Writing Tips Guides

Have you ever realized that there is better way of sending funny birthday poems for a boyfriend? You are probably sending your funny birthday poem for a boyfriend through the snail mail. Well if you are a member to an online social utility, then it would be easier for you to send messages like those for free. An online social utility is a website where you can sign in or register for free and use all the applications and tools available for you. Post on your blogs, chat online, send messages, post comments on forums and the list goes on.

If you are a member to this social networks or online social utility, your poems can be seen worldwide on the internet or you can make private. When you make it private, it would only be you and whoever you allow to see it. You will the one who will dictate who can and who cannot see your poems. You may also want to create your own group of classmates or friends that are really into poem writing and that kind of stuff.

Memberships to these social interactive networks are mostly free. Becoming a member gives you a lot of choices in terms of sending and communicating to your boyfriend or the people around you. To connect and communicate to people you know cannot be easier. You can find people too, on a network like this. Best of all you can chat online with your boyfriend, relatives, classmates, schoolmates and people you know.

There are other things you can do with your poems. You can write more a let the whole know who wrote them, and then you become an instant celebrity or a well known poem writer. Some people make a living writing poems or write them on a part time basis. And the best vehicle for you to be known and recognize is through this social networks. The benefits of being part these groups are the free access to keep in touch with your friends or boyfriend. Another thing you can do is create a group of people who do the same thing as you do so that you can connect and communicate on how to do things.

It is so common nowadays to be a member of an online social utility network especially younger people. They love being well connected to their classmates and schoolmates that some of them may be registered to two or even five different websites. It is a craze that is going to be very popular especially sending messages and keeping in touch.

In todays world, sending messages are mostly done online or through the internet. Using short messaging services can cost a lot of money if you use too long or more frequently. Whereas, in an online social utility network, it is free and you can do it for hours or as long as you can click the mouse of your computer. Thus, sending a funny birthday poem for a boyfriend can be done easier using a social group or community.

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Danger, debauchery, drinking and Dylan Thomas seem to all the world like natural bedfellows and, one might add, what a rather adroit menage they would make. Despite the fact that he is unilaterally hailed as Wales’s artistic hero, he is less the literary father of the nation than its roguish, prodigal son. With Matthew Rhys, Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller all starring in The Edge of Love, a new film that explores the poet’s colourful love life, a shot of glamour and cool is bound to be injected into the growing Thomas phenomenon. He is now, if he wasn’t before, untouchably cool.

In fact, of late, people are practically tripping over each another to make public their reverence for the Welsh poet. Mick Jagger, for instance, owns the rights to his 1939 collection, The Map of Love. Pierce Brosnan had his son christened “Dylan Thomas Brosnan” and Neil Morrissey owns a handful of properties in Thomas’s spiritual hometown of Laugharne. Musician Ben Taylor named his recent album Famous Among the Barns as a tribute to the man and, if one decides to look for him, his work can be found in a smattering films, albums and television programmes from the likes of Chumbawumba to George Clooney.

So why Dylan Thomas and why now? Is his work just the new flavour of the month? Are people attracted to his rebellious persona or has this modern age discovered something truly remarkable and artistic in his body of work?

Well, not according to Nicholas Lezard from the Guardian. His attitude to the “rockstar poet” pivots on the fact that he takes Dylan Thomas to be the “poet for people who don’t really like poetry”

Quite an indictment I think you’ll agree. But then, he might have a point.

Thomas is certainly famous enough to be a touchstone for those with only a passing interest in poetry. It would be difficult to find a chap of a certain age alive that couldn’t recite one or two phrases from Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night or have an idea about what Under Milk Wood was all about. But is that enough? Is he, dare I say it, easy?

The answer, naturally, is: no, of course that’s not enough.

Thomas’s poetry is often striking and immediate, but it is never easy. The skill that Thomas constructs his verse is seemingly in its aural quality, which it has to be said, it holds above all other qualities. For example, digging out an old copy of Richard Burton’s reading of the play Under Milk Wood, we come across this description of the trees that lead to the sea in the opening monologue:

“limping invisible down to the slowblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea”

Sounds fantastic doesn’t it? The lilting, lolling tones roll beautifully. But does it make sense? Well, you could ague that: no it doesn’t, not in a strict or methodical way. But, if we look closer at what Thomas is doing we may be able to piece something together. The ‘limping’ of the trees for example mirrors their uneven line down to the sea whilst the ’slowblack, slow, black, crowblack” echoes the limping. Hear it?

