What If . . . ? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for May

May already? How did that happen?

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

What if…

1. clouds sometimes crashed to earth, causing flooding and destruction?

2. there really was a ‘time’ bomb?

3. failing to keep a secret was a crime?

4. you kept putting off a difficult decision until it was too late?

5. you asked a hundred people and got a hundred different answers?

6. people underestimated your intelligence?

7. the proof was overwhelming?

8. you thought the punishment was too severe?

9. you never used your real name?

10. you needed to be alone?

- – - – - – -

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2013, 2014 (plus all future editions) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas (contains 4,400 what ifs), our complete 5,000+ collection of writing ideas, How to Win Short Story Competitions, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software (writing engines), and more…
(total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

(It’s always) competition time!

Did you know there are always at least 300 short story writing competitions going on at any one time? It’s true! You can find most of them listed at Sally Quilford’s Writing Calendar.

But what you really want to know is how to win them.

As it’s my birthday this month I’ve very generously slashed the price of How to Win Short Story Competitions, so it’s now just £1.65 in PDF format (which is also printable), and slightly less than that for the Kindle version. (For our American readers that’s about $2.66.) The price goes back up again on 1st June, so don’t miss out – and don’t forget to tell your friends.

(The Kindle version can of course be read on other devices too, including PC, Apple Mac, iPad, iPhone, and most other smart phones and tablets – you just need to install Amazon’s free Kindle App.)

Here are some reviews:

“This book delivers more than its title promises. I read it to find out if I wanted to pursue short story contests … but I also found some real gems for improving my writing and chances of being published.”
– Summa Nulla

“Written in conversational style, this book for me is like having a private lesson with two experts in the field. Easy to follow and understand. It contains very useful inside information for anyone wanting to enter (and win!) short story competitions. It is divided into easily absorbed chunks and I would say it covers just about everything one would need to know on the subject.”
– AM Jones

“The marking scheme for short story competitions opened my eyes and it will definitely change my approach when I plan a story in the future. Lots of fantastic information packed into a quick and easy read. Highly recommended.”
– D Wilkinson

Here are the links you need:

PDF version from ideas4writers
Kindle version from Amazon.co.uk
Kindle version from Amazon.com

I’m currently working on an idea for a “secret book project” that I might tell you more about in two weeks’ time! (I’m pretty sure it’s never been done before.)

Kindest regards,
Dave

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in October 2013 for you to write about (and make money from!)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in October 2013 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

This list is a small sample of the entries for October in  The Date-A-Base Book 2013. There are more than 340 anniversaries for this month in the book. The book covers the whole of 2013 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries.

The 2014 edition is also available.

250 years ago (7 Oct 1763)
King George III issued a Royal Proclamation which organised Britain’s North American Empire and its relations with Native North Americans

200 years ago (10 Oct 1813)
Birth of Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer, known for his operas including ‘Rigoletto’, ‘La Traviata’, ‘Aida’, ‘Otello’, and for his ‘Requiem Mass’

200 years ago (16-19 Oct 1813)
War of the Sixth Coalition – the Battle of Leipzig (Saxony, Germany); Coalition victory – the largest battle in Europe before WWI, and one of Napoleon’s worst defeats

175 years ago (25 Oct 1838)
Birth of Georges Bizet, French composer, best known for his opera ‘Carmen’

150 years ago (3 Oct 1863)
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation which designated the last Thursday in November 1863 as Thanksgiving Day. It has been celebrated annually ever since

150 years ago (16 Oct 1863)
American Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant (later U.S. President) was given command of all the Union armies in the Western Theatre of the war

150 years ago (26 Oct 1863)
The Football Association (FA) was founded in England

150 years ago (29 Oct 1863)
The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in Geneva, Switzerland

125 years ago (1 Oct 1888)
The first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published in the USA. (First issue was dated October 1888, but was on sale from 22nd Sept)

125 years ago (9 Oct 1888)
The Washington Monument in Washington D.C., USA was opened

