Points of Interest for the 13th of June, 2008

Cripes, Friday the 13th, eh? Usually it’s a good thing when your articles are linked to by another writer, but today it might just be unlucky.

BLOGGERS: Before I get into the links, have you entered our contest for bloggin’ goods worth $350?

Getting Noticed by Google by Dustin Wax:

For most sites, especially when they’re getting started, Google and other search engines are the #1 source of traffic, especially for new visitors who might become regulars. It helps to know a little bit about how search engines work and how to make your site “search engine-friendly” so you an make sure your site is easy for your fans, clients, and potential readers to find. Since Google is by far the most important search engine at the moment, I’m going to talk mainly about Google, though most of this will apply to other search engines as well.

Also see his recent Lifehack post How to Write (in a thousand words or less) which is brilliant. Can we have a How to Write in 140 Characters or Less follow-up?

How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive by Darren Rowse - I try not to include links to blogs that 90% of my readers already read, but this was a very refreshing and practical take on productivity. And you know how I love good productivity articles.

A typical day would see me checking email 30 times a day, moderating comments as they hit my inbox, being interrupted by IM throughout the day, reading RSS when I remembered to do it between using social media sites and writing extra blog posts. The result was that my inbox had over 10,000 unread emails, I never cleared my RSS Reader and that I would get to the end of most days feeling like a nervous wreck.

My mistake was feeling compelled to deal with things as they came to me.

Manuscript-Under-The-Mattress Syndrome by Jamie Grove (all writers have at least one of these):

No matter what sort of writer you happen to be, there is some part of you that is confident. Putting the words in your head onto the page is the first demonstration of that confidence. Sharing them with others is the second. Asking for help is the third, and it is here that many writers fail.

As in many things, it is easier to quit than ask for help.

4 Steps to Unleash Your Creative Genius by Marelisa Fabrega:

Creativity can mean identifying an untapped market for an existing product, finding a new solution to a problem, finding creative ways to resolve a labor dispute, and so on. In addition, creativity is not the sole domain of the arts—whether it’s painting, theatre, music, architecture, dancing, literature, and so on—but is important in any field, from medicine to business, and from engineering to economics.

Enjoy ‘em. What are your favorite links for the week?