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By Dave Hitt on Dec 24, 2013 in Writing | 4 Comments
Version 1.5 of World of Tanks, The Missing Manual is now available. It contains about 20% more content than the first version, and has also been updated to reflect changes in the game. The version number is now noted on the Intro page. If there’s no version number on your Intro page, you’ve got the […]
By Dave Hitt on Sep 21, 2013 in Writing | 5 Comments
It seems that half the stories and blog posts on the ‘net are now list articles. Here are seven reasons I hate them. 1) Its Lazy Writing – Good articles make a point or three, backing up opinions and ideas with compelling writing. This requires time and craft. List articles, by contrast, are stupidly simple […]
By Dave Hitt on Sep 1, 2013 in Writing | 0 Comments
Note: This is not a beginner’s tutorial; it assumes you already know how to use Scrivner. I got the idea for Blood Witness in the early eighties. I poked at it for a couple of years before I finally sat down and finished it. Then I spent another year on revisions and edits. I made […]
By Dave Hitt on Mar 27, 2012 in Ridiculous, Writing | 6 Comments
Social media sites are infested with sayings plastered into graphics files. Most of them are trite, cliché, and/or stupid. The few that aren’t are diminished by such treatment. If you’ve got something worth reading, just write it in regular text. Plain text retains the power of your words.  Slapping them into a graphics file dilutes their […]
By Dave Hitt on Feb 19, 2012 in Writing | 0 Comments
Novice artists are often appalled by the idea of constraints. “I’m going to ignore the rules and create something completely outside the box!” (A cliché that reveals a complete lack of creativity.) They don’t realize the boxes are there for a reason, and working within them could make them more creative, not less. For instance, […]
By Dave Hitt on Aug 6, 2011 in Writing | 9 Comments
It’s easier to learn from bad writing than from good writing. Good writers integrate the techniques of their craft so smoothly it’s often difficult to figure out exactly what they’ve done. It’s like enjoying a great dish prepared by a master chef – you know it’s delicious, but can’t quite figure out the ingredients or […]
By Dave Hitt on Feb 1, 2011 in Bad Business, Writing | 13 Comments
You’ll appreciate this post more if you read this first. Publish America is a vanity publisher who takes their scam one step further than most by saddeling authors with outrageous contracts. The contracts have varied a bit over time, but often contain a clause that requires authors to buy a butt-load of their own books […]