by 350.org

Question by Lynn: B & A writers: Drafting-schmafting! Let’s be real, how many drafts do you do?
I’ve read plenty of articles by people who swear no one should do more than three drafts of a novel. They even get cocky and tell how to do that, but the truth is I’m not that smart and I can’t hold that many ideas in my head at once. I can look to kill off as many adverbs as possible. I can look to kill off my over abundance of directional words. (My poor character sit up, sit down, stand up, over, under, off, on and upside down occasionally, so I need to get rid of all those directions. lol) I can even look to get rid of “look” and all the other sensory words that distance the reader from my character. But, darn if I can do all that in one pass. I take 10 passes on one chapter before I get through the list of things I’m weak with, and then I have to make sure all the words are the best words for that spot and the fat is trimmed.

So, I’m on my nth revision. Honest! I have no way of counting what draft I’m on beyond knowing I keep putting the new ones into new folders only after revising the old ones once and then just saving that as the last revision. Right now, I have four versions saved. Considering each version had at least one revision, before I saved it, I know I’m past my 8th revision in two years.

So let’s just skip the “you should be able to polish your novel in three revisions” crap. That’s author talk! That’s stuff multiple-publication authors can spew–the type of writers who can write and polish a novel in less than a year–every year. Most of us are writers more than authors. (True, some have published, but it’s not yet a steady, comfortable income stream, once more the fulltime job, so, even if you’re published–which technically, I am, just not for fiction, nor a full book lol–feel free to chime in.)

But, I’m really asking how many drafts for that first novel?

And, if you have a memory better than mine, do you remember how many for each phase?
Phases:
Phase 1: Get the story down.
Phase 2: Get the story right. (That is make it flow properly, by kicking out the crap and inserting “better” until it flows “naturally.” (Naturally = a pile of crap. This ain’t natural. lol)
Phase 3: Get it looking good to the untrained eye–most readers.
Phase 4: Get it good enough to sell.

I feel for those who think they’re getting their butts kicked after finding out their first draft isn’t very good. I hope this helps them see it’s not supposed to be good–just written. Good comes later. How much later for you?
Travis, yeah, because “experts” always admit how stupid they are. Then again, at least I made a complete thought out of this. You?

David, ooooh, you’re “that guy.” The guy who does get how it can be done in three drafts. Some day, in two or three decades, I hope to be “that guy” too. lol
Ghostwriter, of course you count. Any guesses what draft you’re on for the 20 year old “this is the One” novel? My guess at eight was a guestimate. I’m assuming I’ve done way more than that, but that’s all I can semi-prove. It’s hard when we keep going back, before we even finish a round. You’re doing more, because you’ve committed to learning, before publication. Every time I learn something new, I keep wanting to go back again.

HP, so you’re braver than I am…or more logical…or know what you’re doing more…or all three. Cool! I hope to be like that one day too.
I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one who can’t do it quickly. :D

S ü, Ugh, errr, I’m one of those people who can’t spell right the first time. (I was tempted to use “write” in that less sentence. lol) Grammar check and spell check will catch my problems with your/you’re, but honestly? Half the time I write passed when I mean past, and vice versa. I also go back and catch my your/you’re later, and let’s not get into they’re, there or their. (Then again, that’s one of several reasons no one sees my first draft ever. lol) I also have aphasia, so I accept nontraditional reasons why people might screw up. I’ve been known to write (and say) “why,” when I mean “while.” I know the meanings and know they’re different words, but some times my mind skips that part anyway. ;)

Best answer:

Answer by Travis
What makes u an expert

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Question by : Is a website that lets people list their unwanted gift cards for sale a good idea?
I want to know if this idea could make me a lot of money. To make money on the site, I would charge the seller a small fee once the card was sold on the site. I would also put advertisements up on the site and a subscriber newsletter that could promote affiliate products. If you don’t think this online marketplace for gift cards idea is any good, please tell me how to make A LOT of money online and some of the best online business ideas to try out that could be profitable.

Best answer:

Answer by joe.attaboy
Actually, it’s not really a bad idea. You could also add an exchange option, in case two people wanted to swap cards.

As for online business ideas to make A LOT of money, you just thought of one. There’s no pile of ideas just sitting there waiting. Most inline web businesses are come-ons and scams.

Add your own answer in the comments!

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Video Rating: 4 / 5

Warning: You should know, as useful as this extension is, the slimy developers decided it would be a good idea to auto post a recommendation of the extension to your G+ page the moment you install the extension – without your permission. It will do the same when you connect your twitter/Facebook too. The extension works beautifully but be prepared to delete the autoposts immediately after if you don’t want to spam your friends.