100 years ago (3 Oct 1913)
The Revenue Act was signed into law in the USA, following the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It made the federal income tax a permanent part of the U.S. taxation system

100 years ago (10 Oct 1913)
Death of Adolphus Busch, German-born American brewer; co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, one of the world’s largest breweries

100 years ago (14 Oct 1913)
Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, Cardiff, Wales – the worst mining accident in the UK; 439 miners were killed in a methane and coal dust explosion

100 years ago (20 Oct 1913)
Birth of Grandpa Jones, American country music singer and banjo player; a member of the Grand Ole Opry and a regular cast member on the long-running TV series ‘Hee Haw’

100 years ago (24 Oct 1913)
Birth of Tito Gobbi, Italian operatic baritone

100 years ago (31 Oct 1913)
The Lincoln Highway was officially opened. It was the first paved coast-to-coast road across the USA

90 years ago (16 Oct 1923)
The Walt Disney Company was founded by Walt and Roy Disney (as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio)

90 years ago (29 Oct 1923)
The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as its first president

80 years ago (7 Oct 1933)
Air France was founded

80 years ago (24 Oct 1933)
Birth of Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the Kray twins, notorious British gangsters who ruled the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s

75 years ago (1 Oct 1938)
German forces took control of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, which Hitler had annexed under the Munich Agreement

75 years ago (3 Oct 1938)
Birth of Eddie Cochran, American rock and roll singer, songwriter and guitarist, known for the songs ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘C’mon Everybody’ and ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ (released posthumously). (Died 1960)

75 years ago (5 Oct 1938)
Nazi Germany ordered that the passports of all German and Austrian Jews must be stamped with the letter ‘J’

75 years ago (15 Oct 1938)
Birth of Fela Kuti, Nigerian singer, songwriter, musician and political activist; founder of the Afro-beat style of music. (Died 1997)

75 years ago (16 Oct 1938)
Birth of Nico, German model, singer and actress, known for her association with The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol. (Died 1988)

75 years ago (17 Oct 1938)
Birth of Evel Knievel, American motorcycle daredevil. (Died 2007)

75 years ago (22 Oct 1938)
American patent attorney and amateur inventor Chester Carlson invented the photocopier and made the world’s first xerographic copy

75 years ago (27 Oct 1938)
DuPont announced the invention of nylon, a synthetic yarn

75 years ago (30 Oct 1938)
Orson Welles’s radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s ‘The War of the Worlds’ was broadcast in the USA. It caused nationwide outrage and panic as many people thought the events described in the broadcast were real

70 years ago (13 Oct 1943)
World War II: Italy declared war on Germany, its former Axis partner

60 years ago (22 Oct 1953)
Laos gained its independence from France

50 years ago (1 Oct 1963)
Nigeria became a federal republic; Nnamdi Azikiwe was its first president

50 years ago (11 Oct 1963)
Death of Jean Cocteau, French poet, novelist, playwright, actor, artist and film director

50 years ago (11 Oct 1963)
Death of Édith Piaf, popular French singer and cultural icon, known for her songs ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ and ‘La Vie en Rose’

50 years ago (18 Oct 1963)
British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan resigned due to ill health and was succeeded by Alec Douglas-Home

40 years ago (6-25 Oct 1973)
The Yom Kippur War. Egypt and Syria attempted to take back land occupied by Israel, adjacent to the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. A tactical victory for Israel, leading to the Geneva Conference in December

40 years ago (10 Oct 1973)
U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with tax evasion; he was succeeded by Gerald Ford

40 years ago (19 Oct – 17 Mar 1973)
1973 Oil Crisis – OPEC suspended oil exports to all nations supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War, leading to major shortages and rationing in the USA, the Netherlands, Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa

40 years ago (20 Oct 1973)
Sydney Opera House in Australia was opened by Queen Elizabeth II

30 years ago (25 Oct 1983)
Operation Urgent Fury: U.S. troops invaded Grenada to restore order and democracy after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was killed in a left-wing coup

