The Supplemental Kick

Ease of Submission
With so many article distribution sites out there, it amazes me that some still require their submitters to jump through so many hoops. When choosing one, you should look for the process to be as pain free as possible. Asking you to sign in is alright, but once they start requiring you to take surveys, confirm multiple times or give a blood sample its time to go elsewhere. These sites will never survive in the current atmosphere, so submitting your article may be a waste
of time.

SEO Friendliness
This can be determined in many ways and is important because without SEO benefit,
your article may never get past the submission stage. The first thing to look
for is if they allow live links. These exist when you submit your web address
and people are able to click directly on it. This single feature can have the
most effect on your rankings so it is crucial. Another aspect to SEO friendliness
is the way that the article submission sites urls are displayed. Static ones
(ie. /category/example.htm) are always preferred to dynamic ones (ie. php?id=798).
In most cases this means your article gets found and indexed faster.

Popularity
It does no good to submit to a site if nobody is ever going to see it. Right
now there are three major article submission sites:

Article Depot – www.articledepot.co.uk
GoArticles – www.goarticles.com
Ezine Articles – www.ezinearticles.com

These 3 account for probably around 75%-80% of the market. They get thousands
of unique visitors starving for content to use on their sites and in their forums.

The best advice when choosing a submission site is to pick only a few and stick
with them. These should be sites you are comfortable with and fit the characteristics
above. Good luck and happy submitting!

Jason Rickard is the owner of http://www.yourfavouriteshop.com – Europes largest reseller of White Noise CDs

There are many things in life to spend money on. From cars and bikes to clothes and computers, there is never a lack of things you can buy. Most people forget to spend money on one thing of great and lasting value: good literature.

Literature. You studied it in school. You had to read it and then write about it. You had to act out scenes of it or watch movies about it. Perhaps you have even seen movies based on great books. For some people, their relationship with good literature never makes it beyond graduation day. Oh, sure, they will read a few more books during college and maybe even start to enjoy it a little more, but once “the real world” hits very few people continue to buy and read books of real value.

Take a look at your bookshelves (if you have any). See what kinds of books you have collected over the years. Do you see any classic novels, any literature that has been highly praised? Do you have a volume of Steinbeck, Hawthorne, Dickens or Shakespeare? If not, you are definitely missing out. If your shelves are filled with too many how-to books or with the info on the latest fads, you may find that you read the book once and then have no reason to read it again. A benefit of filling your shelves with great literature is that you can read great books over and over and learn new things each time. You can discover greatly depth in the characterization or themes that good authors pen into literature.

Now, take a look at the things you have purchased in the past few months. How much of your valuable money has been spent on things that are fleeting? It is amazing how much money can be used on eating out at restaurants or buying expensive specialty coffee drinks. It is fine to spend money on those things, but you should think about spending at least a portion of your money on things of value that will last beyond the time it takes you to eat or drink them. Good literature is one of those valuable things you should buy.

Wonder why you should spend money on a book? For starters, books last forever. Once you buy it, you have it. You can purchase a great volume when you see it on sale and leave it on your shelves for years before you get around to actually reading it. When you pick it up to read it you will find it is still just like new.

Buying great literature is smart because it makes you smarter. You can purchase a book and then use it to develop parts of your mind that may have been left dormat for a while. Leisure time can be spent in an enjoyable way that is productive and beneficial as well.

So, the next time your money is burning a hole in your pocket and you just have to make a purchase, consider adding a piece or two of great literature to your collection.

Hallidae Thomason has been purchasing great literature for what seems like forever. She enjoys advising others to use their money on literature too. Get help discovering a great book or two at www.findliterature.info

Writing is obviously important to you or the reason you are writing is important to you other wise you would not be reading this article or writing articles of your own and putting them up on the Internet for all to see.

One thing I have found over the last 15 months writing articles was that it is best to put your articles online at the most reputable online article website you can find and then stick with it and stay loyal.

Recently, Ed Howe an expert author and writer who had similar experiences as me reminded me of this. He wrote of the reasons to choose the best online article submission site to post them there, as I read his article I thought to myself wow, I too have had similar experiences and had posted one article on a lesser site once, and then saw why that was not such a hot idea.

