Alliance Leveling Guide - Finding a True Guide to Level Faster in WoW

If you're searching for an alliance leveling guide, there are a few things to consider before purchasing the first one you see. Obviously you want to reach level 80 in the shortest amount of time possible, but in what order to do it, you'll have to spend some money. This being said, we're going to show you how to find a true guide to leveling faster.

What Ingredients Do You Need?

Sometimes people think that if they purchase an alliance leveling guide, it will contain much more than just leveling up your Toon faster. Unfortunately this isn't always the case, and even when it is the guide may not include what you need. So the next time you're reading over all the information, make sure it lives up to your criteria. If you don't, you could end up wasting your money.

Some of the main ingredients to an alliance leveling guide is making sure you have the best tips available. This means they should include pictures, maps, or anything relevant to make a particular quest easier. There are occasions where you even see a couple videos in which having the visual aid could make all the difference.

Auction House and Gold

As you progress through the World of Warcraft game, you will realize the importance of gold and the Auction House. You will have to understand why these are crucial to leveling your character and the best ways to profit from the AH. Granted it's going to take some time on your own, but with a good alliance leveling guide you can get the inside track on all your competitors. Even after spending some time in the AH you will notice something on your own that ends up making a ton of money.

Other Things You'll Need

In order to level quicker you will need a slew of other tips during your journey. They could be about add ons that enhance your character, how to build your character for quicker questing, or even find certain locations that help you farm for mats to make items. An alliance leveling guide should have all of these traits and if it doesn't then it's not worth your time.

Finding Profession and Class Trainers

One of the easiest ways to waste time on WoW is trying to find profession and class trainers. They are situated all over the place and learning where each one is located can be very helpful. One other thing to remember is that there will come a time where you need to find a new trainer because you've maxed out all the rest of them. Knowing this, why wouldn't you want to know where they are from the get go?

The Misleading Hype

When you go out and search for the perfect alliance leveling guide, you will see maybe websites talk about record leveling times. This usually revolves around 6 or 7 days, but it can be a little misleading. See, to you a week is Monday thru Sunday and to WoW gamers seven days means 168 hours of game time. So just keep this in mind because we would hate for you to think you can buy a leveling book on Friday and be at level 80 on the following Thursday.

About The Author

Finding the best Warcraft Alliance Leveling Guide can take quite a bit of work. You don't know which one's to trust and which are...well, just plain crud. Why not just choose the one's that are already well known that work! Free Reports at http://www.wowlevelingpro.com

Seven Ways To Connect Your Writing And Your Life

An important question for any artist is: How can I built a career and simultaneously be true to myself? It’s an important question, and during the twenty years I’ve taught writing, hundreds of students have expressed the belief that success and personal integrity are mutually exclusive.

The Lifewriting™ approach to fiction suggests that not only do these two qualities overlap, but that the safest, surest, most satisfying path to discovering your true voice, your deepest creative flow, and ultimately crafting the most satisfying career, is to be true to yourself. It suggests that Aristotle’s famous debate concerning the relative merits of plot and character is a trick: Plot and character are actually two sides of the same coin. Character is best revealed through action. And plot is merely what happens when a given character engages with a specific situation. It is not only possible, but advisable, to shift back and forth between those perspectives, seeking to create a seamless whole.

How do you, personally, define character? You MUST have some theory or feeling for the human condition, or you’ll have nothing to write about. The best and simplest way to learn characterization is to study psychology. And the best psychological study is yourself. Why? Because you have more information about what makes you you than you will ever have about what makes anyone else tick.

What this path demands is the honesty and courage to look deeply into your own life, and some model to organize the different aspects of your personality and emotional history. Then you need some mechanism to help you apply your discoveries to your writing.

The very finest model of the human condition is the 6,000 year old model from India, the “chakras” of yoga. Supposedly seven energy centers within and around the human body, they mirror Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Both yogis and psychologists suggest that until the “lower” more basic needs are met, one cannot move to the next level of life.

