A Home for Word Nerds That Kick Butt

Word Nerd Knights Still Kicking Butt!

2011-06-01T11:53:00.000-07:00

Time for an update. Word Nerd Knights have been kicking some major butt in recent months. First, Nikesh got published, was nominated for a Costa Award and is now working with Channel 4 on a sitcom called Kabadasses!

Next, Brian got a publishing deal with MuseItUp Publishing for The Blood Chronicles.

Now, Dan has only gone and become an Amazon bestseller! Not only that, but he won the Blackwell's Bookshop 'Favourite Oxford Novel' readers' poll and he's on the brink of making the TOP 50 on Amazon, not only Kindle but for all fiction!! BUY HIS BOOK and get a Word Nerd Knight into the top 25!

Oh ... and I'm now a columnist for Writing Magazine, and I just launched my first novel,

Palaces & Calluses.

Gifts for Word Nerds

2010-11-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Word Nerd Gifts.

UK store: zazzle.co.uk/wordnerdarmy*

US store: zazzle.com/wordnerdarmy*

Poetry Against Cancer

2010-03-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

Includes poetry by many writers - including Brian, one of the Word Nerd Knights, and me. The Editor is also a Word Nerd Knight, Paul Carroll.

Can a Randomer Win the Shorty Award for Literature?

2010-01-20T03:21:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I came 3rd in the Shorty Awards. More info on my blog and at the Shorty Awards page.

Hi everyone. I may need to introduce myself. My name is Rebecca Woodhead and this is my blog. I'll wait for you to stop saying 'eh? Who is this randomer?' Finished? Jolly good. It has been a while since I posted here, because I wanted to hand over the stage to some other word nerds.

They've done such wonderful work. I love the diversity of opinion and expression on this blog. It is not an easy thing to hand over your blog to others with little more than the guidelines 'try to keep it legal and I won't edit' but I am glad that I have taken that approach because I find it such an interesting place to visit.

The Word Nerd Army is growing. It is not kept in one place - the membership is fluid and diverse. People calling themselves 'word nerds' are cropping up all over the place on Twitter and elsewhere. I want to bring attention back to the 11 issues that started this whole thing off. There is an election due to happen in the UK in the next few months so now might be a good time to raise some of these issues. At the top of the column is a link to how the Word Nerd Army came about. If you click on that you will find the 11 issues. I'd love to hear which of these matter most to you and then invite the Word Nerd Knights to blog about the ones that affect them the most. As ever, I am happy for them to mention their own projects but I would like the issue/s to be the central theme. This will give me something with which to approach the politicians. As votes are the important thing to campaigning political types, they need to see that Word Nerd Army has influence, so I have held off until we have some decent numbers. It is a shame that these numbers don't show up in one place though, as this would have a bigger impact on the people who change policy.

One way to help would be to spread the word about the blog and/or Twitter account: twitter.com/wordnerdarmy and ask people to follow visibly. Another would be for me, or one of the Word Nerd Knights to win the Shorty Award (Twitter Oscar) for Literature.

At the moment, I am beating Neil Gaiman and am in third place but I need help to stay where I am or do better. If I won this, the Word Nerd Army would get much more attention. Since the Word Nerd Army developed in a Twitter contest - Ms Twitter UK - it would be poetic if it found its voice in another contest - The Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts and Sciences Award for Literature The short link for the literature section is: tiny.cc/TheRandomer and for my own page is: tiny.cc/therandomer

Any help you can give - by speaking to your own followers on blogs, Twitter or Facebook for instance - would help. Publishers are not that impressed with contests and I may yet choose to self-publish, so winning this may not benefit me in any substantial way but what it will do is give me a platform from which to discuss the 11 issues on which Word Nerd Army is based, and I would welcome that opportunity.

If you still don't feel you know me, here's a vid:

Many thanks,

Rebecca

rebeccawoodhead.com

Support Our Lady

2010-01-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

I have the utmost pleasure to come to you from my own blog, Mightier Than the Sword, and my YouTube channel, under the username "writeranonymous" to ask for your support for Rebecca Woodhead, our Lady and Founder. I was one of the first Knights of the Word Nerd Army, though I cannot quiet remember what it was that I did. However, I am finally uptaking some Knightly duties and requesting that all of you vote for Rebecca.

If my written words aren't enough, here is my exhausted-from-lack-of-doing-anything plea for her, with some of my mad mumbles on either side. I think that just about proves how serious I am about this - I wouldn't put my face onto just about any website if I didn't have a good reason for it (and to be honest, I couldn't be prouder to put my face onto this one).

So vote Rebecca Woodhead in the Shorty Awards and make a Word Nerd's dreams come true. It would also make Rebecca very happy, as far as I'm aware.