I had also once sold 100 articles $5.00 each, I guess they wanted to use my name to help their directory get started and I agreed, as that is about a day and half work for me. I think they both went out of business too. Now those articles are lost forever, well perhaps they are floating around out there somewhere, but they certainly are not doing me any good now are they? Perhaps you will consider all this in 2006. When you write articles online.

The voice is a powerful speaking tool. Too many speakers deaden their voices while giving presentations.

Why?

Because the speaker is focusing on the exact words he or she is trying to communicate. Words do matter, but if you flatten your voice to the point where it is dull, lifeless, monotone, and dry, no one will be able to stay awake long enough to hear your words.

If you are looking for vocal role models, I would highly recommend listening to the talk radio show host known simply as “Lionel.” (You can hear him for free at iTunes.com)

When you listen to Lionel’s voice, the first thing you notice is how natural it comes across. His voice is expressive to the extreme and yet he always sounds real and non-contrived. There is a playful quality to Lionel’s voice that makes him seem like fun, no matter the gravity of the topic under discussion.

Lionel’s vocal range is wide. When he is gets excited his voice goes high, high, high. He will never be confused with former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite (and neither should you).

Listening to Lionel’s voice is like watching a balloon being batted around by children at a partythere is constant variety in tone, speed, volume, everything. This guy could read a phone book on the air and be more interesting than the average person reading the best material ever written by Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock.

Would you like another great vocal role model?

Try listening to yourself. The trick is to capture audio of yourself when you aren’t reading or giving a prepared speech. Try leaving a video or audio recorder on in your office or home for an extended period (don’t record anyone else without informing them in advance). Then sift through the audio until you found yourself deeply engaged in a conversation while you had forgotten you were being recorded. Listen to the full richness and variety to your voice. If your voice doesn’t sound just as good during your prepared speeches, then you need to make changes.

You need to showcase your best voice in every speech, not bury it underneath a glum monotone.

A faculty colleague of mine at a large university once quipped that “Academic politics are brutal, even more so than governmental, for the precise reason that so LITTLE is at stake.”

An interesting view; and that reminds me of the perennial discussion about whether coaches, consultants, seminar leaders, and speakers of all kinds should build their careers on a foundation of free or fee-based presentations.

The argument for giving away speeches is obvious. If you have no substantial experience, and you want some, why not get up on your hind legs and perform before service groups such as Rotary, Kiwanis, and so forth?

They need and want speakers, but have no budgets, and you need experience and exposure, and they’re willing to provide these benefits to you.

But the downside to vying for free work, and here’s where the political barb applies, is that there’s way too much competition at the bottom. There’s so little at stake in free speaking that every neophyte in the world is trying to break into the business this way, so it’s actually challenging to get gigs.

Wouldn’t the aspiring speaker be better advised to charge a modest or even an average fee and to market his or her “act” directly, to paying organizations?

Moreover, and this may be peculiar to my experience, free speeches beget more free speeches. If you’re good, the Rotarian will ask if you’re available to talk before another nonprofit group to which he belongs.

You’ll stay busy, of course, but where is the payday in all of this, you’ll come to wonder.

Let me mention, and I’ll develop this at length in another article, there are several ways to be “paid.”

Money works, to be sure.

But if you can negotiate in advance a strong letter of reference that you can leverage to get future paid speaking opportunities, then that free talk you’re giving can be considered one that is done for compensation.

Or, if you’re addressing otherwise hard to reach executives when they’re in a mood to listen, as they may be at a meeting of their favorite charity or university, well, you couldn’t really BUY that exposure, so yes, in a sense, that audience’s attention to your and to your message, IS compensation.

Sometimes there are different ways to extract cash from your events. I spoke before an area meeting of Toastmasters and I was able to sell my books and tapes at the back of the room, after my talk.

I netted a very decent amount, so yes, I gave away the talk, but still got paid.

Sharing the platform with me that day was Mark Victor Hansen, before he became a Chicken Soup server, and he did a robust job of selling his materials, as well.

Perhaps the best reason to consider accepting free dates is that in doing so you stay busy, you get to sharpen your skills, and you feel you’re making progress.

