Who Controls Creative Work? The Creator or the Fans?

The Blu-Ray Menace; or, Who Really Owns Star Wars?, a recent article in the Time online column Tuned In, raises the question of who an established work belongs to: its creator, or its fans? James Poniewozik, the author of the article, clarifies that he is not talking in terms of legal ownership, rather the question is [...]

Writing and Reading Short Stories – Open Courseware at MIT

Rather or not I go back to college via my local college, I am going to take a few classes at MIT this fall. Specifically I am going to take some Open Courseware classes through MIT on writing. These are previously offered classes that have been made available, along with lecture notes and other information, [...]

The importance of proofreading everything

Proofread, proofread, proofread.

It might seem like a tired old bit of advice, particularly in this age of computers with spell checkers built into everything including the Internet browser programs, but nothing beats good old fashioned spell checking by hand to make sure that you have everything looking right. And, if you are not a [...]

Can’t we all just get along? Freelancing Friends

I was reviewing article titles on my Google Reader a few minutes ago when my attention was caught by a Forbes post from Susannah Breslin: Dear Pink Slipped: Can Freelancers Be Friends?

I can see the perspective of the questioner, identified as “Freelance Friend Finder”, in their ability to locate work being somewhat limited. There is [...]

Must Freelance mean Free? – Pt 5: Ethics of Advertising on Blogs

In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began to look more closely at the guidelines that governed advertising, in particular as it applied to blogging and social media.

On October 5, 2009 the FTC released a press release on the publication of their final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials, it was this guideline that would [...]