25 years ago (1 Oct 1988)
Mikhail Gorbachev became President of the Soviet Union

25 years ago (2 Oct 1988)
Death of Sir Alec Issigonis, Turkish-born British car designer, best known for developing the Mini and the Morris Minor

25 years ago (9 Oct 1988)
Death of Felix Wankel, German mechanical engineer, inventor of the Wankel rotary engine

25 years ago (12 Oct 1988)
Steve Jobs launched the NeXT computer, 3 years after being ousted from Apple. (Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, used a NeXT computer to develop the first web server and web browser)

25 years ago (13 Oct 1988)
The results of carbon-dating tests on the Shroud of Turin were announced. The relic, believed by many to be Christ’s burial cloth, was dated to between 1260 and 1390 AD, and was therefore considered a fake

25 years ago (21 Oct 1988)
Former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges of fraud and racketeering

25 years ago (27 Oct 1988)
Death of Charles Hawtrey, British comedy actor, best known for his roles in the ‘Carry On …’ series of films

20 years ago (4 Oct 1993)
Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks to storm the parliament building, crushing a hardline Communist rebellion

20 years ago (8 Oct 1993)
The United Nations General Assembly lifted economic sanctions against South Africa as the apartheid era came to an end

10 years ago (15 Oct 2003)
China launched its first manned spacecraft ‘Shenzhou 5′. Astronaut Yang Liwei orbited the Earth 14 times and landed safely in Inner Mongolia

- – - – - – -

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2013 and 2014  (plus all future editions) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, How to Win Short Story Competitions, our complete collection of 5,000+ writing ideas, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software (writing engines), and more. (Total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

What If . . . ? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for April

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

What if…

1. you were always in a party mood?

2. you never took risks?

3. your best was just not good enough?

4. you found out who your real friends were?

5. your exam results got mixed up with someone else’s?

6. you couldn’t tell which was real and which was fake?

7. it would take a miracle to save you?

8. you decided to stop before things went too far?

9. the Moon was actually an enormous egg?

10. keeping secrets was illegal?

- – - – - – -

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2013, 2014 (plus all future editions) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas (contains 4,400 what ifs), our complete 5,000+ collection of writing ideas, How to Win Short Story Competitions, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software (writing engines), and more…
(total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

A few bits and pieces

I’ve often recommended Google Reader as a way of keeping up-to-date with the ever-changing information on websites. I’ve mentioned it in several of my books too. The thing is, whenever I recommend something useful the powers that be tend have a tendency to kill it off – and such is the case this time. Google have decided to terminate Reader from 1st July. What madness!

Fortunately there are several alternatives, and the best one I’ve found is Feedly.com. Even better, you can sign into it using your Google Reader account (just click a button to allow it – there’s no need to enter your details) and it automatically sets up your Feedly account and copies everything across from Google Reader. It’s more flexible than Google Reader too, so I’m more than happy. (I’m less happy about having to update all the books I’ve mentioned Google Reader in, but at least there’s something decent to replace it with.) Obviously, if you don’t have a Google Reader account you can set up a new one on Feedly and use it to subscribe to all the websites you want to keep tabs on – such as the ideas4writers blog!

- – -

I’ve been out of action for the last couple of weeks, getting over a virus. I haven’t felt like doing any writing (which is definitely a sign of ill health), and I gave up watching TV at Christmas (for the simple reason that there’s nothing on worth watching). With nothing but reading and Facebook games to fill my time, I decided to try something more productive – so I’ve been learning Chinese.

I like to take on a seemingly impossible challenge every now and again, and learning Chinese has always seemed utterly impossible to me. But a website called Memrise makes it quite easy and fun – and quite a lot like playing a game. (You can even compete against your friends to get to the top of the leaderboard). Unlike the usual games though, this one actually has a purpose.