All of these outcomes are motivating, and they certainly beat sitting on the sidelines.

There are so many different and unique things for people to collect. Some of the things are worth money, while there are others that do not have much money value, but do have personal worth for one reason or another. There are some people that do enjoy collecting different items and have a lot of fun searching for them.

One item for collecting is a fountain pen. There are so many unique and classic styles of these pens to choose from. Fountain pens were used in the early years as a method of writing. They came shortly after the quill pen. The defined body styles of some of the vintage fountain pens of the past are certainly something to hold on to.

There are many places that you can find the fountain pens that you want to collect. One way to find them is online. There are many auctions and other places on line to find great fountain pens at good prices. You can find many of the older styles of pens for little money.

You can try the antique shows and look there for you fountain pens. You may find old vintage fountain pens there that are worth something to someone someday. For now, though, you will have a good start to your collection at a very good price.

There are also things like fountain pen shows you to take a peak at. This is the easiest way to learn about this fascinating hobby. There are a lot of people that know a whole lot of information about fountain pen collecting and they will be able to answer any of your questions. At these pen shows, you will see that there are many choices of fountain pens to choose from.

You will find that a lot of the pen shows also have vintage fountain pens for sale. You can find these gold or silver plated pens in these shows and get them for a great price. These are the vintage pens that you want to hold onto. They have great designs and no matter what shape they are in, they will be worth something.

When you find these ancient and fascinating pens, you should hang on to them. You can always worry about fixing them up later. As long as you have the pen, you are going to have your start for your vintage fountain pen collection. You can start slow and work your way up. All you need to do is find one and you will be on your way to a fabulous collection that will be worth so much to you and to many others as well.

Agust Hauksson is a regular contributor of articles to many online publications. Find more great information at: http://www.fountain-pen.biz and http://www.promotional-pen.biz.

If you’re like me you’ve likely had an experience of getting the jitters at the thought of standing in front of an audience to do a presentation.

The experience of those jitters is often the same i.e. nervousness, anxiety, tension, sweating, feeling faint, tightness in your abdominal region, feeling confused, going blank, tripping over your words, speaking too softly, fear of making eye contact and so on.

Surprisingly however the actual cause of those jitters is not always the same from one individual to another.

So what are the underlying causes of one’s public speaking fears or performance anxiety?

Well some of them are as follows:

1. The fear of making a mistake.

2. The fear of going blank.

3. The fear of rejection.

4. The fear that you will look foolish or stupid.

5. The fear that others will find your talk boring and a waste of their time.

6. The fear that others will find your talk offensive in some way.

7. The fear of having a panic attack or having a breakdown right in front of the audience.

8. The perception of the audience as hostile and unforgiving.

And so on.

At a deeper level where do these fears originate from?

Well they are related to early traumatic life experiences that are stored deep in one’s unconscious mind and body and which happen to be re-triggered by the speaking situation.

It’s as if, while in the speaking situation, the speaker is taken back to earlier negative experiences and starts to relive these experiences right in front of the audience.

Of course it goes without saying that not only is this inappropriate it also makes the individual quite dysfunctional.

The worst part of all of this is that each time an individual faces an audience and thus re-triggers the old emotional trauma they essentially become re-traumatized by it.

In other words their fear of speaking in crowds becomes more deeply ingrained.

It is for this reason that I do not employ nor advocate approaches to overcoming one’s fears that do not help the individual first release the hidden traumatic material.

I too suffered from a public speaking phobia and severely debilitating shyness for most of my early life. Like most people I tried many methods to help myself: meditation, hypnosis, psychotherapy, EMDR, imagery exercises, behavior modification etc.

My experience with many of these was that they were only temporarily helpful, required ongoing effort on my part, and/or were re-traumatizing to me.

In the latter years as a psychiatrist I yearned for and discovered another way which I later called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) (MRP).

MRP is a powerful tool that helps release emotionally based trauma and the negative beliefs, emotions, behaviors, perceptions, and reactions associated with them once and for all from the mind and body.

It’s very much like doing what I call an “emotional detoxification”.

