Saiga's Notes

In the first year of my journo career I was welcomed by a fitness glossy editor to pitch in some article ideas. So I did, and she replied with, Your angle is quite enticing so I commission you this article. Being a novice in journalism, I jumped with joy as a puppy. In the following days the editor regularly dropped me letters showing interest in the work. Finally I pitched in the article and an immediate answer was, Having read the material I’m about to say that readers will gain nothing from it. What’s more, it all looks like a non-systematic fact list, compiled through a two-minute search on the Web. No interpretation, nor systematization, nor fact checking provided. The magazine is not interested in such an article. Thank you. I felt dizzy to loss of orientation. Ten minutes later I had restored ability to think and feel, and anger came. For all my hard work I now receive this??? Fine, I’m gonna sell the damn article to some other edition and through with this lady! But I m...

Maybe you have already heard about „The Keys To The White House“, a system invented by Allan Lichtman that fantastically predicted the  nine last  presidential election results. In 2016 the author himself didn’t believe that Donald Trump would win. But the system said „yes“ ... and he won. (c) CharismaNews.com In other words, Lichtman's forecasting system overcame the author’s own subjectivity, the hardest quest for any system. So it really is a system. And I think that politics and publishing have much in common. Readers do vote too with their wallets. Then a crazy idea came to transform Lichtman’s system so that it would predict success for a new book. So I did. Check out. My system consists of a fourteen-questions poll (original one had thirteen). If ’yes’ answers dominate, the book wins. If ’no’ – drop your plot to a bucket. Contest. There were no bestseller books in the category recently. Sector Mandate. The book gets good promotions from respected persons i...

I'm trying to find a writing tool more convenient than a usual text processor for a writer. A wide choice of software is offered in the market, but many writers had attempted and got back to Microsoft Word and its alternatives. My case with ApolloPad is one of the kind. After an initial brief study of about 15 programs and online tools, I had sorted out four of them to give a try in real work. Apollo was one of these four. After two hours of using it, I decided to quit. So, what is ApolloPad, why it tempted me, and what had gone wrong? Its developer Dave Child describes ApolloPad as a „distraction-free writing environment for budding authors“. I can add that it works online, with well-known pros and cons of online tools. ApolloPad is not a finished piece of work, it runs as a beta version. Else, it is free to use – the main advantage before Scrivener. The developer promises that „you will be able to extract your work quickly and without a fee after the beta“. The „after“ is a...