There are plenty of other subjects and languages you can learn on the Memrise site. I’ve also been learning how to memorise a deck of playing cards. (I haven’t tried it in real life yet, but I’m pretty sure I could do it now. If only I could find a deck of cards…)

- – -

A quick reminder that all our books are now available on Kindle. Just go to Amazon’s website and enter ideas4writers in the search box to see the full list. You”ll find all 35 books from our writing ideas collection, plus The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, The Date-A-Base Book 2014, and How to Win Short Story Competitions. We’ll be adding The Date-A-Base Book 2013 this week, and The Fastest Way to Write Your Book (2nd ed) should be released in about a month.

All of these books are also available in PDF format from the ideas4writers website, and The Date-A-Base Books are also available as printed copies (though the 2013 edition is almost sold out). Printed copies of the other books will be available later in the year.

- – -

How to keep in touch:

Leave a comment on the ideas4writers blog
Send us an email
Visit our website
Join our Facebook group
Follow us on Twitter

ideas4writers – inspiring you since 2002!

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in September 2013 for you to write about (and make money from!)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in September 2013 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

This list is a small sample of the entries for September in  The Date-A-Base Book 2013. There are more than 340 anniversaries for this month in the book.

The Date-A-Base Book 2013 covers the whole of 2013 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries.

The 2014 edition is also available.

500 years ago (9 Sep 1513)
War of the League of Cambrai – the Battle of Flodden Field, Northumberland, England; the English defeated the Scottish invaders. King James IV of Scotland was killed in the battle

500 years ago (25 Sep 1513)
Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa and his team became the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean. (They reached the ocean on 29th Sept and named it the South Sea)

200 years ago (12 Sep 1813)
Death of Edmund Randolph, American lawyer, Governor of Virginia, U.S. Secretary of State, and the first U.S. Attorney General

200 years ago (13 Sep 1813)
Birth of Daniel MacMillan, Scottish bookseller and publisher; co-founded Macmillan Publishers Ltd with his brother Alexander

150 years ago (13 Sep 1863)
Birth of Arthur Henderson, British politician; one of the key founders of the Labour Party, and its leader on 3 occasions; winner of the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on disarmament

150 years ago (19-20 Sep 1863)
American Civil War – the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia; Confederate victory. This was the most significant Union defeat in the Western Theatre of the war, and had the second-highest number of casualties in the war after the Battle of Gettysburg

150 years ago (20 Sep 1863)
Death of Jacob Grimm, German folklorist, philologist and writer of folk songs and fairy tales with his brother Wilhelm (‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’)

150 years ago (23 Sep 1863)
Birth of Mary Church Terrell, American civil rights and women’s suffrage activist and educator; co-founder and first president of the National Associated of Colored Women; charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; one of the first African American women to earn a college degree

125 years ago (8 Sep 1888)
The first matches in the English Football League were played

100 years ago (2 Sep 1913)
Birth of Bill Shankly, Scottish football player and manager, best known as the manager of Liverpool F.C. (1959-74); one of the most successful and respected managers in the history of British football

100 years ago (3 Sep 1913)
Birth of Alan Ladd, American film actor, best known for playing cowboys, detectives and war heroes; films include ‘Shane’ and ‘The Carpetbaggers’

100 years ago (7 Sep 1913)
Birth of Sir Anthony Quayle, British stage and film actor and director

100 years ago (11 Sep 1913)
Birth of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, American football coach

100 years ago (12 Sep 1913)
Birth of Jesse Owens, American track-and-field athlete, best known for his legendary performance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin

100 years ago (28 Sep 1913)
Birth of Ellis Peters (pen name of Edith Pargeter), British novelist, best known for her murder mysteries and historical fiction, particularly the ‘Cadfael’ series of novels, many of which were adapted for television

100 years ago (29 Sep 1913)
Birth of Trevor Howard, award-winning British stage, film and television actor (‘Brief Encounter’, ‘The Third Man’, ‘Sons and Lovers’, ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, ‘Gandhi’, and others)

100 years ago (29 Sep 1913)
Death of Rudolf Diesel, French-born German engineer who invented the diesel engine. (Died at sea in mysterious circumstances)

