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Yesterday’s news

By: Tateru Nino

News-writing is kind of funny in all sorts of ways. I’ve talked about some of those ways before.

One of the problems involves delays.

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Learn the words 2

By: Tateru Nino

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you’!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

‘Would you tell me, please,’ said Alice ‘what that means?’

‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

Through the Looking-Glass.

Humpty may be the master of his words, applying whatever new meaning he sees fit to old and established terms, but it limits his audience, essentially, to himself alone. If he just starts making up his own words at will, or applying unusual meanings to common words, he effectively stifles any useful discussion.

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Learn the words

By: Tateru Nino

Everyone wants to be heard, right? Everyone’s got unique perspectives and distinctive angles that can sometimes lead to astonishing insights.

Whatever it is that you’re trying to communicate, though, it doesn’t help if your audience tunes out or dismisses your point out of hand before you actually go anywhere.

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Over the years, there’s not that many Second Life blogs that haven’t asked me to do some writing for them (I can only think of a few). Blogs come and blogs go. Something that most of those blogs have in common are writing-rates.

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There’s all sorts of places that will offer to teach you how to build up a successful blog. Pretty much all of them will charge you for it at some point.

Here’s my pro-tip and it costs you nothing, except the time to read about it and to think about it.

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A questioning quandary

By: Tateru Nino

Hmm… a quandary. I’ve been wrestling for the last few days with a set of interview questions, specifically a set of zero size.

I’ve got a shot at questioning a company executive – goal: format that into an interview – but one who is something of a cipher. So I’ve been going around and around in circles trying to figure out what to even ask.

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Dark Siren

By: Tateru Nino

I recently had the opportunity to review Clifford Wycliffe’s new virtual environment novel Dark Siren for the Metaverse Journal. An experience which turned out to be far more enjoyable than I was expecting.

At the time that I wrote the review, I didn’t know that a portion of the novel was going to be serialized at the TMJ. I only found that out the next day. So, you’ve got an opportunity to get a taste for it, starting with part one.

Obviously, my tastes aren’t necessarily going to align with yours, but this is your opportunity to find out if you like it as things develop.

Donation etiquette

By: Tateru Nino

Some of you obviously have noticed the donation button over there in the sidebar.

I’m not really sure what the etiquette for these donations are is, exactly.

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Something most non-fiction writers have noticed is that their work is simultaneously considered to be both too critical and too uncritical at the same time.

In my own writing, a given piece may be lambasted by some as being to favourable towards some person, thing, organization or philosophy, while simultaneously lambasted by others as being too harsh or critical towards exactly the same thing.

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