January 2012
1 post
Stop censorship
On January 18 “I Write Like” will be blacked out to protest SOPA and PIPA, two proposed online censorship legislations in the US.
You can read about these bills here.
September 2011
1 post
Obituary for Michael Stern Hart, Project Gutenberg... →
July 2011
2 posts
"I Write Like" open sourced →
I’m happy to announce that, as promised, the full source code for “I Write Like” is available under the ISC-like license (in short: do whatever you like, just mention the author).
IWL is written in Racket programming language. Happy hacking!
June 2011
1 post
The Curve
LA Times blogger Carolyn Kellogg wrote an article called “Independent author John Locke joins Amazon’s million-Kindle-seller club, but at what cost?” which includes ignorant claims such as:
“Locke makes less money with his 99-cent gambit than he would selling the same number of books with a traditional publisher.”
Are you sure he’d sell the same number of...
April 2011
1 post
Introducing "I Read Like"! →
After the half a year of development, we are glad to announce the availability of our new analyzer — “I Read Like”.
Check which famous reader you read like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your reading style and compares it with the style of the famous readers.
Analyze your reading »
Update: April Fool’s!
February 2011
1 post
The Very Rich Indie Writer →
Amanda Hocking is 27 years old. She has 9 self-published books to her name, and sells 100,000+ copies of those ebooks per month.
January 2011
2 posts
“If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things...”
– Ernest Hemingway
Mémoires in the Mac App Store →
The best diary program is now available via the Mac App Store.
Get it!
December 2010
3 posts
Personal diary vs Blogging →
“Blogging has become increasingly popular during the last few years. People of all ages enjoy this relatively new trend. However, there are some reasons why you may decide that keeping a personal diary is preferable to blogging.”
Read
“The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn’t write.”
"I Write Like" is available in Chrome Web Store →
Install the shortcut right into your browser for quick access.
November 2010
4 posts
Special offer for "I Write Like" users →
$5 off when purchasing Mémoires, our journal or diary software for Mac OS X.
Learn more about the app.
Use this link to buy Mémoires with the discount
I Write Like updated
Version 8 released. It’s rewritten from scratch and includes changes to the word extraction algorithm, so results may differ from previous versions.
It's November. Start writing. →
October 2010
6 posts
In just 30 days, you too can write a masterpiece →
“Or maybe not. As writers prepare for National Novel Writing Month, Andrew Johnson looks at classics that were knocked out in a few weeks.”
Everything You Need to Know About Writing... →
By Stephen King
“You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the...
Why E-Books Aren't Scary. Interview with Stephen... →
“Is the future of publishing all digital?
It’s a hard subject to get a handle on. People like myself who grew up with books have a prejudice towards them. I think a lot of critics would argue that the Kindle is the right place for a lot of books that are disposable, books that are read on the plane. That might include my own books, if not all, then some.”
J.K. Rowling’s Plot Spreadsheets →
“The author and mastermind of the whole Harry Potter universe uses plain old notebook paper and a ballpoint pen to develop the intricate plot structures of her books.”
Read Stephen King's On Writing
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„Ich schreibe wie . . .“ →
German version of “I Write Like” is live!
September 2010
11 posts
“The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk...”
– Chris Baty
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
– Ray Bradbury
No Plot? No Problem! →
Get ready for NaNoWriMo by reading this book.
Every November, tens of thousands of people sign up for National Novel Writing Month and attempt to write a 50,000-word novel. Baty, the brains behind this competition, has produced an uproariously funny motivational manifesto so readers can get a leg-up in his race or in the larger publishing game. The key is to lower your expectations “from...
Konrath Ebooks Sales Top 100k →
“Currently, I’m selling an average of 7000 self-pubbed ebooks a month on Kindle. Those numbers are for 19 self-pubbed titles, though the top 6 account for more than 75% of my sales, roughly 5000 per month.”
Three-Minute Fiction →
“Our contest has a simple premise: Listeners send in original short stories that can be read in three minutes or less. We’re looking for original work no longer than 600 words.”
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public...”
– Cyril Connolly
Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips For Writing Well →
“Hemingway was famous for a terse minimalist style of writing that dispensed with flowery adjectives and got straight to the point. In short, Hemingway wrote with simple genius.
Perhaps his finest demonstration of short sentence prowess was when he was challenged to tell an entire story in only 6 words:
For sale: baby shoes, never used.”
Upd. from editor: actually, it was “For...
Some Thoughts on Writing (by Elizabeth Gilbert) →
“Back around the age of 19, I had started sending my short stories out for publication. My goal was to publish something (anything, anywhere) before I died. I collected only massive piles of rejection notes for years. I cannot explain exactly why I had the confidence to be sending off my short stories at the age of 19 to, say, The New Yorker, or why it did not destroy me when I was...
An Anesthetic Default →
“I have this problem. When I get home from work, I sit down on my couch and open my laptop. When I’m waiting for the next bus, I pull out my iPhone.”
August 2010
23 posts
Which ebook sellers will allow publishers and... →
“Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo were all happy to carry my books without DRM, and on terms that gave you the same rights you got when buying paper editions. Sony and Apple refused to carry my books without DRM — even though my publisher and I both asked them to.”
On Beyond Ebooks →
“The thing is, this couldn’t have happened in the print world. We would have had to get all of our current print publisher’s approval (because of no-compete and first look clauses), had to have found a buyer, and had to have toned down some of the violence (this sucker is violent!) But doing this on our own, we have complete control, don’t have to answer to anybody, and can...
“Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer...”
– Stephen King, On Writing
“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy...”
– Albert Eistein
“Novel writing is mostly a “one day” event. As in “One day,...”
– From NaNoWriMo FAQ
A Novel in Three Days →
“Day three, ten a.m.: no sleep last night. Nothing else seems substantial anymore except for the words on the laptop screen. The backs of my eyeballs feel prickly, suggesting complete and unforgiving fatigue. My brain went AWOL hours earlier and I keep omitting words like ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘or’, and ‘of’ from sentences. Yet I am ecstatic—an intense happiness burgeoning in me from too much caffeine,...
Parodies
There are a couple of funny parody websites appeared on the Web that I wanted to highlight:
I Actually Write Like
Check who or what writer, animal or household object you most write like with this highly advanced statistical analysis tool which was actually genuinely written by a guy with a real PhD which has some statistics.
(Thanks for a laugh, @richardclegg!)
I Write Like (parody)
This one...
I’m Blogging From My Shower →
“When is the last time you did something creative on your computer — written a blog post or a letter, worked in Photoshop, or even read a long article — without allowing yourself to be interrupted by the realtime internet?
I don’t really remember what I was I thinking about during all of those moments when I used to be alone with my thoughts. But I have a feeling that the quiet moments once...
The Changing Face of Publishing →
“But if print goes the way of the dodo, publishers will have to rely on ebooks. Plain old non-enriched ebooks. And if they keep offering authors 17.5% royalty on the cover price, they soon won’t have any authors to publish. After all, authors can get 70% on their own. And it doesn’t take 18 months to release it. Plus the author gets to pick the price, cover, and title.”
Video Mémoires →
We launched a new product for Mac — simple video diary software.
The Highest-Paid Authors →
Times may be tough for book sellers, but for Stephen King, James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer, the money keeps rolling in.
How to write a journal →
6 tips on how to write a journal that will inspire you.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a...”
– The Elements of Style, Rule 17
“I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it...”
– Blaise Pascal
"I Write Like" Store →
Selected products for writers.
“[Writing is] a bit like shitting… if it’s coming in dribs and drabs...”
– Germaine Greer