90 years ago (7 Sep 1923)
Interpol was founded

90 years ago (28 Sep 1923)
The British TV/radio listings magazine ‘Radio Times’ was first published

80 years ago (1 Sep 1933)
H. G. Wells’s classic novel ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ was published

80 years ago (6 Sep 1933)
Cuban president Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was forced out of office by military leader Fulgencio Batista. Ramón Grau was installed as President. (Batista became President himself in 1940)

75 years ago (10 Sep 1938)
Death of Charles Cruft, British founder of Crufts dog show

75 years ago (15 Sep 1938)
Death of Thomas Wolfe, important American writer, known for his autobiographical novels, particularly ‘Look Homeward, Angel’

75 years ago (21 Sep 1938)
The Great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island, New York, then headed into the New England states, causing widespread damage and killing more than 600 people

75 years ago (28 Sep 1938)
Death of Charles Duryea, American car pioneer, invented (with his brother Frank) one of the first cars to be built in the USA, and founded the Duryea Motor Wagon Company to manufacture it commercially

75 years ago (30 Sep 1938)
Britain, France, Nazi Germany and Italy signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia

70 years ago (8 Sep 1943)
World War II: Italy’s surrender to the Allies was announced. (They had already signed an armistice agreement in secret on 3rd Sept)

70 years ago (12 Sep 1943)
World War II – Operation Oak: German commandos, acting on Hitler’s orders, rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was being held prisoner in Gran Sasso, Italy. They took him to Munich. On 23rd Sep he established the Italian Social Republic (also known as the Salò Republic) as a puppet state of Nazi Germany. (Ended April 1945)

65 years ago (9 Sep 1948)
The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was established, headed by Kim Il Sung

65 years ago (20 Sep 1948)
The Morris Minor motor car was launched

65 years ago (24 Sep 1948)
The Honda Motor Company was founded

60 years ago (14 Sep 1953)
Nikita Khrushchev became leader of the Soviet Union

60 years ago (28 Sep 1953)
Death of Edwin Hubble, important American astronomer who confirmed the existence of other galaxies and discovered the degree of red shift of stars that are accelerating away from Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope is named in his honour, as is an asteroid and a crater on the Moon

50 years ago (7 Sep 1963)
The Pro Football Hall of Fame opened in Canton, Ohio, USA

50 years ago (16 Sep 1963)
Malaysia was founded when Malaya united with Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. (Singapore was expelled in 1965)

50 years ago (30 Sep – 12 Oct 1963)
Hurricane Flora killed over 7,000 people in the Carribbean – one of the deadliest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded

40 years ago (2 Sep 1973)
Death of J. R. R. Tolkien, British fantasy writer, poet, scholar and educator, best known for his novels ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’

40 years ago (11 Sep 1973)
General Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile in a military coup, overthrowing President Salvador Allende who apparently immediately committed suicide. (Some claim he was killed and the suicide was staged)

40 years ago (29 Sep 1973)
Death of W. H. Auden, British-born American poet, regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century

30 years ago (19 Sep 1983)
Saint Kitts and Nevis became independent from the UK

30 years ago (29 Sep 1983)
Microsoft Word 1.0 released – the 1st version of the popular word processor

25 years ago (10-19 Sep 1988)
Hurricane Gilbert killed 433 people and caused $7.1 billion worth of damage in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico

25 years ago (20 Sep 1988)
Death of Roy Kinnear, British comedy actor

25 years ago (29 Sep 1988)
Death of Charles Addams, American cartoonist known for his macabre humour, creator of ‘The Addams Family’

20 years ago (10 Sep 1993)
The first episode of the science fiction TV series ‘The X-Files’ was broadcast in the USA

10 years ago (9 Sep 2003)
Death of Edward Teller, Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist, known as ‘the father of the H-bomb’

10 years ago (11 Sep 2003)
Death of Anna Lindh, Swedish politician, Minister for Foreign Affairs (1998-2003). (Assassinated)