Ten Things about A.S. Byatt

2009-12-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

A.S. Byatt in her recent BBC interview with Mark Lawson (BBC Four, 2:25am Thursday 17th December 2009) told us among other things the following:

1. Lawson was a student of Byatt’s during his undergraduate education.
2. Byatt tragically lost a son who was eleven years old when he died.
3. The surprise death at the end of Still Life is based on a real accident that Byatt had with a refrigerator
4. Her greatest novelist of English Literature is George Eliot.
5. She has a deep respect for the work of Iris Murdoch, with whom she shared an editor at Chatto & Windus, and feels that the film of her life and Kate Winslet’s attitude towards the novelist’s portrayal was a negative thing.
6. Margaret Drabble is her sister, and they don't read the books written by each other.
7. One of the premises behind the quartet of novels that began with The Virgin in the Garden was that of exploring the unpredictable nature of accidents in fiction, but when her real life was impacted upon by the death of her son, she wrote Possession as an interlude since she found it hard to return to the subject.
8. The popularity of the Booker winning novel Possession has been an ongoing (but pleasant) surprise for Byatt.
9. According to Byatt, she learnt how to plot her novels from early episodes of The Bill, she also used to watch Dallas. The only thing she tends to watch on television now is tennis.
10. She was on the Social Effects of Television Advisory Group set up to investigate the impact of television on people during the 1970s.

The interview is available here to view until 3:24am Thursday 24th December 2009.

Experience and History: Elie Wiesel’s The Night Trilogy and Martin Amis’s House of Meetings

2009-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy ([Night, 1958], [Dawn, 1961], [Day, 1962]; New York: Hill and Wang, 2008)

Martin Amis, House of Meetings (2006; London: Vintage, 2007)

I recently read Elie Wiesel's The Night Trilogy. Each book in the trilogy took me an hour and three quarters to read. Roughly the time it takes the train from Canterbury to arrive in Charing Cross. (And I happened to be on this train when I read the first two books.) For those who have not read the three books Night, Dawn and Day - the latter of which was formerly called The Accident - the first of the books (newly translated by Wiesel's wife, Marion) is a memoir based on Wiesel's time in Nazi concentration camps, the second is the story of a young and recently conscripted terrorist in post-war Palestine having to take the life of an English soldier, and the final book is about a Jewish man who having survived the concentration camps and seen his family members die, is 'willingly' knocked down by a taxi in New York.

The reason Wiesel’s books are of interest to me is two-fold. The first of which is that they are not written in an overtly literary style, and yet I would argue they are literary. Second, the power of the books does not lie in the record of the events alone, or the fact that Wiesel lived through the Nazi concentration camps and lost his family to them. It lies in his ability to render psychological and philosophical states through a record of history, and also imagined scenarios. This is a talent. Especially when the content is so personal.

Wiesel's books demonstrate that a high level of success can be achieved without entering into what is traditionally regarded as literary (in English and European literature at least) - i.e. dense, multi-layered and ambiguous narratives. But this is not to deride the dense, multi-layered and ambiguous. And what I would like to begin to demonstrate here is the way in which the two writing styles comfortably co-exist, through a comparison of the work of Wiesel and Amis. In order to do this, however, some points must be made first of all.

Martin Amis's House of Meetings is most definitely a text along the lines of ‘dense, multi-layered and ambiguous’ and is very good indeed. But the Amis book is about post-war Russian gulags (slave camps) not Nazi concentration camps. And it is therefore by no means possible to write that the two texts are about the same thing (this would be reductive). Even the observation that Wiesel’s and Amis’s texts contain imprisonment, torture, execution and subjugation in their themes is inadequate given the specifics of their histories.

I therefore wish to apologize in advance for any areas in this posting that might be thought to ride roughshod over important facts through the comparison performed here. For, while I am writing about writing, I realize this is no excuse for not showing due respect and sensitivity.

To begin then, my argument is that Wiesel and Amis - despite writing about histories that would seem ostensibly to give them the opportunity to adopt similar approaches to the challenge of describing them - start from the very beginning in two different positions.

If there is a distance existing between Wiesel and the Nazi concentration camps, it is one imposed by the flaws of memory over time, and by the need to narrate (and story) in a meaningful way the things he has been exposed to. Wiesel’s challenge then is to convert experience into text. He tries all the time to find language that will convey as clearly as possible his experiences (and in fact describes this process in his foreword to Night). Amis, meanwhile, is faced with a different challenge, which is to translate history (passed down through [mostly written] accounts) and to write a text that then conveys experience.

Amis's book begins as a letter written to a young lady incongruously named Venus. The narration is consciously about the past, and about the act of narration. The letter/novel is impossibly long (and here echoes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; no doubt consciously since the narrator uses Conrad’s name several times).

As a soldier in the Second World War, the confessor/narrator of Amis’s novel raped multiple women across Germany and also killed. We don’t know exactly why Amis's narrator risks disgusting his reader’s ‘Western’ eyes with brutal truths, because we imagine it may lead to the female recipient of the ‘letter’ aborting her reading and never understanding the story in full. But it is reflective of all the things in Amis’s world that have dark corners and things that cannot at first be explained or known.

When reading House of Meetings we do not always know clearly where we are, and the poetic nature of the language can make this even less clear. But isn't this after all the condition of life? And don't wars (and post-war situations) and all that goes on during them hold much that is inexplicable (and often inexplicable in the extreme)? I would argue an emphatic yes. The thing that I would like to note here, however, is the way in which Amis’s book differs from the aforementioned texts by Wiesel.

In House of Meetings the history appears larger than the individual. This is in no small part due to the background history provided to the reader along the way, which is entangled with the rich writing style. The protagonist raped because the rest of the army raped, for example. While the whole story of the slave camp is set 'descriptively' in its context of post-war Russia, which makes the human aspects, for example the love entanglements of its central characters, more trivial than they would otherwise be if we weren't supplied with the outside detail. Whereas, in Wiesel’s The Night Trilogy, and I am not talking about simply the memoir here but also the two novels, the psychological state of the individual actually appears bigger than the history surrounding it.