The Chakras represent survival, sexuality, power, emotion, communication, intellect, and spirit. Let’s take a peek into the way each of these “levels” can be used to connect your inner emotional world, and your writing.

1) Survival. What are your deepest fears? Remember that fear underlies most anger, and fear turned inside-out inspires most comedy. What comic or horrific use can you make of your own most secret fears? Create characters with the same concern and needs. I promise you: plenty of your readers will have the same problems. Die Hard and a hundred other movies a year punch this button. We fear dying, disfigurement, abandonment, old age, and disease—all survival values. All superb story sources.

2) Sexuality. What turns you on? Sexuality can be an important aspect of your character’s lives . What was you r first experience? Best? Worst/ Most recent? Least ethical? At what point do you feel you began to have mature sexual relationships? When do you think that sexuality is appropriate or inappropriate? What people in your experience have been uplifted, healed, damaged or debased in their sexual interactions? Every one of them is a character, and an opportunity for you to express your opinions and philosophies. The movie A History of Violence used sex brilliantly to help us understand the powerful bond between the leads.

3) Power. What is your physical condition? What does it say about your actions, values, and priorities? Craft characters with distinct physical attributes, and allow their life history to express itself in their movement and appearance. Rocky or Million Dollar Baby utilize dynamic training and fight scenes to express depths of passion and desperation. While physical power is the most basic form, this evolves into financial and political power—any form of control over self, family, or others. Explore your own attitudes toward these kinds of power, and begin to craft characters who breathe.

4) Love. What is love? Mature affection as opposed to immature “puppy love”? Love for one’s children and family. Love for country? For all mankind? What is the difference between love and sexual attraction? What is the price you see people paying for their heart space connections? What are the greatest advantages and disadvantages of human contact? Forrest Gump is about a man with a beautiful loving heart…and the mind of a child. His life is better than almost anyone he ever meets, despite their advantages.

5) Communication. What is your belief about education and perception? What is our obligation to communicate with clarity and honesty? What kind of mischief is caused by miscommunication? Is verbal communication better, more immediate and more honest than nonverbal? In Billy Budd, an inarticulate character strikes a man dead, largely due to frustrated communication.

6) Intellect. What are your intellectual strengths? Weaknesses? When have you had to modify your world view because reality didn’t match your theories and beliefs? Creator with Peter O’Toole tells of a brilliant scientist locked in an intellectual prison, unable to deal with the death of his beautiful wife. ago. He must either change his map of the world, or his heart will die.

7) Spirit. What are your spiritual beliefs? Are you an atheist? Agnostic? Buddhist? Christian? What do you see as the spiritual and philosophical differences? If you didn’t use the specific labels, could you create characters of each type, and demonstrate the differences? If so, why? If not, why not? Have you ever had a crisis in faith? Ever felt a prayer was answered? Did it happen in a way you expected, or otherwise? Ghandi dealt with a man of great spiritual commitment who found the strength to loosen the grip of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

Once you have thought through each of these levels as they apply to your own life, you are now able to create characters of uncommon complexity and depth. And you have taken a huge step toward releasing your true writing potential…whether your intent is artistic, commercial, or, most wisely, both.

About The Author

Steven Barnes

N.Y. Times bestselling writer Steven Barnes has written for The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and Stargate among many others. Why not have the career of your dreams? Don’t just write…Lifewrite ™. Sign up for your FREE daily Lifewriting tip at: http://www.lifewriting.biz Learn more at: http://www.lifewrite.com

How To Come Up With Ideas For Your Halloween Costume

Halloween is a time for kids and adults alike to find excuses to dress up as something else. Kids usually choose their favorite characters from cartoons, books, comic books, movies, and television shows. Adults have a lot more options, since some adult costumes arenít appropriate for children, such as a French maid uniform. There is no shortage of Halloween costume ideas for any age group.

This is a time for people to get creative. You can either wear tried and true costumes such as witch costumes and pirate costumes. Or, you can search for unique Halloween costume ideas by visiting more eclectic costume shops or designing your own look from scratch.

Here are some Halloween costume ideas that will help get the creative juices flowing.