10 years ago (12 Sep 2003)
Death of Johnny Cash, legendary American country music/rock and roll singer, songwriter and guitarist

10 years ago (26 Sep 2003)
Death of Robert Palmer, Grammy Award-winning British rock/pop/soul singer and songwriter, best known for the songs ‘Addicted to Love’ and ‘Simply Irresistible’; also a member of the supergroup Power Station

10 years ago (30 Sep 2003)
Death of Robert Kardashian, American lawyer, best known for defending O.J. Simpson at his 1995 murder trial. Father of the socialites Kim, Khloé, Kourtney and Rob Kardashian

- – - – - – -

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2013 and 2014  (plus all future editions) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, our complete 5,000+ collection of writing ideas, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive writing software, and more. (Total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

What If . . . ? 10 Creative Writing Prompts for March

Here’s this month’s selection of “What If…?” creative writing prompts to inspire you – let’s see what you can do with these!

What if…

1. death was something to celebrate?

2. you never met your children?

3. you knew the results of sporting events before they took place?

4. your car decided where you would be going on each journey, not you?

5. people felt obliged to keep you happy?

6. you were determined to be anonymous?

7. your clothing was unsuitable?

8. you faked the report?

9. you made sure you broke the law at least once every day?

10. you went beyond your personal limit?

- – - – - – -

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers for just £49.95 (or the equivalent in your local currency) and you’ll receive The Date-A-Base Books for 2013, 2014 (plus all future editions) as well as The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas (contains 4,400 what ifs), our complete 5,000+ collection of writing ideas, unlimited use of our forums and exclusive online writing software (writing engines)
(total value: over £150!)
Click here for full details

ideas4writers: inspiring you since 2002!

Speed-writing: reader contributions wanted

Calling all fans of writing books really fast: The Fastest Way to Write Your Book (2nd edition) is just a few weeks away. How would you like to be in it?

We’re looking for any new techniques you might have come up with (or come across elsewhere) that weren’t included in the first edition.

We’re looking for techniques that will speed up each stage of the book-creating process (fiction, non-fiction or both):

• coming up with ideas and evaluating and expanding them
• carrying out research
• organising, planning and outlining
• writing
• finding more time to write
• editing
• getting published (in all its many forms)
• publicising/marketing and selling your finished book

If you’ve come across a technique that wasn’t in the original book, please send it in to us (mail@ideas4writers.co.uk). We’ll put the best contributions in the new edition and mention your name. (If you’re sending in a technique you found elsewhere, please tell us where you found it or who created it.)

If you’ve used the technique yourself, it would be fantastic if you could also tell us how well it worked for you.

All contributions must be received by 15th March 2013.

Thanks!

The Date-A-Base Book 2014 now on Kindle

Hello! How is your writing going this week?

We’re continuing our mission to make all our books available on Kindle, and the latest one is now done: The Date-A-Base Book 2014. (Over 2,650 newsworthy and notable anniversaries in 2014 for you to write about and make money from.) Do you like the new cover?

I’m not completely convinced that the Kindle is the best format for this book – in my opinion it looks much better on a bigger screen with its proper A4/Letter-size layout. But the Kindle is a huge market and we can’t ignore it. So we’ve got a special deal for you: if you buy the Kindle version and email us a copy of your receipt from Amazon we’ll send you the full PDF version as a gift.

[TIP 1] If you use Amazon’s Look Inside feature or download the preview you’ll see the complete set of anniversaries for January 2014, plus the first couple of pages for February.

[TIP 2] The Kindle edition is 25% cheaper than we sell the PDF edition for. So if you want the PDF version at a discount price, buy the Kindle edition and then send us your receipt.

[TIP 3] If you don’t have a Kindle just install the free Kindle app/software on whatever computer, smartphone, tablet, etc you use. Amazon will then recognize that you have a way of reading Kindle books and let you order The Date-A-Base Book 2014, and then you can send us your receipt to get the PDF version.

