Resources/Workshops – Tampa Writers Alliance

Technical Tips Improving Craft Publication Opportunities Writing Sites & Info Writer’s Library Conferences

Technical Tips

Stay current with our technical tips and information on contests, conferences, and improving your writing craft.

Alt codes for special characters:
usefulshortcuts.com

Keyboard commands and shortcuts can save bunches of time: They are listed below.

Keyboard commands
(c) = copyright symbol.
(r) = circled R for registered trademark.
(TM) = superscript TM for trademark.
CONTROL Keyboard commands: press and hold the control key [ctrl] and letters shown:

n	open a new page
a	select all
c	copy
v	paste
x	delete
z	undo
p	print
i	italics (toggle)
u	underline (toggle)
b	bold (toggle)
]	font size + 1
[	font size – 1
m	paragraph right .5
shift-m	paragraph left .5
o	open file dialog
s	save document
d	open font dialog
w	close file. Warning: does NOT save.
l	left justify
r	right justify
e	center text
t	.5 hanging indent
1 (one)	single space
2	double space
5	1.5 space
=	subscript
shift =	superscript

Improving Craft

Word Document Set Up

Grammar Girl

Want an easy to understand resource to help you with correct grammar, word usage, and punctuation? Highly readable, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, has your info. See Quickand DirtyTips.com/GrammarGirl. Actually, the Quick and Dirty website is like a department store of experts who have parlayed their writing skills, podcasts, and passions into an online second career. Interesting browsing.

Publication Opportunities

The Ottawa Object is a new print journal that will publish high-quality and intriguing short fiction. It will specialize in strongly focused speculative fiction and compelling, eccentric literary fiction.

Submissions should between 300-4,000 words, double-spaced, eccentric but convincing, and
break into your heart a little, or, failing that, break into your head a little.

Payment is one contributor copy.

More details can be found here:

https://theottawaobject.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/

Writing Sites & Info

WORDPEACE is a new quarterly online journal of literary response to world events in the spirit of promoting peace and hope for all people. We are looking for articles, interviews, fiction and poetry (or mixed media) to publish which reflect this aim. We want work that asks for positive change, that critiques the status quo, that is forward thinking, that is in the face of corruption and greed, brutality, genocide, oligarchy, and that is taking a stand. Submissions are accepted year-round through Submittable at

https://wordpeace.submittable.com/submit.

Writing Sites & Info

Writing Corner: http://www.WritingCorner.com

Book Business: Inside information about the book industry, with links to blogs on industry trends. Sign up for a daily dose of book publishing strategies – Publishing Business Today and/or their bi-monthly magazine, Book Business Today. http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/

Writer’s Library

You don’t have to own these books, but they are good references to have on hand when you are working on a writing project.

Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft is considered to be the “bible” of Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise writer’s conference. If you only keep one book on craft in your fiction-writing library, this one is essential. Available used.

Natalie Goldberg: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within.

Sol Stein: Stein on Writing: A master editor of some of the most successful writers of our century shares his craft techniques and strategies. Fiction and nonfiction.

Stephen King: On Writing.

Noah Lukeman: The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile

STYLE GUIDES

Fiction: Chicago Manual of Style

Non-fiction: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Conferences/Workshops

Florida Writers Workshops http://writing.shawguides.com/Tag/Florida