Wiesel writes in Night about how stories of the wider happenings during the Holocaust are disbelieved by the members of his hometown, and a woman is beaten for scaremongering about there being fires when the Jews are being transported on the train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. History is not allowed to touch the individual in Wiesel’s writing until he is a part of it. In Dawn, for example, the reader is far less exposed to the politics and history of the post-war situation in Palestine than with the narrator’s coming to terms with his responsibility for killing an English soldier in return for the life of one of his group’s leaders, David ben Moshe. The reader thinks, therefore, about the situation in Palestine through the individual character's psychological state.

Finally, to conclude this brief reflection: while I believe that language's failure to explain often says as much as its ability to explain, reading work by Wiesel and Amis so close together was a reaffirmation for me that there is no single way of writing which is 'right'. The author's choices are contextual, difficult and ultimately a compromise between history (experienced or researched) and text. As a consequence, the style of writing that has come to be thought of as having greater literary weight and density in the tradition of English literature is not always necessarily the most appropriate mode for recording experience/lived history, as is demonstrated by the success of The Night Trilogy.

Acknowledgement
I would to thank Rebecca Woodhead for providing this opportunity of complete freedom to post whatever I wished under the banner of the Word Nerd Army.

Anthony Levings (@anthonylevings) is Managing Editor at Gylphi Limited (http://www.gylphi.co.uk), an academic publisher focused on the arts and humanities of the twentieth century and beyond. He was awarded a PhD by the School of English at the University of Kent in 2007, and has published chapters based on his research in Considering Evil and Human Wickedness (Interdisciplinary Press, 2004), Anthony Burgess, Autobiographer (Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 2006), Anthony Burgess and Modernity (Manchester University Press, 2008), and Anthony Burgess: Music in Literature and Literature in Music (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

Friend of Word Nerd Army on MTV

2009-11-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

Word Nerd Army is about words in all their forms. Sometimes the words that are shared in song - from opera to rap - can hit home the hardest. Love to my Twitter friend http://twitter.com/kiddrussell for making it to MTV but more so for making this song in the first place. Hope it makes a difference.

Rebecca.

We Need a Literary Sensation

2009-11-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

Books are sexy

Getting people excited about books is clearly something writers care about very much. At the weekend I blogged about the need for charismatic curatorial types, the literary equivalent of Jay Joplin, to do for literature what Sensation and White Cube did for art in the 90s. It provoked one of the liveliest debates I’ve had in a while. And when I asked how we get the public interested in literature – what our “Sensation” moment would look like – during Sunday night’s #writechat, the @replies lit up like the Vegas Strip.

As writers, we care. The problem is, many of the public don’t. so what’s the answer?
I should probably explain, as I realise that not everyone was around in the balmy days of the 1990s. Back in the mid 1990s a group of artists, mainly out of Goldsmiths & Central St Martin’s (yes, the St Martin’s College of the immortal Pulp lyric), started doing stuff that was new and cool. They became known as the Young British Artists (YBAs). Nowadays we think of them as rather staid and fogeyish, and of what they do as rather yeah yeah yeah, but it’s hard to overstate just how damn cool it was before some idiot went and used the phrase Cool Britannia.

And it was Jay Joplin, and his White Cube Gallery, that brought Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Rachel Whiteread, Gavin Turk and their like to the world. And when Damien cut a cow in two, and Tracey forgot to make her bed, and a whole bunch of them got together to produce an exhibition called Sensation that included a portrait of Mira Hindley painted with children’s handprints, there wasn’t a bus stop or a shopping queues or a, well, they didn’t have watercoolers really back the, but you get the idea, where people weren’t asking each other “yes, but is it art?”

People didn’t just care about this painting or that sculpture – they cared about art.
So how do we get people talking like that about books? How do we get them caring not about this or that book – there’ll always be a book du jour, and that’s great, but it’s not sustainable, it’s not going to secure the future – but about books. Full stop?

The answers to the question have proven somewhat more elusive than the desire to keep asking it and for there to BE an answer. Catch them young, work with libraries, get celebrities to say books are cool. All of them valuable points. But what we really need is our own Sensation. We need an “event”.

And for that we need two things. We need a group of writers doing something that hasn’t been done before. We need our very own Jay Joplin to bring them to the world’s attention in one place at one time. And maybe we need a third thing, for the tabloid press to be offended.

I want to go on a little diversion before ending with a clarion call to action. It’s not – pardon the heresy, books we need to get people excited about, lovely, wonderful objects though they may be. It’s what books contain – stories and ideas and, to be kitsch and sentimental for a moment – the alchemy of the communal soul. Books on their own are just pieces of paper. Sentimentalism and nostalgia for them are understandable, but they’re not what I’m about when I say I want people to be excited about literature. Just like the stockists are wrong to want people to be excited about paintings rather than “art”.

What we need is for people to care about ideas, about stories, about communicating our innermost fears and hopes; articulating our questions and seeking answers; having our insecurities reflected back with reassurance, and our securities questioned; being brought together by narrative. It is because they do all these things that books matter – and not vice versa.