Here are all the links you need:

The Date-A-Base Book 2014 (Kindle edition):
Amazon UK, USA, Canada

The Date-A-Base Book 2014 (PDF or printed edition): ideas4writers.

Kindle software/apps from Amazon.

If you’d like to see the complete list of our books on Kindle simply enter ideas4writers in Amazon’s search box. It should come up with 38 books, including our entire ideas collection (35 volumes), The Date-A-Base Book 2014, The Fastest Way to Get Ideas, and How to Win Short Story Competitions.

[COMING SOON] The Date-A-Base Book 2013 Kindle edition will be added this week (the PDF or printed editions are already available here). And look out for The Fastest Way to Write Your Book (2nd edition) in April. (Yes, we do keep ourselves busy.)

See you next week!

50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in August 2013 for you to write about (and make money from!)

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in August 2013 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time for research and writing.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

This list is a small sample of the entries for August in  The Date-A-Base Book 2013. There are more than 290 anniversaries for this month in the book.

The Date-A-Base Book 2013 covers the whole of 2013 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries.

The 2014 edition is also available.

200 years ago (11 Aug 1813)
Death of Henry James Pye, British Poet Laureate (1790-1813)

175 years ago (1 Aug 1838)
Slavery was abolished in most of the British Empire

150 years ago (1 Aug 1863)
Birth of Gaston Doumergue, President of France (1924-31)

150 years ago (3 Aug 1863)
Saratoga Race Course opened in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA. It is the oldest organised sporting venue in the USA

150 years ago (11 Aug 1863)
Cambodia became a French protectorate

125 years ago (13 Aug 1888)
Birth of John Logie Baird, Scottish engineer who invented the first practical television system

125 years ago (15/16 Aug 1888)
Birth of T. E. Lawrence, (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), British Army officer, military strategist, archaeologist and writer, best known for his activities in the Middle East during WWI and for his autobiographical account ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’

125 years ago (16 Aug 1888)
Death of John Pemberton, American pharmacist, inventor of Coca-Cola

125 years ago (21 Aug 1888)
American inventor William Seward Burroughs was granted a patent for the first adding machine

125 years ago (31 Aug 1888)
The mutilated body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim, Mary Ann (‘Polly’) Nichols, was found in Whitechapel, east London

100 years ago (7 Aug 1913)
Death of Samuel Cody, American aviation pioneer; killed while test-flying a prototype aircraft over southern England when it broke up in the air

100 years ago (13 Aug 1913)
British chemist and metallurgist Harry Brearley produced the first stainless steel

100 years ago (13 Aug 1913)
Birth of Fred Davis, British world snooker and billiards champion

100 years ago (16 Aug 1913)
Birth of Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel (1977-83), joint winner of the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize

100 years ago (28 Aug 1913)
The Peace Palace opened in The Hague, the Netherlands. It is home to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, and other organisations

100 years ago (31 Aug 1913)
The Dutch football club PSV Eindhoven was founded

90 years ago (2 Aug 1923)
Death of Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States; succeeded the following day by Calvin Coolidge

90 years ago (20 Aug 1923)
The USA’s first rigid airship, the ‘USS Shenandoah’, was launched at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey

75 years ago (18 Aug 1938)
The Thousand Islands Bridge was officially opened; it spans the St. Lawrence River, connecting New York State, USA with Ontario, Canada

75 years ago (30 Aug 1938)
Death of Max Factor, Sr., pioneering Polish-born American make-up artist and businessman who founded the Max Factor cosmetics company

65 years ago (15 Aug 1948)
The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was formally established

65 years ago (16 Aug 1948)
Death of Babe Ruth, America’s most-celebrated baseball player

65 years ago (23 Aug 1948)
The World Council of Churches was founded

60 years ago (12 Aug 1953)
The Soviet Union tested its first thermonuclear bomb ‘Joe 4′ in Kazakhstan

50 years ago (8 Aug 1963)
The Great Train Robbery, Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, England. £2.6 million was stolen in one of the UK’s most infamous robberies; the bulk of the money was never recovered