There are a number of extensions and tools out there that attempt to make it easier to cross post between Google+, Facebook and Twitter but perhaps none quite as flexible as Publish sync for Google+ & facebook.

The extension makes it possible to post from either Google+, Facebook, Twitter or Plurk and cross post to all (or just a selection) of the others. It unfortunately doesn’t support Facebook Fan Pages but does support crossposting to specific G+ Circles which is nifty – particularly without a public API.

It currently works seamlessly with text and links; video and images only work when cross posting from Google+. Grab it here. And for more quality Google+ resources check our Mother of All Google+ Resources Lists and this Tumblr.

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Trimit is a clever app for the iPhone, and soon a bookmarklet for your browser, that allows you to take large bits of text that you write or import from a link and shrink them down to fit into a social network update. The concept is clear and applies across the board to many different networks, but I found it best for Tumblr and Facebook.

To shrink some text, you type it in, paste it in or add a link to Trimit [App Store, $ 0.99]. Then you shake your phone or tap the trim button on the app’s toolbar to get a miniaturized version of your text. Most of the time, you’ll end up with a fairly legible, although somewhat number-ridden version of your text. Things like ‘straight’ might be shortened to ‘str8′, for instance, and anything with an acronym gets shortened as well.

This makes your text look a little undignified, but it does make sharing large blocks of text while keeping the main ideas intact fairly easy. The app offers the ability to share to a bunch of different networks, but I found that short messages intended for Twitter didn’t work as well for me. It was large banks of text that ended up working the best. When you only give the app 140 characters to work, you might as well just write your own summary. But if you give it 500-700 for Facebook or Tumblr, it really shined, giving up very pleasant results. It also tends to work just fine sending text in an email or to a text message recipient.

The app is also beautifully and cleverly designed. It gets you started with the meat of the app within seconds, for one. I love apps that get right to the point. There are just four controls for settings, pasting a link that you’d like Trimit to grab, dropping said link into your text for context and the shrink button.

Tap the settings button to drop a pane down to reveal which types of post you want the app to shrink your text to. Holding down on any of the options allows you to toggle Vowels and Abbreviations on and off for each type, that way you can choose to sacrifice coherence for space and vice versa.

Trimit also has a bookmarklet set to drop that will give you features similar to the app, but right in your web browser, you can head over to the website to sign up to be notified when it’s available.

If you post a lot of articles that have a high amount of text content and you like to summarize and provide context, rather than just dump a link into someone’s lap, then Trimit can make your life a lot easier. If you’re a punctuation, spelling and grammar purist then I don’t think even leaving vowels in is going to make you like the way the text looks much though. If, however, you’re not as concerned with the fidelity of the syntax, and more concerned with getting the point across with as few characters as possible, I’d definitely recommend that you check Trimit out.

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I may have just found gorgeous font replacements for The Next Web after just thirty seconds of trying this new tool from Font Shop.

FontFonter lets you test out 40 font alternatives on any website on the fly. Just type in the URL you’d like to test the new fonts out on and you’re set. You’re also able to select whether you’d like to replace all Serifs with Sans Serifs or the opposite.

Check out how The Next Web turned out below with the first set of alternatives fonts provided. I’m sold. Try FontFonter here.

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People using Facebook in work is a huge problem for employers and some go as far as banning it completely for all their employees in a fruitless bid to increase productivity. Well a new app from Diesel is seeking to solve that problem and allow you to access Facebook all day long without anybody being the wiser that you are social networking instead of working on tiresome documents.

The app hooks up to your Facebook account using Facebook connect and you can start updating your status, liking content and chatting with your friends all from what looks like an excel spreadsheet to the outside world. Their campaign is all about making work more fun and although employers are not going to like this you have to take your hat off to Diesel for coming up with a great concept that is sure to get some serious buzz online in the coming days. Excel spreadsheets have never been this fun. Introducing Excelbook…

Connect Your Account

This is essentially a desktop app so the first thing you will have to do is head over to the site and download it for either PC or Mac. Once it launches the app will prompt you to log in with your Facebook account and ask you to pull information from your account.

Update Status And Interact With Friends

Once you have logged into the app it looks to all intents and purposes that you are using an excel spreadsheet and carrying out serious work. All your Facebook status updates and messages from your friends display within the columns and you can even flick between the wall, chat and the news feed. It’s not the full Facebook experience but you can always click on the links which will open up in a new window and you can do simple things like update your status and reply to friends from within the spreadsheet.

Genius Marketing

All of this is carried out by Diesel in a bid to make work more fun and you can see the campaign site here. It’s a cool little app that will get people talking and some people might use it but it’s more about making a bit of noise around the launch of the campaign and for the relatively small cost of developing a simple app it is something that will get massive coverage because of it’s connections to Facebook. Hats off to Diesel on this one.

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