So what will our event look like? I’ve had some great suggestions over the past couple of days. A second Blur v Oasis, trading heavyweights; a second Beat Poets tour; and, of course, our own Sensation. I don’t know what form it will take. But it will be an Event. And I won’t stop asking the question till I’ve found the answer – and tried and failed a few times along the way.

So, who wants to explore with me?

(Dan Holloway is a founder member of Year Zero Writers, a collective devoted to creating a direct relationship between readers and writers, and described by Nylon Mag as “cool”. The Year Zero website has new original fiction and articles about literature every day. Dan is also organiser of the Free-e-day festival. He is an outspoken self-publisher and futurologist of publishing, and an advocate of live performance prose. His current novel, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, about a girl growing up in Hungary after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, is free to download in all e-formats, and £8 as paperback.

Patience....

2009-11-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

Is a virtue we must cultivate daily. As writers this is a critical piece of wisdom to store in the grey matter. In this day and age it seems we are always waiting for something - the economy to improve, companies to start hiring, test results, or that e-mail from an agent or publisher.

It's easy to get trapped in the cycle of just waiting in the name of patience. I think thats why many of us don't have patience, we get confused with waiting and patience. Why do I bring this up to the Word Nerd Army? We are here to change the sentiment of books, make an impact on the world through the use of literature and to see our fellow mates published one day.

All of these things take time and therefore, patience but don't get discouraged my fellow writers for Rome was not built in a day. I believe if we continue fighting on, writing, making ourselves heard we will see a change. How long will it be before we see this change? I can't answer that but each step we take moves us closer to that day when we see the benefits of our work.

If some one learns to read or a child gets a book for a holiday that is a sign of our work here. People talking about authors and books are just the ripples in the waters of society that started when we threw the first rock of information.

Patience is what we need to remember and hold on to as we move forward in this uncertain world and even in our private lives. Patience is a virtue, true, but it is also our friend. Don't wait on patience, patience gives you the access to follow through on other projects.

The Meat Fisted Typing Robot

2009-10-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

(picture courtesty of www.sho.com)

In my head I'm Hank effing Moody. In my head, there's still a need for alpha-writers meat-fisting their coarse words on a typewriter held together with self-belief and amateur misogyny, surrounded by the effluvia of insomnia-ridden haunted writers: a soft-pack of 20 cigarettes, a half-snarfed bottle of bourbon (the 20 year old good stuff) and some Warren Zevon blaring out of the stereo. Oh, and I'm dressed in black. Maybe I'm wearing shades. Maybe the detritus of last night's party is still asleep at my feet. Maybe I'm deluded.

In reality, I'm sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by clippings of interesting articles I'll probably not come back to, my vanity shelf (this is a line of CDs, newspapers, magazines, books and a record that I've been involved with). I've got a cafetiere next to me, cos you know, I got to be up in the morning to go to my job as a regular Office Joe. I'm wearing slippers and tracksuit bottoms. And maybe Radio 4's on, but more than likely, it's silent because too much distraction can throw me off my game, I've got 1000 words to write and it's nearly midnight and if I go to bed in the next ten minutes, I can get 7 hours and 30 minutes of sleep- that is, if I fall asleep instantly. The more likely situation is tossing and turning and disturbing my wife while I try to figure out why my character Nishant isn't working in my book, what to do with Larry who I introduced early on and never came back to even though he's got great lines, and when I'm going to find the time between writing and editing and working and relating to my wife and cooking and paying the electricity bill and watching my two new Lovefilm DVDs to find a blooming agent.

It's tough out here for a writer. It really is, and I've been lucky to have performed across the world and had my stuff published in sh*t-hot magazines but the above scene is pretty much my everyday life. I'm consumed.

But it's not all bad- no way, no how because this book I'm writing at the moment is something I would want to read in a heartbeat. And that is the ultimate winner, the goal the prize. Before the compromise of selling books, that initial rush and compulsion to sit down and put pen to paper is more often than not because, regardless of feeling you got a story to tell, it's more... you want to read what you have to say. You're the first customer for anything you do. If you're writing something and you know you wouldn't buy it if you needed to pick up a new book to read from your local independent bookshop, then you've lost, people. You've lost that compulsion, that hunger and necessity and drive and power and drive to write the best you can write. I write because I want to read what I got to say. Sounds selfish when you put it like that, but it's the truth. You're the first customer of anything you write; you got to sell it to yourself first.

And what I'm writing now? I love it. I think it's ace and I am loving it when I read it back. Sure it needs tightening and there are some saggy bits but the idea, the essence of it, is exactly what I want to read. In a second. I've won. And for that reason alone, tonight I'll go home, put on my writing slippers, brew two cups worth of decent hazelnut coffee in my cafetiere, fire up the laptop and pound the keyboards with my meat fists... because some things do never change.

How Far Is Your Reach?

2009-10-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hello Word Nerd Army! My name is Brian and like you I am a fan of the written word. It is amazing to see how far many of us have come in such a short time. This blog is an accomplishment of the forward progress made by Rebecca during her quest to publication. My journey to publication started very close to the same time Rebecca's did and, thankfully, the Internet roads crossed allowing us to meet.