The results are permanent and leave the individual with a renewed sense of confidence that requires no added effort to sustain.

If you suffer from a speaking phobia, shyness, performance anxiety, or some other phobia you may be interested in my ongoing Public Speaking Teleclass or in an Introductory Consultation. If so kindly visit the web link below.

Dr. Nick Arrizza is trained in Chemical Engineering, Business Management & Leadership, Medicine and Psychiatry. He is an Energy Psychiatrist, Healer, Key Note Speaker,Editor of a New Ezine Called “Spirituality And Science” (which is requesting high quality article submissions) Author of “Esteem for the Self: A Manual for Personal Transformation” (available in ebook format on his web site), Stress Management Coach, Peak Performance Coach & Energy Medicine Researcher, Specializes in Life and Executive Performance Coaching, is the Developer of a powerful new tool called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) that helps build physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being by helping to permanently release negative beliefs, emotions, perceptions and memories. He holds live workshops, international telephone coaching sessions and international teleconference workshops on Physical. Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Well Being.

Web Site: http://www.telecoaching4u.com/PublicSpeaking.htm

Article directories are popping up all over the internet. You
may wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Allow me to
ensure you this is a great thing for internet marketers. Below
is just a few of the many benefits of submitting articles.

1. The ability to brand your web site business and yourself
by submitting articles to article directories. You could include
a link back to your web site in your resource box Along with your
name and credentials.

2. You will get your article published all over the web
when you submit it to a article directory. They’ll allow
their visitors to republish your article on their websites and e-zines.
Imagine if you submit your article to multiple article directories.
Remember all your articles have a back link to your website.

3. You will be considered an expert on the subject matter
of your articles. This will give you and your business
added credibility which will help you take on your
competitors.

4. Your article may also be placed on the article
directories home page. Some article directories post
new articles on their home page. This will give you some extra exposure.

5. You may get extra publicity if the article directory publisher
archives articles on their site. People may want
to read older articles in their search for information
or content.

6. You will get free advertising. This will allow you to
spend your profits on other forms of advertising. You
could purchase google advertisements or other pay per click
ads. You could buy ads in e-zines.

7. You’ll gain trust. If prospects read your article
and like it, they will be far more likely to buy your
product or service. Thereby increasing your earning potential.

8. You could allow website marketers to publish your
articles in their free e-books. Since people give them
away, your articles could multiply all over the
internet.

9. You may get additional income from people wanting to
hire you to write their articles, books, or even ask you to
speak at seminars. This is a great way to grow your
income exponentially.

By now you are no doubt convinced of the power of submitting
articles to the countless article directories out there. So
what are you waiting for get started now.

Are you ready to reap the benefits of submitting articles then start by
submitting your articles to the many
article directories or submit
forex articles
here.

Novels to screenplays and screenplays to novels…sometimes a work shines in both forms.

I know because I’ve written seventeen screenplays and converted three of them to novels. I’ve also worked in the other direction, ghost writing a screenplay into a novel.

Since most of you are novelists, I’ll look at the process from that side. The biggest difference between a novel and a screenplay is that in a screenplay

1. All action has to be immediate – even if it is in the past (a flashback)

2. The entire story has to be told visually. Your characters in a screenplay cannot feel, think, or remember. You have to SHOW them feeling, thinking, and remembering. And what you show has to happen in present time.

Here’s an example.

In a novel, you may write:

John stood in the hotel room with Lisa that morning, studying the old photograph they had found. He remembered his mother – her beautiful face, her haunted eyes. But he would not have known his father. Perhaps he did not want to know him.

In a screenplay:

INT. JOHN’S HOTEL ROOM – DAY

John studies a faded photograph of a beautiful young woman with haunted eyes, and a smiling man, with features similar to his own.

Lisa steps up behind him.

LISA

Do you remember them?

JOHN

My mother, yes. My father -

He hesitates. His face hardens.

JOHN

Not at all.

###

As you can see – present tense, and visualization all the way. As you can also tell, writing a screenplay employs a completely different format than a novel. There are many books and software programs that will show you these basics.