50 years ago (22 Aug 1963)
Death of William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, British industrialist and philanthropist; founded Morris Motors Ltd, the first British car manufacturer to adopt the mass production techniques developed by Ford

50 years ago (28 Aug 1963)
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., USA during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – a civil rights rally attended by approximately 200,000 supporters

50 years ago (30 Aug 1963)
The hotline between the President of the USA and the leader of the Soviet Union went into operation, allowing them to communicate easily during a crisis. (It was first used in 1967 during the Egypt–Israel War)

40 years ago (6 Aug 1973)
Death of Fulgencio Batista, President/dictator of Cuba (1933-44, 1952-59)

40 years ago (11 Aug 1973)
Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc invented the genre of music now known as hip-hop at a back-to-school party in The Bronx, New York City, USA

40 years ago (14 Aug 1973)
The USA ended its bombing of Cambodia

30 years ago (3 Aug 1983)
Death of Carolyn Jones, American film and television actress, best known for playing Morticia in the TV series ‘The Addams Family’

30 years ago (5 Aug 1983)
22 members of the IRA were jailed for a total of more than 4,000 years in one of Northern Ireland’s biggest ‘supergrass’ mass trials

30 years ago (17 Aug 1983)
Death of Ira Gershwin, award-winning American lyricist, best known for the Broadway shows and memorable songs he wrote with his brother, the composer George Gershwin. He also worked with other composers

30 years ago (18 Aug 1983)
Hurricane Alicia hit the coast of Texas, USA, killing 22 people and causing more than $1 billion worth of damage

30 years ago (21 Aug 1983)
Death of Benigno Aquino, Jr., Philippines opposition leader, husband of Corazon Aquino who later became President. (Assassinated)

30 years ago (30 Aug 1983)
Guion S. Bluford, Jr. became the first African American in space, as a crew member on the U.S. space shuttle Challenger

25 years ago (2 Aug 1988)
Death of Raymond Carver, major American short story writer and poet. There was great controversy after his death regarding the drastic changes his editor had made to many of his works

25 years ago (11 Aug 1988)
The terrorist organisation al-Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden

25 years ago (14 Aug 1988)
Death of Enzo Ferrari, Italian racing driver, car manufacturer and designer; founder of the Ferrari sports car company and the Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team

25 years ago (20 Aug 1988)
The Iran-Iraq War ended after nearly 8 years

20 years ago (3 Aug 1993)
Apple Computer launched the Newton MessagePad personal digital assistant (PDA) in the USA. It was not a commercial success due to its short battery life and highly criticised handwriting recognition

15 years ago (31 Aug 1998)
North Korea allegedly launched its first satellite ‘Kwangmyongsong’ and declared that it had been successfully placed in orbit. (Officials outside North Korea have never detected this satellite in orbit, and the launch is considered to have failed)

10 years ago (1 Aug 2003)
The Hutton Inquiry began in the UK to investigate the death of Dr David Kelly, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. (At the end of the inquiry in January 2004, the BBC’s chairman and director-general both resigned)

10 years ago (2 Aug 2003)
Death of Don Estelle, British actor and singer, best known for his role as Lofty in the TV sitcom ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’

10 years ago (10 Aug 2003)
The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK: 38.5^oC (101.3^oF) in Faversham, Kent

10 years ago (10 Aug 2003)
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko became the first person to get married in space. He was aboard the International Space Station and married Ekaterina Dmitrieva via a teleconference from Texas, USA

10 years ago (16 Aug 2003)
Death of Idi Amin, President/dictator of Uganda (1971-79), noted for the brutality of his regime

10 years ago (22 Aug 2003)
Libya paid $2.7 billion compensation to the families of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie airliner bombing in 1988. ($10 million per victim)

10 years ago (30 Aug 2003)
Death of Charles Bronson, award-winning American film and television actor, best known for his tough-guy roles (‘The Magnificent Seven’, ‘The Great Escape’, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, ‘Death Wish’, and others)

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