For readers of our main blog here, you may not know that we also have a community blog over at the Relief Writers Network as well that members of the Relief community can freely post at. E.A. Whitten just posted a very interesting blog on characters in short stories. Click here to bounce on over and take a look!
Assistant Editor Heather von Doehren shares a website she found while web-surfing (a.k.a procrastinating).
I recently stumbled upon a site called Biblemap which is a wonderful website that displays a google-esque map showing the geographical location referenced in a particular Bible verse. All you do is pick a Bible chapter/verse and a map pops up. It’s as easy as that. Think of the site as a kind of Bible Atlas linking text with geography. It’s so cool!
The site is still in Beta testing, so locations are limited, but they are working hard, adding new locations all the time. They’re trying to work up some funds so they can continue to work on the site, but you should drop by and check it out. It’s very cool so far! Oh, and the folks at ESV interviewed one of the developers of Biblemap, Tim Kimberley. While you're at it, check that site out too.
Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff continues our series on the Craft of Chrisitan Writing.
The World We Write In
My original cunning plan for blogging here was to comb through books on craft and selectively cull them for witty and insightful thoughts. I quickly decided that I didn’t have the time to properly read any of those books and didn’t want to pretentiously misrepresent myself as some expert on the wide world of poetry-writing guides. I have other ways of being pretentious.
I began this post at a Borders café in downtown Evanston, IL, the well-to-do hometown of Northwestern University. While I sat with my gourmet iced tea, blithely typing away on my laptop like the very model of a modern metropolitan, a woman sat down at a table across from me with a huge book on witchcraft. I thought, two hundred years ago we were burning witches at the stake; now we’re marketing to them. I don’t think this is a phenomenon limited to “liberal” urban centers—it’s just easier to find here, where there are more people who exist together anonymously. This is the world we live in, a world in which average people think it not out of the ordinary to “explore” alternative worlds, alternative narratives, including those labeled “metaphysical” and “occult” by Borders, Inc. And this is the world Christians write poetry in...
In light of our series on Writers and Technology, we’d like to open the blogging floor for some of your questions.
If you have a question about technology, writing, and publishing, you can submit a question to our very own Hunk-A-Burnin’-Geek at Relief (i.e. Coach). Later in the series, Coach will blog answers to some of the more popular or pertinent technology questions we receive.
Some of you know that Coach is a 10-year veteran of the computer industry, and currently produces some of the Best Computer Training On The Planet at Trainsignal.com. Feel free to get as basic or as technical as you like--somebody out there has the exact same question, so not only are you helping yourself, but also your colleagues! Click here to submit your questions now!
We start out with a question we've received several times over the last couple of months since we've upgraded the site. Click Read More to find out what it is!
Continuing our series on Writers and Technology, Relief Advisory Board member and author J. Mark Bertrand describes why writers should have their own website.
I’m on the West Coast, chilling with a fellow writer in a coffee shop that’s far too stylish for either one of us, and he’s explaining to me the problem with publishing today.
“The problem with publishing today,” he says, “is that you can’t get a book published until you already have an audience—but how do you build an audience without a book?”
“Chicken and the egg,” I say, portentously swirling my espresso. Should my pinkie be out or not? “Vicious cycle.”
“You have to be a celebrity. You have to be professional speaker. You have to be—” his eyes narrow, “—you have to be a blogger.”
The way he says ‘blogger,’ it sounds worse than a scab busting the picket line. Like there are guys who would betray their friends, sell out their communities and hand their souls to the Man—but at least they have the self-respect, the common decency, not to blog.
Not the first time I’ve been exposed to contemptus bloggi. Usually, though, it’s coming from Old Media types quaking at the thought of pajama-clad bloggers stealing their scoops. And really, those days are gone. Now the nightly news runs YouTube clips before the break. What I’m faced with here is something else.
“I mean, maybe I should be blogging,” he says. “But I’m a novelist. I’m not gonna waste my time writing about what was on TV last night when I could be finishing a chapter of my book.”
He has a point there. Blogging is a great tool for procrastinators. I bet if I copied all my blog entries and pasted them into a Word document, there’d be a book there. A freakin’ trilogy, no doubt. But I’m not going to give up so easily. After all, I have a blog. I consider myself a writer, not a “blogger,” but let’s not get all semantical. I blog, I have advised others to blog, and I am unrepentant. Sort of . . .
For readers of our main blog here, you may not know that we also have a community blog over at the 
I recently stumbled upon a site called 