In a nutshell, you have capped headers or SLUG LINES that indicate location, time, and interior/exterior; followed by simply written text that describes the location or action. Character names are capped, and beneath them follows your centered dialogue.

Screenplay structure is more than just format, however. A novel gives you experimental freedom, not just to explore what a character is thinking and feeling, but to vary the length and time of your exploration. A screenplay is more rigid.

Certainly there are variables, but basically your story must have strong action. A novel that is all internals, all thought and no action would be difficult to translate to screen (note, not impossible, it’s been done.)

The action needs to be broken into three acts – the first begins with an inciting incident, something that sets the plot in motion (pages 2-10). Plot point one (page 25-30) leads the reader/viewer into escalating stakes, a twist or turn in the story. The midpoint (about half way through your script) again offers a twist in the story, or a revelation. Something which significantly changes or reveals something about your protagonist (s). And the second plot point (page 90) will again increase the odds, up the risk, change the direction, and lead directly into the conclusion. And remember to conclude at about 120 pages, although current fashion is about 115 for a spec project.

If you do start turning your novels to screenplays you may want to begin by breaking your story down into the three act structure.

Unlike writing a screenplay (or a novel)from scratch, moving to another form allows you to keep your story. It is a map in either direction – taking a screenplay to a novel there are emotional and intellectual blanks to fill in. Taking a novel to a screenplay you need to carefully prune only the most essential elements – it’s a shorter, more tightly structured form. And you must show the internal workings of character only through action and visually depicted emotion.

There’s your start!

Genie Davis’ romantic suspense novel THE MODEL MAN is her first with Kensington/Zebra. The noir DREAMTOWN was published by a small press in 2001. And now available through Amazon Shorts, the short fiction of THE GIRL AND THE GUN.

Coming July 2006: erotica written as Nikki Alton from Kensington Aphrodisia’s The Cowboy Collection – RODEO RIDER; January 2007 more suspense with FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW, also with Kensington/Zebra.

A produced screen and television writer, her work spans a variety of genres from supernatural thriller to romantic drama, action, family, teen, and comedy.

She’s written on staff for ABC-TV’s Port Charles; written, produced, and directed reality programming and documentaries for The Learning Channel, PBS, and HGTV, as well as numerous television commercials and corporate videos, and the independent film, Losing Hope.

What is your point? What do you do if you don’t know? Why does it matter?

It is important for every writer to know their point because the writer is in charge of the reader’s experience. If the writer doesn’t know the point then the reader surely won’t. That means at best, a writer without a point will soon be a writer without a reader. At worst, a writer without a point can end up with a confused and perhaps even angry reader.

Making the point of your article or essay clear and apparent is how you capture the interest of your reader and it is how you keep the interest of your reader.

However knowing your point and making it clear and apparent are sometimes easier said than done. So what is a writer to do?

Finding your point is as easy as 1-2-3.

First, identify your topic. Simply make a note of the subject you plan to address. Narrow it down to one word or simple phrase. For example, you plan to write an article about potty training. That makes potty training your phrase.

Second, ask yourself a pertinent question about that topic. For example, how can you make potty training easy? Now turn that question into a statement, such as “You can make potty training easy… ” This is your point. But you aren’t done yet.

Third, you will need to expand and support your point so you must come up with three supporting points. Remember, not only do you have to make your point, but you also need to make it clear and apparent. That is why support is important. So think of three points you can make to support your point. For example, keeping the pressure low, making it fun, and giving it time. Finally, you join your statement with the three points and use a preposition to join the two together. In this case probably “by” would work best and often “because” is a good choice. Some other prepositions include about, during, through, under, and with.

Now you have a good introductory paragraph:

You can make potty training easy by keeping the pressure low, making it fun, and giving it time.

Not only do you have a point that you will be able to make clear and apparent to the reader, but you also have a road map for your article or essay. Simply expand on your introduction and expand on each supporting point in turn and you will have a clear point, good organization, and solid support.

Taking a few minutes to plan out your point in this manner can be well worth spending the time as it will make your writing easier. It will also make the reading easier as well. And that is the point of this article.

Deanna Mascle has more than two decades of experience writing professionally and teaching writing. Find more of her writing tips at Word-Craft.info