Harper Lee's New Book and a Stamp with Alice Munro

Last week happened to be very rich in literature events.  You know, I sometimes get very excited when I talk about books or authors. They are my real passion and I just don’t have enough strength to walk past any bookstore I come across (sometimes it gets even problematic cause I swear, I don’t know how I lose so much time there). Thus, as I’m a true reading geek, I just couldn’t miss the opportunity to share my impressions regarding literature news. There are two of them, in particular, that impressed me the most.

So, here we go.

A new book by Harper Lee “Go Set a Watchman” has been released on July 14^th. I haven’t managed to buy it yet but I will certainly do! “To Kill the Mockingbird” is one of my favorite books and here comes the next one. It’s surely on the bestseller list on Amazon and I suppose it couldn’t be any other way. However, I’ve read the first chapter kindly published by The Guardian and I have very mixed feelings. That’s certainly not what I expected but I can’t evaluate without seeing the big picture. I definitely want to purchase the full version and then I’ll be able to settle on my opinion.

By the way, you can also listen to the first chapter of “Go Set a Watchman” read by Reese Witherspoon. Intriguing, isn’t it?

But that’s not all. Canada Post created a stamp with the image of Alice Munro, the first Nobel Prize winner in Literature from Canada. I think it’s a real honor and she totally deserves it. I love her short stories written in a simple style. They are so deep that you sometimes wonder how it is possible to fit this world in such a small number of words.

That’s quite impressive and I suppose gives some food for thought.  Well, I hope next week will bring me more joy in the form of literature events and I will definitely share with you.

“Writing Agency of Spring 2015” Award with EssayLancers.com!

 

Here it is! Finally, the event where you can pay tribute to your favorite writing agency and choose the winner of the Spring 2015! EssayLancers.com is holding the “Writing Agency of Spring 2015” Contest, where freelance academic writers can choose the winning writing agencies in several categories. For example, “the most writer-friendly agency” encourages you to select the service with the best conditions of work for its employees. “The most generous agency” suggests choosing the company with the highest salaries (it will be interesting to know :)). “The most punctual agency” means that your employer doesn’t delay your payments and sends everything on time. “The most demanding agency” supports your choice of the company that has the highest quality standards and “the agency with the best design” is a service that has the most functional and creative website and makes you want to visit it again. So, that’s it. A wide range of choice I would say.

Voting is simple. Just go to http://essaylancers.com/writing-agency-award.html and choose the agencies of your choice. Voting is surely confidential. So no consequences implied :)

I suppose this is also a great opportunity for me to express my gratitude to the best writing agency for me – ThePensters. I’ve been working with this company for almost 5 years now and I have only positive emotions and associations with it. And, of course, I will vote for ThePensters :)

So, dear writers! Get to your computers, click this link, create your own accounts and vote for your favorite writing agency … or for ThePensters :).

Thank you!

P.S. If you have concerns that your writing agency will find out you haven’t voted for them, don’t worry! The voting process is totally confidential. So, this is your chance to express your opinion on this or that writing company and share with the public.

After-Birthday Talks or What You Need to Do to Be a Happy Writer

I bet you know the feeling when you enjoy everything that surrounds you: morning coffee (even if it’s without milk), your old but dear laptop (even when it doesn’t want to collaborate) and your neighbor’s golden retriever Bumblebee (even if it sometimes wakes you up in the middle of the night). So, that’s the feeling I have now and that inspires me to write. Thus, I’ve decided to make an after-birthday blog post, analyze my previous year and think what I should or shouldn’t do.

First of all, I clearly decided to avoid a few things: leaving for the airport without plane tickets, following all tips from LifeHack.org and adding too much baking soda to the pizza dough. But these are little things. The most incredible discovery I made last year is free writing. Seriously, it’s one of the best things I’ve learned during my writing career. I’m sure that every writer eventually faces that unfortunate block and I’m not an exception. In fact, it was a real problem for me to overcome and I tried a lot of things: changing environment, listening to music or drawing mind maps. But there were times when even those pills didn’t work. Finally, I came across free writing and understood that when you have a writer’s block and nothing works out, you just write continuously for a certain period of time about anything that comes to your mind. And it fades away. And then even your Transformers-loving neighbor’s dog can distract you from the creative process. 

Now, when I am surrounded by people I love, when I do what I really like and know how to overcome the obstacles and enjoy every bit of my life, I can surely say that I feel happy and delighted. That’s what the life must be for me. So, it means that I’m doing great J

Creativity: Talent or Just Experience

If you want to be successful, you need to be creative. A good motivational phrase that looks like it’s taken from some workshop held by I-did-it-myself manager of an art project. To tell the truth I totally agree that you need to be different, stand out from a crowd as we live in the era when typical things don’t put up with the competition and it definitely means that you need to be above the average. But what does it mean “to be creative”? Is it all about being unique and beautiful? Or just not similar to the precedent?