I found it very ironic today when I saw a question posted by Rebecca on LinkedIn. In short the question was regarding new writers trying to break in to publishing during such a tough economic time. I believe this fits in very well with my article today. Please allow me to explain. My blog, the New Author, was created to allow me to connect with other writers in an effort to learn, motivate, and share with each other. I believe writing is a lonely endeavor but we need each other to tackle the overwhelming amount of information surrounding our passion. The blog has grown and I'm very thankful for that but it has also opened doors to meeting new friends and in my case a partner. In March of this year I partnered with a fellow writer to start Premium Promotional Services. Our main goal is to help authors who are starting out and struggling to be seen gain the exposure they deserve. Why did we decide this? It is becoming the status quo for publishing companies to place all the marketing and promotional work on the authors. Many authors have no idea how to go about promoting their books. As hard as we work to become published and attract the attention of agents/publishing companies this is truly the real problem we face. Why? Agents and publishers want clients and books they KNOW will sale. They do not want to gamble on a hunch or idea.

What do we do since we are not Stephen King or J.K. Rowling? We use all available tools to the max. The Internet has provided us with a great opportunity to establish our name to a broad audience. When used properly it can garner a leg up when approaching agents and publishers about our book(s). The goal is simple, reach as many people as you can. Agents and publishers see every follower, reader, subscriber as a potential book purchase.

I think it is safe to say that very publishing company place their client's books on Amazon, Amazon UK, and Barnes & Noble (among others). This is because a massive number of books are being purchased online so this tells me that the Internet is truly the place to focus our efforts as we establish our name in the business. Do you think "The Shack" would have sold as many as it did without the Internet?

The bottom line here is this, it is hard to break in to the publishing business but that may not be because you are not a great writer. It may be that they feel you don't have enough name recognition and therefore your great book may not sale the numbers they need. Don't get discouraged, keep writing but at the same time think of ways to get your name out there. Never stop building your platform.

I do have an announcement to make before I wrap up. As I mentioned above, my promotional business was started to help authors. Recently I helped an author from England and I can honestly say, he wrote a great book. In talking to him about his book he mentioned how hard it was to gain exposure for his book here in the States and wondered if I could help with that. About a month ago his publishing company contacted me and asked if we could help them spread the word about their books. I am very happy and excited to announce that we have opened a second book store, which is sponsored by Pneuma Springs Publishing, called 'The London Connection.' This is just another step in shining a light on the authors who are struggling to be seen. By doing this we can extend the reach of these authors to a whole new audience.

In closing I go back to Rebecca's question, "what can we do to improve our chances?" Publishing companies will continue to be a bit harsh until the market improves but mid-sized publishers are actively searching and so are small publishers. The most important thing we can do (aside from writing a great novel) is to build an audience and keep building it. Reach out to every corner of the planet. Come up with new ideas to keep your name current. We know the hard work has been placed on our shoulders but we can carry this burden. We are the Word Nerd Army; failure to be seen and heard is not an option.

Just when you thought the internet was full of advice...

2009-10-27T02:55:00.000-07:00

Hello. I'm Nikesh and I'm a word nerd. I've been addicted to words for nearly thirty years now. I can't say exactly when it started or what it is about words that makes me feel so alive but I know that this addiction is ruling my life.

I'm Nikesh and I'm a word nerd.

I write. I read. I consume pretty much all the time. If I'm not online, I'm listening to podcasts or music or reading or watching quality television. I'm never switched off from pop art. I write all the time. I have three levels of writing, reflected by the three sizes of notebook I have with me at all times. The small one is where I collect fragments of ideas, like if I'm at a party and I'm talking to someone whose t-shirt reads 'You look like my next girlfriend' and that's an important detail to collect for a future story creep, I note it down. I have a medium sized notebook for lyrics. This is good for jotting down poems and lyrics for songs, for being able to make it look manageable and easier to balance on your knee if you're on planes, trains or automobiles. Then there's the A4 sized notebook which comes in handy in cafes and my mind wanders and I want to write my book or work on a short story or jot down sketch ideas. I go through each of these 3 a quarter. Check out my carbon footprint.

I could introduce myself properly and boast about the gigs I've done in India or New York or my award-winning film or the time I was on BBC2 busking in the rain on Brick Lane but that's what my website's for. This blog is to connect with you because you're more likely than not, in the same position as me.

I love words.... AGREE/DISAGREE
I want to write for a living.... AGREE/DISAGREE
I have written a book.... AGREE/DISAGREE
I'm finding it hard to get it published.... AGREE/DISAGREE

Even if you agree with one of those, you're in the right place. If you agree with all of them, then... errr... maybe you're actually me and I'm in some sort of temporal timeloop reading my own blog about my own experiences.

So, I could offer you advice and I have lots of positive experiences to share, both working in publishing for an organisation and as a writer but here are my handy top five tips for developing a profile, because, to be honest, we're all aspiring writers and we need to stand out. We may be fellow word nerds, but we're also competition and sadly, it's not just about the words at the beginning. That's not to say we're in competition. We're not, but you get what I'm saying.

1) Enter competitions and submit for magazines. People read these and look for writers there. Send off your stories. Find the print magazines and the good respected online magazines and submit to them a lot.
2) Write a blog. My blog is a collection of stories of my performing and writing and publishing, but also a collection of funny anecdotes because I want to write funny stuff and it's like a diary of bits to use, an aide memoire of characters, turns of phrase and events.
3) Read at events. Most independent bookshops have open mics and reading opportunities, there are an abundance of short story nights across the country. Go and read at them. Develop a reading voice and a stage personality and perform. Be more than the page, but with your words.
4) Read everyday.
5) Write everyday.