New Spins on Old Favorites

Would you like to dress up in a traditional Halloween favorite such as a monster or witch? If you would like to do something different, try to find interesting Halloween costume ideas using the old favorites as a spin off. For example, if you want to dress up as a witch, you donít need to find an ugly witch costume to get the job done. You can create your own costume and give the character your own unique spin.

Superhero Costumes

It is also fun to dress up as superheroes such as Spider Man, Superman, and Wonder Woman. However, you donít always need to dress up as an established superhero. How about making up your own? You can be as silly or serious as you want. The beauty of this is that you can create a hero using any theme you like. Depending on your audience, you can make your hero comical, farcical, cute, ugly, etc. Itís completely up to you.

Other Halloween Costume Ideas

Of course, it is possible to create a costume that is completely traditional. If you want to dress up as a black cat and wear the traditional black cat clothes, that is also okay. To find good ideas visit your local costume shop, read some comic books, watch some cartoons, and take in a few flicks. You will certainly find something that will inspire you. Remember to find a costume that suits your personality. Part of creating a successful Halloween costume is to play the part of the character throughout the evening.

About The Author

Phil Sikes writes about Halloween costume ideas and other Halloween-related topics for the Get In Costume website. Get more creative costume ideas at http://www.getincostume.com

Are You Confusing Escape with Comfort, in your relationship?

We’re going to talk about some “advanced stuff” today, so I want you to pay careful attention. As you may or may not know, it is very important for a woman to feel a sense of security in a relationship, to feel protected when she’s with a man. This is true no matter how powerful or successful she is, and comes back to what I call defining authority in a relationship.

A woman takes comfort in a man who defines authority in a relationship. She feels secure… and the two go hand in hand IF what you’re providing is what I call “true comfort.” See, way too many people confuse comfort with escape and the consequences can be dangerous. So what’s the difference between the two?

Let’s start with what “escape” means. Escape is really the illusion of comfort… a retreat into a false reality in an attempt to get away from “real reality.” Unfortunately, the consequences of “real reality” still apply. An extreme example, of course, is the drug addict who spends all his time either high or trying to get that way, so he doesn’t have to deal with reality. Of course reality always come crashing down, and the addict has to face the consequences of the decisions he made based on events in his illusion that in actuality apply to reality. Usually these consequences are not good… jail, termination of relationships, health problems, etc.

Now, don’t get the idea I think escape is bad, because it’s not, unless taken to the extreme, and mistaken for comfort in the relationship. I think escape is a fine thing IF you both recognize that’s what you’re doing. In fact, many “special friends” or “adventure partner” relationships are based purely on escape, and that’s a great thing… as long as both people realize that and continue to make reality based decisions, not “illusion based” decisions. But, what often happens is one or both partners mistakes escape for comfort, and starts making decisions based on illusion, not reality. I think many long term relationships go bad for this reason. Can escape be part of a successful long term relationship? Sure, and it should be IF “true comfort” is present. “Special friends” or “adventure partners” can be based purely on escape, but if you want to have a successful long term relationship with a wonderful woman, you must be able to provide her true comfort IN ADDITION to escape.

So what is “true comfort?” True comfort comes from the creation of a different reality, the molding and changing of a current reality to create outcomes which lead to comfort and security. The old reality is changed, not “retreated from.” With “escape” you’re dealing with two versions of reality: reality itself and “illusion of reality.” With comfort you’re creating, changing, molding, and shaping your own reality. When you are aware of this distinction, and controlling the direction, your relationship improves on many levels.

True comfort in a relationship comes only from true strength. Only a truly strong man can create his own reality. And true strength comes from sound mind, true character, desire and the willingness to pay the price to create that comfort for her and for you. That means, learning, studying, reading and working on “reality creation”… developing the ability to create your own outcomes with attraction, with money, with your health and with your relationships. When you can do that, you will achieve fulfillment.

