Originally from Suite101 University, a free ecourse posted a few years ago. I've saved the information here because there is a lot worth keeping and I don't know what will happen to all of it now that Suite101 is closing this area of their site.

Writing Editorials

By Jason Reeher

Introduction

Welcome to the Suite University course on writing newspaper editorials. In this course, you can learn effective techniques for writing letters to the editor, then submit your opinions to everything from your local newspaper to national publications. Valuable for anyone interested in public affairs, current events, and pop-culture, this course will help the student to develop a writing interest, as well as hone argumentative and persuasive writing skills. This course is great for beginning writers, as well as those interested in scientific disciplinary writing, print journalism, editorial processes, and public policy discourse. Writing newspaper opinions is a great way to gain expression for your writing. With relatively little time invested, you can learn to produce concise, effective and persuasive editorials on a regular basis. Perhaps the most exciting element is that YOU can choose your subject based upon public interest and current relevancy. By learning what subjects are most important to your target community, whether it’s local property taxes or “American Idol,” you become part of the public discourse when your opinion is published. This course can help you get there. …more

SuiteU is closing and will disappear soon. There is a lot of great content there. People who wrote the courses put a lot into them. It's a shame for them to just disappear. Here is the free ecourse for Horror Literature. I'd like to write horror but so far it all starts out all wrong for me. I need a new way to write it.

Horror Literature By Catherine Bitzer

Introduction

Welcome to the lair of horror literature! Dark minds over centuries have scared the wits out of their readers by harping on our most subconscious of fears. Below is a description of what you might expect to find in the course.

FEARS: CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Fear, the greatest ally of horror literature, has had a home in the human heart since the beginning of time. According to H.P. Lovecraft, a horror fiction master whom you will learn more about in the course, said that fear is the oldest and deepest emotion of humankind. And he is right.

Consider for example your childhood. Were you afraid? What were you afraid of? Abandonment? The death of your parents? These are the two greatest childhood fears. …more

Long before the Internet people used the mail service as a cheap way to protect and establish their copyrights for written material. You just make a copy of your work and mail it to yourself. If you keep the envelope sealed you have a preserved copy of your work, dated by Canada Post (insert the name of the postal service in your location).  It was a cheap and fairly good way to prove your work was your own original work.

Now we have the Internet. Publishing online is risky if you want to control your written work, your words. Copyrights are in battle with artists, governments, corporations and the public all pulling in their own directions. Each group has their own agenda and all too often they don't really seem to listen to each other. At times they actually want the same thing and yet, can't see it.

Anyway, today I found a link to MyFreeCopyright.com on a blog by Veronica The Pajama Thief. I have seen it before but today I clicked the link and went for a visit.

I thought it was funny how the basis of the copyright plan was following the traditional idea of mailing your work to yourself. Something so old is still around, just in an updated version for the digital age.

This could work for most people. You would have something to show for the date your work was created. It would be using a service not of your own making to prove the date.

However, it doesn't really do anything to control your written work online. It's still out there, waving around like laundry on a clothes line. Anyone can still come along and take what they want. Publishing online is still reliant on the honour system, old fashioned trust and good will.

Is it frustrating? Yes. Is it worth steaming and stewing about? Not really. As individual artists we just don't have the resources to do a lot about it. I have had my work taken. I've even had my ASCII Art taken and claimed to be created by the person who took it. I only know about that because she was silly and posted it to the ASCII art newsgroup as her own. I was active in that group. Everyone that mattered knew I had created the work. She looked like a fool. So, in that case I had my petty revenge and the thief did admit what she had done. From that I learned to stop focusing on controlling my work online. Once I put it out there it really is available, fully and completely. I just have to do what I can to protect it, which isn't much.

I would like to see the copyright laws made to protect artist's work online. But, I can't see it really happening for us. For the corporations... yes. The music industry, the film industry... etc. those will be protected, as an industry. As individuals... I think we really just have ourselves and an old fashioned reliance on the honour system, good will and trust. Maybe a touch of karma, now and then.

Condensing your idea into a few words has a way of giving you focus. So if you #TweetyourThesis on Twitter, with its limit of 140 characters (including spaces), should show you what you really are trying to write your thesis about.

If it works for a thesis, why not any non-fiction you are working on? If you can't pin down your focus or if you have wandered away from it, get back on track by putting your idea into a Twitter post. Put your idea in a few words, get your focus back and then expand on it again. Develop your points with the focus on your end goal. You can even use your Twitter post as your conclusion to wrap it all up.

Resources:

• UCLDIS Goes Viral - This is where #TweetyourThesis began. An idea to summarize your thesis in one sentence that would fit in a Twitter post.
• Wired Campus: You Can Summarize Your Thesis in a Tweet, but Should You?

Pick a time frame, a month, a week, 2 weeks... and ask yourself a question each day. Post it to your blog and see what your readers will answer as well.

I'm going to write a self questionnaire and leave it here for anyone to add their own answers.

1. What would you choose for your first name if you could choose anything to replace the name you were given?
2. Do you believe there really is a Lost City of Atlantis, a Loch Ness Monster or life on other planets?
3. If you were a shapeshifter, what type of animal would you choose to become and what would you do while you were that animal?
4. What do you really want for Christmas this year? Don't give the world peace type of answer, be selfish.
5. What book (of all those you can remember reading) have you never forgotten?
6. What legendary character (pirate, ghost, vampire, old world explorer, mad scientist...?) would you be if you could be in the pages of a good book?
7. Which is your favourite season and why?

Here are my own answers:

1. As a kid I thought I would like a different name but I really do like my name now and wouldn't change it to anything else.
2. I do believe in Atlantis, Nessie, Bigfoot, aliens and almost all the rest. Is it ironic that I don't believe in the more accepted things like heaven and hell?
3. I'd like to be a crow or some type of raptor bird that can fly very high and see the world from above. I'd like to explore places no human usually sees, the high floors of old buildings, tops of bridges and so on. I'd also like to be a shark and explore old shipwrecks too.
4. Usually there isn't anything I really want other than to be slimmer or something like that. This year my brother may be getting me an ebook reader/ Kindle and I've started getting interested in that. I'm thinking I will also look at a handheld scanner after Christmas when the Boxing Day sales start.
5. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson.
6. It's hard to pick one but I think a witch combines most of the things that interest me.
7. Winter because Summer is too hot and I like walking through the snow on a day when it all sparkles in the sunlight.