It’s a very interesting issue because there are loads of definitions that connect creativity with something new and valuable but it is not possible to produce something original without knowing what it was before. As a result, it is necessary to be intelligent and competent enough to produce something “fresh and juicy”. In other words, you need to have life experience because of two reasons: 1) history and knowledge background give you the opportunity to know what has been already created and what needs to be created; 2) everything is done for people, thus communication experience provides necessary information about the people’s needs. So, if you think that creativity is something people are born with, I suppose you should reconsider your views on that matter. And next time you brag about your inability to generate an original idea or plan your own project, try to expand your world outlook and enrich your knowledge about this or that sphere. I bet your brainstorming will be much more productive and who knows, maybe you’ll come up with a genius idea.

So, creativity – is it a talent? Or is it just experience plus good understanding of human needs? I think there’s really something to think about. What are your ideas on the matter?

Why Jack London Is My Favorite Writer and What We Can Learn from Him

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it.

(c) Jack London

You know, when you have favorite writers in childhood, growing up makes you re-evaluate the reasons which influenced your taste in reading. Going through the same books again and again doesn’t give you the same feelings as when you were 10 years old and your heart thumped and jumped out of chest while main characters were fighting for their lives. And it’s all the same with me. I can’t find that joy and happiness or fear and anxiety that I felt as a child living through the adventures from the printed pages, except for one writer who still instills those emotions with the only change – the deeper understanding of human nature. The first book by Jack London that I came across was “The White Fang” and, of course, I immediately fell in love with it. I won’t tell you about the excitement from his novels and stories because you all already know it and that’s not the point. As I was getting older I started to take interest not only in books but in authors as well and Jack London wasn’t an exception. So, you can imagine how impressed I was when I found out that he wasn’t born with such a talent. It was earned due to the hard and persistent work. To seek inspiration he hopped the trains, was an oyster pirate and worked like hell on ships. When he pursued the dream to create real fiction, Jack London barely slept and ate (simply because he either forgot or felt twinges of conscience “wasting” time for sleep). He wrote, wrote and wrote essays, short stories, verses, pamphlets and novels. At the same time he educated himself as much as possible to improve and develop.

Jack London made writing his work and his life. He devoted all his time and strength to become a decent writer and it is a good example of a struggle for a dream. This eminent personality and his not easy but noble path show us that talent can be acquired by hard work and patience. We can’t produce a masterpiece without the preceding tries and fails. So, if you want to write but don’t know where to start, look at your favorite writers. I bet they can teach you a lot of things.

Plagiarism: Something to Avoid or Our Inevitable Future

As writers you regard plagiarism as a matter of honor. At least I suppose so, associating feelings with my writer’s essence. The beauty is in the process of turning your thoughts into the coherent sentences that either trigger emotions or serve as guidelines for your readers. This is not all, of course, and you definitely know it.

Copying somebody’s opinion creates the feeling of some defectiveness and inability to produce an original idea or judgment. Consequently, every self-respecting writer stays away from plagiarism to feel self-confident and secure. But how many times you said the phrase: “You read my mind” or “That’s what I said”? How often do you come across texts on the Internet that seem similar, familiar or the same? Have you ever found phrases that you felt you would say exactly the same way?

Recently I’ve bumped into an interesting talk by Kirby Ferguson called “Embrace the Remix”. He told about Bob Dylan and people’s claims about him stealing songs, mentioned Apple patent of Multi-Touch in 2007 and records of its development way before Steve Jobs even dropped out of college. As a result he made a conclusion: “Everything is a remix”. And then it hit me. Everyday people produce tons of Internet content expressing different or similar thoughts sometimes in the same words. From time to time it seems to me that I have a genius and original idea but when I start surfing the Internet it appears that someone has already got the point. So, most of the time I attempt not to produce unique writing but to avoid plagiarizing and it feels not very good.

Well, the point is that I really have a fear that plagiarism is our inevitable future, that everything possible will be said in any possible way. But I do hope that the constant evolving of society and language will not let that happen.

And are you afraid of plagiarism?

Cyber Widow, Twoogle or I Love New English Words

I constantly come across newly coined English words while surfing the Internet. Usually they are connected with digital world and new technologies. But sometimes they just make my day :) I’ve decided to share my favorite new English words that I happily use in my everyday language!

• procaffinating - the situation when you decide finally to do something only after drinking coffee.

Well, I think that it’s just the word I needed all my life! It perfectly describes my working process and when someone accuses me of procrastination I can easily defend myself with “Hell no! I am procaffinating.”

• bag salmon - a passenger who moves in the opposite direction of deplaning passengers to get baggage from an overhead space.

There is always someone who is elbowing his/her way through the crowd like it’s the end of the world and he/she is running from zombies. Now, there is a special word that will help you to identify people who do this in the plane. “Hey! Who’s pushing there? - Never mind. It’s just another bag salmon”

• lumbersexual  - a heterosexual man wearing lumberjack style outfit and a long beard
   

Coming across this word I finally understood who so called hipsters reminded me of. Lumberjacks! Men rack their brains over how to earn enough money to be stylish smoothies and pick up girls. It’s simple: just be a lumberjack! You don’t have to go to expenses because your work clothes is the hit of the season. A perfect crime :)

So, these are my personal “newbies” in English that I already use daily. I love the dynamic nature of the English language and I am always eager to find some new material to use in my writing. The world doesn’t stand still and so do people together with their main means of communication. And it’s wonderful.

I hope this post has lived up to your textpectations and you will definitely use these awesometastic words!

By the way, what are your favourite newly coined words in the English language? Let me know!