When she knows you can create a reality for her and you in these areas she will feel true comfort, even if she herself is already capable of creating these things for herself. Why would a “capable woman” settle for an “incapable man” who can provide only escape, not true comfort? The answer is, she won’t, at least not for long. She may indulge herself in escape for a bit, but when the escape is over and it’s time to get back to reality, she’ll continue her search for the MAN who provides her with true comfort in the relationship she wants.

The lesson is this: if you feel you’re ready for a long term relationship with a wonderful woman who makes every part of your day brighter, you must be strong enough to create true comfort for her. If not, you will only create escape, and your time with her will be momentary. Escape is great for some things, even as part of a long term relationship, but not as its foundation. When it’s true comfort you’re providing her she will stay with you until the end… and beyond.

About The Author

John Alanis, "The King of Let 'em Come to You", is author of the "Women Approach You" system at http://www.womenapproachyou.com. His blog is at http://www.johnalanis.com.

How to Make a Warhammer 40k Building

“One day I can make a cool piece of warhammer terrain” thats is always come to ones mind when looking on the beautiful terrain maid by other people. Stop wishing and prepare your materials caused today you will create your own terrain. Creating a flocked hills and rocky formations for warhammer is not just complicated compared in making buildings and towers. Although constructing buildings is more commendable and needs more creativity but as long as you are willing and have the heart to let it all out in creating a warhammer terrain you can make anything. Almost anything you can make such as towers, houses, churches, castles, bunkers, factories and and pretty much anything part of warhammer gaming. That all for the introduction and its time to gather all the materials needed for its time to stop the talking and start working.

Materials list

• 20?x30? foam board
• pencil
• ruler
• utility knife
• paint brush (medium sized one will do)
• white glue
• black paint
• gray paint
• white paint
• Popsicle sticks

And one karma from Astronomican (it’s like food for the soul)

Step 1 Outline and cut your windows and entrance ways

Use a space marine cadet to size up the doors on your foam board they should fit through the doors. They're actually able to fit through the windows too but that's not entirely necessary if you choose to make the windows a different size. Lets not include what is the measurement of the foam board that we will be using for the height and length of the walls for we have our own design and size of the building to be made. Just buy a sheet of foam board with a size of 20 inches x 30 inches will serve for a good sized miniature building.

So, we draw and trace the desired design the cut out the doors and windows. To save some of your time you can cut out a template and trace the template for future use.

Next, creating the side wall of the building. To assume the wreckage you can roughed the side walls.

Step 2 Installing Popsicle sticks for added support

This next step is the crucial and important because you are going to add extra support to your structure so that it will not easily be break down. But this step will not give you a hard time, first begin by slicing out Popsicle length strips in each level or storey of the front side of the building. Next is glue the Popsicle sticks in the slots you have just created.

(Note: slicing too deep in the foam board will cause you to deface the front side of your wall.)

Step 3 Cut and glue down your floors and walls together

This step is the craftiest and needs an extra patience because it takes a little concentration and hands that are not shaky. Line up your three wall together to measure the size of your floors. You will then see what will fit in as a floor for each level or storey. You can choose to roughed also the edges of the floor to indicate wreckage same as what you've done for the side walls. to give some give some variety and design on the floors you can add up some wooden sub-flooring made from Popsicle sticks.

Step 4 Scuff and add rebar

This will be the most unique part of creating a terrain for you will destroy some part of the building you made in order emphasized the damaged parts of the building. It's the best part actually. Don't be afraid and hesitate go ahead and try and you will see the result. But don't destroy all, randomly create explosion holes and bullet hole marks throughout the front sides.

And going in for a closeup to see some added rebar which is glued in place .

Step 5 Prime building

Acrylic black paint is what to be use in priming the whole building. You can add some fine sand to texture your paint this will add a rough concrete like texture to the structure and will give a different look and result when its time to dry brush later.

Step 6 Paint building

Next step is paint the building with gray paint. Make sure not to put a lot of paint on the brush. Creating a dry brushed look with the gray paint exposing about 5 percent of the black is best. Otherwise priming it in black would be meaningless. After painting it with gray dry brush it with white paint but this time make sure it's a very light dry brushing. And finally add a light green to accent the building. Otherwise it would be gray only and dull. Also add variety on the floors by painting it with yellow and brown colors.