Then this part about ‘fishing boat bobbing sea’, well, Thomas here creates a striking image at the expense of standard grammatical laws; the word order is all of a pickle so to speak. But then therein lies the power. Thomas’s intensity comes from dislocating the image from that which surrounds it. It is an example of what, in Russia, they might call Ostrananie or “making strange”. A formalist idea that says that once we make something seem strange or new, it takes on a new freshness and vibrancy that we were not expecting. Its result is to make that which is normal seem bright and immediate.

It seems to me that that is why Thomas is going through somewhat of a boom of late, because his work is so lyrical and intensely visual. People are making films about him now because, largely, his work has such scope for cinema and theatre. One could argue that The Edge of Love is not so much about the poetry but the man, but then can we really separate the two?

Dylan Thomas is clearly someone that lived his profession; he would have been a poet if no one else had ever read a single couplet of his writing. What is attractive about Thomas though is that he lived his profession so intensely. He created a persona that, like his poetry, is clear and bright and a perfect (dislocated) image of his work.

Samantha is a London theatre fanatic and regular West End theatregoer. She writes and researches some of the biggest London shows you can view examples of her work here Oliver

When searching for an anniversary gift the main thing to remember is to be romantic and sincere, especially if the gift is for your partner or loved one.

Sometimes a material anniversary gift really does not express how deeply you feel, and you may consider sending something more heartfelt and personal such as a poem or a card that contains anniversary verses.

Writing your own poem may not be your forte but do not despair, there are many services available to help.

If you do decide to send an anniversary gift that is a poem it is important to include information that is personal to the receiver

Here’s a good example of a creative anniversary gift that was
written especially for a couple’s first wedding anniversary:-

Wiggy and Wigster
We had known each other for 13 years,
that was even before we’d started to date,
but despite the best efforts of our mutual friends,
they hadn’t accounted for those winds of fate.

You came to my job one hot July 30th,
and you struck up a conversation with me,
that day I happened to be very tanned,
you thought my ripped stomach was a place to be.

You asked what I did to stay in shape,
and asked if sometime we could go together,
I was only 3 minutes away from “more than life itself,
each and every day of my life, forever and ever”.

Exactly one month from that first meeting day,
I looked you up in an e-mail address book,
I must admit I’d been driving by your house,
just in the hope I’d get a wave or a look.

Because I’d already turned down one invitation,
and wasn’t going to make that same mistake again,
so I asked to take you up on that bike ride,
you were so thrilled, you just said: “When?”

We went out on our first date two days later,
for the record, it was dinner at The Offshore,
then we took a romantic stroll, hand in hand,
and I knew my life had changed (for evermore).

After two weeks of dating,
I asked when would all the sweetness end,
and you said, “Never, why does it have to?”,
We both knew then, we’d found a lifelong friend.

It was obvious to our friends and family too,
and I had waited for you to say “I love you” for so long,
so happily, I moved in just a few months later,
and ever since, we’ve never put one foot wrong.

When we first met I found you disliked cats,
and now Ziggy “your son” gets more kisses than me,
but let me tell you, Wiggy, you’re wonderful,
and you’ve made Wigster’s World a great place to be.

Wearing two crowns can be sometimes tiring,
so together, we play, we laugh, love, walk and pray,
hand in hand, we do everything as a couple,
as we did on August 2nd, our “Beautiful” wedding day.

I now know what a husband’s love is truly worth,
and we know that there’s no “I” in team,
I know you took your time in arriving,
but you were worth waiting for, my dream.

Our relationship is the best I’ve ever had,
you truly are my soul-mate and the love of my life,
I just wanted to say, “I’m proud of you”,
and very proud to be known as your wife.

Now there’s Wiggy, Wigster, Ziggy and Pinky,
the newest member to the Italiano clan,
Pinky, is Daddy’s favorite baby girl,
but don’t worry, you’re still my favorite man.

And at the risk of our friends and family gagging,
and this is really what these words are for
Happy First Anniversary, Tommy, my Wiggy,
and you’ve already guessed it, Wigster loves you more.
(Copyright A Gift of Poetry 2008)

Allen Jesson writes for several sites that specialize in helping
you to find the perfect Anniversary Gift, or to write a meaningful Anniversary Poem or find a
suitable Wedding Gift

I had to write up a flow diagram the other day for the process I need to follow to get a song/lyric from idea to completion. You might find it useful;

1./ You are walking down the street thinking about nothing in particular. One thought leads to another and suddenly you are struck by what seems to be a great idea. A concept arrives waiting to be fleshed out. This is often called ‘ The Muse’. Any bit of inspiration or muse that passes by is worthy of pursuing. It might come from your walk down the street or it might come from an exercise such as object writing. Object writing is the process of writing from your senses about a particular object/thing/person/place or time, within a set time frame of 5 or ten minutes.