Why are you reading this blog? You know all this stuff already. Everyone's got an opinion and who cares about yours Keshla, you're stillunpublished? Yes. This is very abundantly true. But sometimes you need affirmation that you're heading in the write direction [sic].

Right, now, plug time: There's an awesome literary venue in Farringdon, London called Free Word Centre. On 11th December, I'm putting on a microfiction night there. The theme is 'THAT TIME OF YEAR.' The story should be 3 minutes/500 words. To take part, email me your story here and I'll choose the ten best to battle it out at Wham! Bam! Story! Slam!

Also, if you're on Facebook, sign up to the Book Club Boutique group. They're awesome. I'm extended fam. Salena Godden is mega-amazing and submit work to her to perform because this night is off the chain.

Write, I'm off.

Yours wordily,
Nikesh

New Knights!

2009-10-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

The new knights were announced in the sidebar 'knights' section at the start of the month but I thought I'd put up a little post for them here too.

Our new knights are: Nikesh Shukla and Brian Knight (yes, he was already a Knight by name but now he also has the title!)

They've been given relatively free rein to do what they will with their month of power. Curious to see what they get up to - I will report back!

If you stumble across them on twitter - http://twitter.com/nikeshshukla and http://twitter.com/thenewauthor - don't forget to call them 'Sir' until 5th Nov :) Oooh! 5th Nov - Guy Fawkes Night - wonder who will be the next Knight of the Month. All nominations go into the comments section below.

By the way, when you're tweeting up the Word Nerd Army or our issues, there's a nice short URL you can use - http://tiny.cc/wna - thanks for all your enthusiasm and ideas. You can also now find the Word Nerd Army group on LinkedIn! Remember to look it up next time you're there.

Word Nerd Army Award for Knightly Potential

2009-09-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

New Rules

On Monday 5th October, the next knight of the month - if one qualifies - will be announced.

Above is a new award. It is the Word Nerd Army Award for Knightly Potential. Sounds rude but isn't.

This is your opportunity to nominate people you think have made a contribution to the cause of words. Maybe they run a writing group or blog or maybe they're an awesome librarian or teacher or maybe they're a writer or simply just passionate about books. You can even nominate yourself! The Award of Knightly Potential shows that a person has been nominated to go forward into the next tournament to choose the Word Nerd Knight of the Month.

How to Nominate Someone

To nominate someone, simply present them with the above award - which shows that you think they have knightly potential - and pass on the following rules.

Rules of the Award/Nomination

Here are the rules a person must follow to display the award and qualify for consideration for the big award - Knight of the Month:

If you are nominated to be the next Word Nerd Knight of the Month, you can put the above award on your blog/site once you have completed the following tasks. The award shows that you are deemed by one of your peers to have the potential to be a Knight of the Month. It is your invitation to the Word Nerd Knight of the Month Tournament.

Follow http://wordnerdarmy.blogspot.com/. You need to follow this blog to be entitled to display the award and be considered as a potential Word Nerd Knight.

Put up a post on your own blog/site thanking the person who gave you the award and writing about one of the 11 Word Nerd Army issues that you feel passionate about. Go to the first post - http://tinyurl.com/11issues - to see these issues in more detail and the short URLs for each of them. Write about an issue on your blog and link back here at the end of your post.

Come to this post and leave a message in the comment section saying who nominated you and leaving a link to your blog post about the issue you chose to write about. You can also say in your comment why you think you would make a great Knight of the Month.

Nominate 3 more potential Knights of the Month by sending them the award, passing on these rules and linking to this post. Once you have completed 1-4 you have qualified as a potential Knight of the Month as you have shown dedication to words and respect for fellow word lovers - all qualities that make for a great Word Nerd Knight.

Put up your award! Link back to this blog or link to the post in which you wrote about the issue in your own blog. Wait to see if you win the big prize!

If you win, I will contact you and present you with Sir Word Nerd, Knight of the Word Nerd Army, which you display on your site/blog for as long as you are a follower of this blog.

Good luck!

Rebecca

Issue 9 & Issue 10 Emergency. Rally Troops for Action in UK!

2009-08-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

We have a BIG problem. Huge supporter of the Word Nerd Army cause and stupendous writing genius, Jamie Ford, is being kept out of the UK. This has been a cause of some personal anguish since I had to beg someone to send me his book from America many months ago but now an official distress signal has gone out and I think it is time for the Word Nerd Army to go into action. http://tinyurl.com/rw-jf-uk

How can Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - the BEST novel I have read in years - be on best-seller lists around the world (including the New York Times best-seller list) and STILL not available in the UK? I don't fear for Mr Ford - he's doing great business - but I fear terribly for UK publishers and book retailers. They can't miss out on this in a recession. It's madness. Hotel is flying off shelves around the world and our book industry is missing out. Not only is our book industry missing out but our readers are too. I can't express enough how deeply moving and profoundly well handled this book is.

UK Publishers! Listen up! What do you want to know about this book? I am not in the pay of Mr Ford and am entirely objective. I should be badgering you to take on my books not his, however, I am not only a writer but also a reader and this book is AMAZING and needs to be enjoyed by other readers. It will sell its socks off for you. If you're confused about how to market it, put it on a shelf where you'd put something like 'Mister Pip' or 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' NOT in 'American History', and expect it to do better than either of these because the writing is amazing. In fact, forget that bit of shelving advice and put it on a big stand at the front because the artwork on the cover is delicious and people with no idea what it is will pick it up for that reason alone.