Alas, there you have it! A simple multilevel building wrecked and blown up to give it character and unique look. We hope this inspires some nice terrain ideas. Feel free to tell us what you think of this project. Any ideas or suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

About The Author

Matthew Glanfield is the webmaster for MiniWarGaming.com, a site that strives to provide useful resources to players of the Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40K, and Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.

You can visit his website at http://www.miniwargaming.com

Be a Person of Integrity

Integrity is one of the great aspect of personality which has drastic impact on mind & has a direct effect on traits. But why it is fruitful & resultant one to become a person of integrity? it is because, Person of integrity can only makes own unique & awesome identity with difference. Lets elaborate it, Integrity is a real-time genuine value, like persistence, courage and intensity. Even more than that, it is the value that guarantees all the other values. You are a good person to the degree to which you live your life consistent with the highest values that you Adopt support & promote. Integrity is the immense quality that locks in your values and causes you to live consistent with them. Integrity is the foundation of character. And character development is one of the most important activities you can engage in. Working on your character means disciplining yourself to do more and more of those things that a thoroughly honest person would do, under all circumstances & by finding positive in everything.

To be impeccably straightforward with others, you must first be impeccably honest with yourself. You must be true to yourself. You must be true to the very best that is in you, to the very best that you know. Only a person who is living consistent with his or her highest values and virtues is really living a life of integrity. And when you commit to living this kind of life, you will find yourself continually raising your own standards, continually refining your definition of integrity and honesty, BECAUSE WE ARE WHAT WE REPEDIATELY DO.

You can tell how high your level of integrity is by simply looking at the things you do in your day-to-day life. You can look at your reactions and responses to the inevitable ups and downs of life. You can observe the behaviors you typically engage in and you will then know the person you are.

The external expression of high integrity is high-quality work. A person who is totally direct, open, frank, sincere & straightforward with himself or herself will be someone who does, or strives to do, excellent work on every occasion. The totally honest person recognizes, sometimes instinctively & unconsciously, that everything he or she does is a statement about who he or she really is as a person.

When you start a little earlier, work a little harder, stay a little later and concentrate on every detail, you are practicing integrity in your work. And whether you know it or not, your true level of integrity is apparent and obvious to everyone around you.

Perhaps the most important rule you will ever learn is that your life only becomes better when you become better. All of life is lived from the inside out. At the very core eminent element of your personality lie your values about yourself and life in general. Your values determine the kind, class & type of person you really are. What you believe has defined your character and your personality. It is what you stand for, and what you won't stand for, that tells you and the world the kind of person you have become.

Ask yourself this question: What are your five most main & important values in life? After some confusion & priorities Your answer will reveal an enormous amount about you. What would you pay for, generous for, love for, sacrifice for, suffer for and even die for? What would you stand up for, or refuse to lie down for? What are the values that you hold most dear? Think these questions through carefully, thoughtfully and, when you get a chance, write down your answers.

Here's another way of asking that question. What men and women, living or dead, do you most admire? Once you pick three or four men or women, the next question is: Why do you admire them? What values, qualities, or virtues do they have that you respect and look up to? Can you articulate those qualities? What is a quality possessed by human beings in general that you most respect? This is the starting point for determining your values. The answers to these questions form the peak foundation of your character and your personality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Guard your integrity as a sacred thing." In study after study, the quality, class & excellence of integrity, or a person's adherence & denotation to values, ranks as the number one quality required in every field.

Integrity is so important that functioning in our society would be impossible without it. We could not make even a simple purchase without a high level of confidence that the price was decent and that the change was correct. The most successful individuals are those with reputations of high integrity among everyone they deal with. This level of integrity builds the confidence that others have in them.

Earl Nightingale once wrote, "If honesty did not exist, it would have to be invented, as it is the surest way of getting rich." There are several things you can do to move you more rapidly toward becoming the kind of person that you know you are capable of becoming. The first, as I mentioned, is to decide upon your five most important values in life. Organize them in order of priority. Then write a brief paragraph defining what each of those values means to you.