2./ If your great idea has not come from object writing then you need to do some; Find a quiet place to set yourself up with pen and notepad, or word processor if you’re computer inclined. Set a stopwatch or timer, most mobile phones have one these days, and write for 10 minutes on your subject. For example this afternoon I came up with the concept of “losing altitude”. This could be about a relationship running out of steam or taking a dip or going through a period of turbulence, so, the challenge is to get metaphors related to the concept and make them into useable phrases for our song. Here’s some example writing;

Losing altitude, we’re dropping down, my tummy is left up in the sky somewhere. Losing altitude, who’s in control of this plane? I’ve got my hand on the controls, but you keep wrestling them away. While we’re wrestling the plane is going into a dive and we’re losing altitude. The ground is spinning up to meet us, I want to jump out of this plane and be free wheeling on a parachute, pulling my own cords, not be your puppet on a string. etc.

Usually you can find a few choice phrases from your stream of consciousness sense based writing that can be valuable to expand on, which is part 3.

3./ Pick key words or themes from your main idea and find rhymes. I am a great fan of the methods of Pat Pattison of Berklee Music college. In his book Writing Better Lyrics Pat advocates that we not just look for perfect rhymes, but also family rhymes, assonant rhymes and near rhymes. So, from our example we might look at the words altitude, dropping, sky, control, plane, dive, losing, spinning, parachute and cords, to find a database of rhymes we can use.

For “altitude” you might try: solitude, latitude, attitude, unscrewed, voodooed, argued, stewed, mood and feud. Now any of those combinations can open up a world of possibilities,but if you stick ‘on theme’ you might get a coupe of rhyming lines like;

Hey, I know we argued
and you’re in a terrible mood
but, I’m reaching for my parachute, ‘cos , [ I brought in one of the other key words which happened to be a near rhyme]
baby, we’re losing altitude.

Not the greatest prose in the world but a starting point. What about dive? Drive, test-drive, arrive, survive, alive, real-life, jaws of life.

We’re in a nose dive
this isn’t a test-drive
if we’re gonna survive
somebody’s gonna have to go and get the jaws of life.

4./ Once you’ve got a few more ideas flowing try to story board your song and work out if there is a narrative flow. What will each part of the song say? To carry on the example, part one could be; boy and girl are going on holiday they are flying and he thinks that there are problems in the relationship. Part 2 could be the woman’s perspective, what she thinks is wrong. Part 3, a bridge, might be them playing out disaster scenarios, and a final verse might be a happy ending as they are coming in to land at their destination, losing altitude, but in a controlled way. Could this journey be a plan to rekindle the romance?

5./ Rewrite the main idea using new lyrical/rhyming ideas within the story board

6./ If you’re stuck for a rhythmic idea try to extract it from the working title of the song. Our working title of “losing altitude” could be broken up to represent he following; Loo-zing-al-ti-tude or, ta Tum ta ta Tum. Try ta Tum ta ta Tum at different speeds to see what matches the ‘feel’ of the song.

7./ Start speaking out loud some of your rough prose and rhyme to see how it might fit against the rhythm and start trying out melodic ideas

8./Hit the “record” button on your tape recorder or computer and get writing, and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, until you’re done!

For more information on home recording and songwriting visit Paul Warren’s websites ObjectWriting.com and MyHomeRecordingStudio.com

Poetry can be described in so many ways, but one general concept people have about poetry is, it stems from an emotion, an inspiration, or from a particular event in the poets life. Poetry is an art form that uses metaphors to express a certain thought or story.

While telling the tale as it is can be easier understood, poetry is not into expressing one definite meaning, but rather into making the reader think and determine for themselves what the writer may be trying to put forth. The artistic use of words to represent something is else is common in a lot of poetry writing styles and is viewed as the norm by most poetry writers. Poetry, however, is basically indefinable and this may be due to the multiple writing styles available to the art.

People who write poetry for the first time usually write from the top of their heads. This means, once inspiration hits them, they write down whatever they felt during that inspired moment in the simplest possible words that they could use. While this does not make for good poetry writing, this could be very well the base for a good poem.

Like all books and other reading material, poetry can only improve with rereading and some rewriting. Some of your emotions from that inspired moment may have been expressed accurately enough for you, however, to help it transcend into art, some careful scrutiny and deliberation may be needed to further complete your work of art.