Whichever UK publisher snaps this up is going to be laughing all the way to the government-owned bank. Start bidding for it now and hope no other UK publisher has suddenly jumped on the clue train. Leave it much longer and you will be in a big bidding war.

US publishers, readers etc, please leave comments here and/or on Jamie's site to tell UK publishers what they are missing out on. Before long we will be the last country in the world without this amazing book on our shelves and it's...well it's embarrassing. Please help.

Could You Be the Next Word Nerd Knight of the Month'?

2009-08-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

At the foot of the right hand column you may have noticed a knight. That is the 'Word Nerd Knight' and is awarded to the 'Knight of the Month'. Most months there will be just the one knight but for the first month, the title was awarded to two brave chaps: Paul Carroll and Dan Holloway.

Rather than have a namby-pamby 'here is my handkerchief' Lady and a kick-butt-charging-into-literary-battle Knight, there is just the one character. As all Word Nerds kick butt (as evidenced in every LitChat bunfight I have observed) and in the spirit of honouring the masculine and feminine within all writers, the Word Nerd Knight carries flowers and is addressed as 'Sir Knight'. Anyone can become 'Knight of the Month' but the title will only be handed out when there is a suitable recipient.

Why are you only 'Knight' for a month? It seemed appropriate, given the way the Word Nerd Army was founded. I am only 'Ms Twitter UK' for a month but I can always claim to have been holder of the title. The same is true for valiant Knights of the Word Nerd Army. It's yours for a month BUT 'Sir Knight' - The Word Nerd Knight - can guard your web site or blog for as long as you are a follower of this blog. You'll only lose the right to display it if you are banned from this blog for acts of extreme badness. When your month has passed you can consider yourself to have been 'Word Nerd Knight of Month The Firste/Seconde' or whatever if you like.

Who Is Word Nerd Knight for Next Month?

That's still up for grabs. I will make my choice at the end of the first week in September so you have a little over two weeks to convince me. I will make my decision based on:

Blogs you post about the 11 issues (you must link to this blog and mention the issue that inspired you in your blog post)

If you cut and paste the issue as your title, it's more likely to fly up google - points will be awarded for that - remember too that each issue has a memorable URL e.g. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-1

Tweeting up of Word Nerd Army etc (e.g. the Word Nerd article on Booktrust's blog - http://news1.rebeccawoodhead.com/

General behaviour befitting a Word Nerd Knight.

When you've done something knightly, put it in the comments section of this post. Points will be awarded for comments in the spirit of promoting the issues of the Word Nerd Army and points will be taken away for blatant self-promotion. Good luck!

Once again, if you want to be able to insist on being called 'Sir' for a month - might be a unique experience if you're female - this is your chance. Let the tournament commence..... NOW!

Word Nerd Army On Parade - Your Chance to Take a Bow

2009-08-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

This is your chance to be heard. Look through the 11 issues we all came up with. Tweet/blog/email all your Word Nerd chums - every single one of the mad group of book lovers that voted for me - and let 'the world' know how you feel. This is my last guest blog for Booktrust. It is a great gig and this particular blog is about you. It is about how my bid to be Ms Twitter became less about platform building and more about what 'word nerds' as a whole were telling me.

If 'the pen is mightier than the pin-up' was a slogan that meant anything to you, if you helped to construct this list of issues, or if any of these issues matter to you then you have bragging rights. Your voice needs to be heard. Please comment on the Booktrust site and under this post. Please put this information up on your blogs and tweet it up. This is the biggest publicity for the Word Nerd Army so far and it won't be up long so let's make the most of it. Now's your chance to tell your story and take a bow for your part in the campaign.

You earned it :)

Word Nerd Army News - Booktrust (1)

2009-08-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

The first of two posts I wrote for Booktrust went up today. The next post - which is about the Word Nerd Army - goes up mid-week. Exciting stuff! Please link to it from your blogs.

http://news1.rebeccawoodhead.com/

Thanks

Rebecca

Word Nerd behind Word Nerd Army
Ms Twitter UK

Calling all Word Nerds!

2009-08-09T07:30:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the BlogWhen I was running for Ms Twitter UK under the slogan 'the pen is mightier than the pin-up', I gave my word that I would use the publicity if I won to bring attention to a number of issues. Setting up this blog is my attempt to keep my word. The more people who blog about these issues and/or tweet them up, the more visibility they will have. It is only a small contribution but hopefully it will help.

Looking forward to hearing about your ideas. Make yourself at home. Please respect copyright - especially of the lovely pictures my husband drew for the blog. If you quote me, please link back.

Thank you.

Rebecca Woodhead

Word Nerd & Ms Twitter UK
http://rebeccawoodhead.com/

Issue 11 - Could we build more libraries and fewer prisons?

2009-08-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

11/ A large number of people in UK prisons (around 3 in 5 according to one prison librarian) have reading problems or dyslexia. There needs to be research into the connection between difficulties with literacy and eventual crime to help people before they resort to crime. Access to good help with reading and communication difficulties needs to be a priority. Wouldn't it be great if by addressing this issue, we could build more libraries and fewer prisons?

