriting can be found at http://www.joeghostwriter.com.




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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices



Thirty-six of the most interesting writers in the Pacific Northwest came together for a week-long marathon of writing live on stage. The result? Hotel Angeline, a truly inventive novel that surprises at every turn of the page.

Something is amiss at the Hotel Angeline, a rickety former mortuary perched atop Capitol Hill in rain-soaked Seattle. Fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin is fixing the plumbing, the tea, and all the problems of the world, it seems, in her landlady mother’s absence.

The quirky tenants—a hilarious mix of misfits and rabble-rousers from days gone by—rely on Alexis all the more when they discover a plot to sell the Hotel. Can Alexis save their home? Find her real father? Deal with her surrogate dad’s dicey past? Find true love? Perhaps only their feisty pet crow, Habib, truly knows.

Provoking interesting questions about the creative process, this novel is by turns funny, scary, witty, suspenseful, beautiful, thrilling, and unexpected.

Seattle7Writers, which created “The Novel: Live!” event and the resulting novel Hotel Angeline, is one of a diverse range of not-for-profit, author-focused organizations receiving support from Amazon.com for programs dedicated to developing new works and new voices. Other recipients include the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Lambda Literary Foundation, Poets & Writers, One Story, The Loft, Council of Literary Magazines & Presses, Hedgebrook, Copper Canyon Press, The Moth, Girls Write Now, Seattle Arts & Lectures, Richard Hugo House, WriteGirl, 826 Seattle, Voice of Witness, The Kenyon Review, Open Letter, Archipelago Books, Pen American Center, Words Without Borders, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Asian American Writers Workshop, and the New York Writers Coalition. All of these organizations share Amazon.com’s obsession with fostering the creation, discussion, and publication of new authors and new work.




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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Three Essential Blog Basics

Blogs and blogging can be many different things to many different people. By uncomplicated use of a free website builder, anyone can write about any subject they wish to choose and have a portal to the world. If you want to get your blog seen by as many people as possible and generate the traffic levels you want then you have to get the basics right and the three blog basics everyone should get right, regardless of writing ability and subject matter, are:

The Design
So the decision has been made and you start to use a free online website builder to enter yourself into the blogging sphere. Choosing the design is like choosing a frame for a piece of artwork; it has to suit and compliment your blog and add value if it can. Go for clean crisp backgrounds to have behind your content which will help the reading of the work and make the work the focus. For areas in the web pages that do not feature writing; try to make it interesting but not steal or distort the focus of their attention which should always be the writing.
When it comes to the actual design of the writing, do not use a font which is unusual. The reasons for this are two fold; firstly, your visitors expect a nice familiar font which they can easily read. Secondly, not all fonts are compatible in the many different operating systems in use around the world, so if in doubt play safe with fonts like Ariel, Verdana and Times New Roman, these are from a family of fonts which are the most commonly used.

Know Your Audience
Knowing who you are writing for will have an influence on the subject matters you choose to write about and the style in which it is written. The choice of subject matter will obviously be your final decision and it has to something you are interested in and comfortable to write about but identifying who are target audience will help you form a strategy with important decisions like how to get it seen.
Inviting feedback and discussion by adding a comments section is a surefire winner to get to know your visitors likes and dislikes as people love to express their opinion just as much as you do, but often the difference is you have decided to create a blog and they haven't. It is also good to get people to subscribe to your blog and as well as having the obvious effect of increasing returning visitors, you can also obtain some basic information like sex and location in the subscription process.
A technical way of knowing a bit more about your audience is use of free analytical tools like that of Google tools to find out who is searching for you, your subject matter and where the searches are coming from. It all helps to increase your knowledge of whom and how to target your audience.

Get It Seen
Once you have used a website builder to display your musings or your art portfolio you then have to get it seen. Forming a strategy to get it seen is the hardest part because it involves work and research as well producing the best content you possibly can.
Look at ways to get back links and people to link to you. This can be achieved by finding areas that would be of similar interest and physically asking them to link to you. It might be that you have to reciprocate the link so be choosy who to get links from and who you link to. Never link to something or be associated with something that would be of detriment to your own blog.
Learning how to make your blog Search Engine Optimized will help with the search engine rankings and will increase the amount of traffic coming to you. There are plenty of resources on the internet which will give you the basics on how to use keywords in your titles and your content which will help you improve your rankings.

Anyone can use a simple free website builder to build a blog and the quality of the writings can vary dramatically but if you have a good style and can write well then by paying good heed to the three essential basics to creating a blog you will be giving yourself and your blog the best chance of success


Maria Wixman can show you How To Use Free Website Maker with WIX.com I have been in the online marketing industry for over two years and love all things related to e-marketing, writing for the web, SEO and SEM. I've been working for a large company that specializes in web design,
and love how dynamic this field is.



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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Art of Writing Novels

If you have ever dreamed of being a writer of great novels, then you are not alone. There are many people who desire to write "that story" that will capture the hearts of the reader and entice Hollywood to make a movie. Unfortunately, while many desire to be writers, most fail to put the ink on the paper. Here are a few things to consider if you are serious about writing that perfect novel.
1. Be persistent in writing every day. The only way to be an excellent writer is to write. Writing every day will help you stay focused on improving your skills and increasing your imagination. Schedule time each day to write something. Whether it is in your journal, an article, or ideas of a storyline, you must write every day. Being persistent will help you overcome all procrastination road blocks that many dreamers fail to conquer.
2. Focus on technique. Writing a novel requires some basic techniques such as writing dialog, creating a plausible plot, or establishing characters that impact that reader. Taking the time to learn the techniques will strengthen your ability to tell a compelling story.
3. Learn the importance of editing your writing. I have heard that the most successful writers spend the majority of their time reviewing and editing their own work. This is important because as you write, your ideas tend to flow sometimes faster than you can write, leaving many grammatical errors and misspellings. A technique in reviewing your writing is to read through the material for specific techniques such as the tone of dialog, descriptive language, or flow of ideas. Also, reading dialogs out loud can improve your ability to discover flaws in conversational writing. By reading and listening to your words, you can better critique the validity of your character's dialog.
4. Learn the importance of marketing your work. Yes, I said it. Marketing! All the greatest stories will forever go untold because no one will never hear or read them. If you want to be a successful writer, you must know some of the basic principles of marketing your materials. Whether you are working with a publisher or using self-publishing techniques, knowing how to market your book will greatly improve your chances of being that great novel writer.
If you follow these four principles you will experience more successes than failures in your journey to become a great novel writer. With today's technology, writing a novel is becoming easier to do. However, whether you use a pen or the strokes of the keypad or typewriter, the process takes time. It is therefore imperative that you become disciplined in the art of writing. By making writing a daily habit you will experience growth in your abilities to tell a great story or to record your thoughts on paper.
If you are looking for a professional coach to help you in the process of writing novels, check out http://tinyurl.com/3q9oto3.


Duane Shoemaker is an instructional designer and manages various websites, including http://www.instructionaldesignexpert.com



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