While certain words may be accurate enough for the writer in terms of expressing the emotion they are trying to convey, this, however, does not ensure that the poem is good.

Here is where metaphors come into play. You can use certain comparisons to how you feel by pairing them off with things and happenings around you. For example, if you are feeling sad, you do not just write in your poem that you are feeling sad or there is sadness in you.

Try to find a phrase that can encompass what you feel without being too direct so as to leave the rest of the thinking to the imagination of your reader. A good comparison to the word sad would be dark or darkness. Another possible word you can use would be deep or depth.

These two word choices may not be totally negative or describe the word sad if taken all by itself, but combined with a few other words, you can artistically portray the feeling of sadness in your poem.

Not all poems are expressions of sadness and negativity, however, despite there being quite a number of them being created and having been created. This is not surprising since sorrow is a very strong emotion and writing can be quite an outlet for this feeling. Anger, as well, has found an outlet in putting pen to paper, along with confusion and even hate. More positive feelings are also common fodder for the poet, with the astounding number of love poetry that is available making this apparent. Other stronger emotions often used for poetry include happiness, and, well, the other predecessors and by-products of happiness.

Whatever the inspiration a person has for writing a poem or poems, poetry is indeed a literary art form that is, as indefinable as it is, something that a lot of us can do well, with a lot of feeling and some practice.

One of the rather useful tools to better yourself at poetry writing is your basic thesaurus. It offers you quite a few choices in terms of word selection to further express what you feel in your writing.

Chris Kennelly is a writer for our article directory and directory submission services at Article DirectoryFind out more about our top articles on Writing Fiction from ExperiencesArticle Directory Blog

Why not just send your manuscript directly to publishers? Writers ask companies to help them find publishers for their book projects all the time. The business of finding a publisher for your work is a multi-step process.

After your manuscript has been completed, edited, and formatted according to industry standards, the next step is to launch it properly into the world. Our advice–find a reputable agent first. Agents are the interim contact you need to connect your work to a publisher.

Keep in mind that agents do not want to deal with short works such as poetry and short stories. Agents work on commission, and there is no way to support themselves from sales of poetry and short fiction.

The majority of larger publishing houses no longer accept unagented submissions. It may seem a waste of time to query a large number of agents before querying publishers. However, this is a time-consuming, but very necessary, part of the submission process for book manuscripts.

If you want to get a good read, you’ll need an agent. Agents know what editors want. They spend much of their time cultivating relationships with acquisition editors. These are the folks who present books to their publishers for consideration.

Networking with editors is an important part of an agent’s job. Editors are happy to receive good manuscripts from agents. It saves them time.

Good agents will help negotiate a decent contract for you. This is their area of expertise. Publishers are interested in making money and taking care of their needs. Your agent will function as your advocate and make certain you receive a fair deal. If you don’t know about subsidiary rights and escalators, make sure an agent is on your side. Your agent will know which clauses are boilerplate and which may hurt your career. (Some people believe an attorney can replace an agent. Unless your attorney specializes in book contracts, find a good agent.) Because agents work on commission, they are interested in getting you the best deal.

Agents will monitor your royalty statements and help ensure that you receive prompt and proper payment. Most agents are paid 15% commission. A reputable agent should also provide you with copies of all rejection letters.

Do not begin querying agents until your book is complete. Unless you’re famous, agents won’t even read your query unless the book is ready to go. Nonfiction proposals are sometimes the exception to this rule. However, you’ll need to prove you can write the book, not just pitch it.

There are many people who advertise themselves as agents. Generally, they are NOT. Legitimate agents do not drum up business. There are literally tens of thousands of writers approaching a limited number of agents. They’ve got more work than they can handle. Your query packet must be perfect and represent you as a professional. It’s a difficult and time-consuming process, but there is no way around it. Get some professional help. Finding an agent need not be a daunting task.

If an agent requests money from you, run for the hills. Some expenses such as postage and copying costs are to be expected. However, over the years, unscrupulous people posing as literary agents have scammed would-be authors out of lots of money. Sometimes these scams are disguised as “editorial help.” Stay away. An agent should not insist that you have your manuscript doctored before agreeing to represent you.

Your agent should act in partnership with you throughout the publishing process. A good agent offering good advice is a wonderful asset. There is no better way to build your writing career.

Author is a writer for Writer’s Relief, a company that helps creative writers
find the best markets for their work. Writer’s Relief also offers a FREE E-mail
Newsflash for Writers. For more information visit http://www.WritersRelief.com.