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 10 - Stories are important

2009-08-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

10/ Stories are important.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 9 - Books give you access to great minds

2009-08-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

9/Books give you access to great minds.

Do you have any experience of this?
Do you know of good research about this?
How do you feel about this?
How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale
How can we use the internet to help?
What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 8 - Illness, bad fortune and/or poverty need not be a significant barrier to success. Web 2.0 can re-enable people facing hardship

2009-08-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

8/ Illness, bad fortune and/or poverty need not be a significant barrier to success. Web 2.0 can re-enable people facing hardship.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 7 - The online book community is very motivated & supportive. Reading & Writing are solitary. Twitter brings social element.

2009-08-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

7/ The online book community is very motivated & incredibly supportive of new & established talent. Reading and writing are solitary activities. Twitter brings in a social element regardless of location or physical mobility.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 6 - Men and women can work together towards a common goal - as can different cultures - on twitter

2009-08-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

6/Men and women can work together towards a common goal - as can different cultures - on twitter. Twitter has a positive part to play.

Do you know of good research about this?
How do you feel about this?
How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?
How can we use the internet to help?
What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 5 - There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a pin-up. There is everything wrong with thinking that is your only option

2009-08-09T05:04:00.000-07:00

5/ There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a pin-up. There is everything wrong with thinking that is your only option. Choice is crucial.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 4 - Many people are not aware of the benefits of using libraries during a recession

2009-08-09T04:59:00.000-07:00

4/ Many people are not aware of the benefits of using libraries during a recession (free books, cheap DVDs & music, free net access etc.) This needs to change.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 3 - Libraries are variously under-funded or under-attended. More effort needs to go into reconnecting societies with libraries

2009-08-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

3/ Libraries are variously under-funded or under-attended. More effort needs to go into reconnecting societies with libraries

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 2 - Millions of people don't read, because they are not inclined to read

2009-08-09T04:49:00.000-07:00

2/ Millions of people don't read, because they are not inclined to read. Being a 'word nerd' needs to be seen as a good thing.

Do you have any experience of this?

Do you know of good research about this?

How do you feel about this?

How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?

How can we use the internet to help?

What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Issue 1 - Millions of People Don't Read - because They Can't Read

2009-08-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

1/ Millions of people don't read, because they can't read. More money needs to go into schemes to give word skills and confidence

Do you have any experience of this?
Do you know of good research about this?
How do you feel about this?
How can the Word Nerd Army help on a local/National/International scale?
How can we use the internet to help?
What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?

Please leave comments. I plan to take action on this. What advice do you have? What can we do as a group of people?

So the Pen is Mightier than the Pin-up. Now What?

2009-08-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

The shared ideas that emerged from my campaign to win Ms Twitter with the slogan 'The Pen is Mightier than the Pin-up'. To comment on any of these ideas, please click on the URL and go to the relevant post. You can use the memorable URLs to deep-link from Tweets or blog posts about these subjects. General comments on Ms Twitter or the idea of Word Nerd Army can be left below. Thanks...

Millions of people don't read, because they can't read. More money needs to go into schemes to give word skills and confidence http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-1
Millions of people don't read, because they are not inclined to read. Being a 'word nerd' needs to be seen as a good thing. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-2
Libraries are variously under-funded or under-attended. More effort needs to go into reconnecting societies with libraries. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-3
Many people are not aware of the benefits of using libraries during a recession (free books, cheap DVDs & music, free net access etc.) This needs to change. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-4
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a pin-up. There is everything wrong with thinking that is your only option. Choice is crucial. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-5
Men and women can work together towards a common goal - as can different cultures - on twitter. Twitter has a positive part to play. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-6
The online book community is very motivated & incredibly supportive of new & established talent. Reading and writing are solitary activities. Twitter brings in a social element regardless of location or physical mobility. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-7
Illness, bad fortune and/or poverty need not be a significant barrier to success. Web 2.0 can re-enable people facing hardship. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-8
Books give you access to great minds. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-9
Stories are important. http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-10
A large number of people in UK prisons (around 3 in 5 according to one prison librarian) have reading problems or dyslexia. There needs to be research into the connection between difficulties with literacy and eventual crime to help people before they resort to crime. Access to good help with reading and communication difficulties needs to be a priority. Wouldn't it be great if by addressing this issue, we could build more libraries and fewer prisons? http://tinyurl.com/wordnerd-11

Point 11 is a big issue and we, as a group, didn't have the necessary information to suggest anything. It may be coincidence but it's got to be worth a look.

This Blog exists in the first instance to promote the above ideas. They all need research, probably a bit of re-wording will happen as we discover more. It would be great if the literary blogging community did battle with some of these concepts and reported back. I'd love to be able to link to lots of great, well researched, blogs about ideas and actions sparked off by this campaign.

If you link to this blog, please write a post about us or about one or other of the aims to help spread the Word Nerd word and support words and books through a really tricky financial time.

I've put this elsewhere but please feel free to promote your books, literacy programmes, libraries etc and link to interesting news and developments in publishing etc. Don't make it a constant advert though or your posts will be removed and you may be blocked. If your comment is specifically about something you've found that directly relates to the goals of the Word Nerd Army then put it in the body of the comment. If you want to comment on one of my posts though, just put it under your name.

Bring on the dancing blog-posts!

Rebecca