A value combined with a definition becomes an organizing principle? a statement that you can use to help you make better decisions. It is a measure and standard which enables you to know how closely you are adhering to your innermost beliefs and convictions.

The second step to developing integrity and character in yourself is to study men and women of great character. Study the lives and stories of people like Swami Vivekanand, Mother Teresa, George Washington, king Shivaji, Samrat Ashoka, Abraham Lincoln. Study the people whose strength of character enabled them to change their world. As you read, think about how they would behave if they were facing the difficulties that you face.

We know that if you feel a particular way, you will act in a manner consistent with that feeling. For example, if you feel happy, you will act happy. If you feel angry, you will act angry. If you feel courageous, you will act courageously. But we also know that you don't always start off feeling the way you want to.

Always Remember “ WE ARE WHAT WE REPEATEDLY DO.”

However, because of the Law of Reversibility, if you act as if you had a particular feeling, the action will generate the feeling consistent with it. You can, in effect, act your way into feeling. You can "fake it until you make it." You can become a superior human being by consciously acting exactly as the kind of person that you would most like to become. If you behave like an individual of integrity, courage, resolution, persistence and character, you will soon create within yourself the mental structure and habits of such a person. Your actions will become your reality. You will create a personality that is consistent with your highest aspirations.

The more you walk, talk, and behave consistent with your highest values, the more you will like yourself and the better you will feel about yourself. Your self-image will improve and your level of self-acceptance will go up. You will feel stronger, bolder, and more capable of facing any challenge.

There are three primary areas of your life where acting with integrity is crucial. These are the three areas of greatest temptation for forsaking your integrity, as well as the areas of greatest opportunity for building your integrity. When you listen to your inner voice and do what you know to be the right thing in each of these areas, you will have a sense of peace and satisfaction that will lead you on to success and high achievement.

The first area of integrity has to do with your relationships with your family and your friends, the people close to you. Being true to yourself means living in truth with each person in your life. It means refusing to say or do something that you don't believe is right. Living in truth with other people means that you refuse to stay in any situation where you are unhappy with the behavior of another person. You refuse to tolerate it. You refuse to compromise. I determined about the fact that most stress and negativity comes from attempting to live in a way that is not harmonious with your highest values. It is when your life is out of alignment? when you are doing and saying one thing on the outside, but really feeling and believing something different on the inside? that you feel most unhappy. When you decide to become an individual of character and integrity, your first action will be to neutralize or remove all difficult relationships from your life. This doesn't mean that you have to go and hit somebody over the head with a stick. It simply means that you honestly confront another person and tell them that you are not happy. Tell them that you would like to reorganize this relationship so that you feel more content and satisfied. If the other person is not willing to make adjustments so that you can be happy, it should be clear to you that you don't want to be in this relationship much longer anyway.

The second area of integrity has to do with your attitude and behavior toward money. Casualness toward money brings casualties in your financial life. You must be dynamics & demanding about your treatment of money, especially other people's money. You must guard your credit rating the same way you would guard your honor. You must pay your bills punctually, or even early. You must keep your promises with regard to your financial commitments.

The third area of integrity has to do with your commitments to others, especially in your business, your work and your sales activities. Always keep your word. Be a man or a woman of honor. If you say that you will do something, do it. If you make a promise, keep it. If you make a commitment, fulfill it. Be known as the kind of person that can be trusted absolutely, no matter what the circumstances.

Your integrity is manifested in your willingness to adhere to the values you hold most dear. Always make commitment & not promises. It's easy to make promises/ commitments and hard to keep them, but if you do, every single act of integrity will make your character a little stronger. And as you improve the quality and strength of your character, every other part of your life will improve as well. (We are what we repeatedly do)

By Nilesh Gore – ng411002@rediffmail.com
http://www.brendynamics.com/gr

About The Author

Name : NIlesh B Gore
Profession : Graphologist(Hndwriting Analyst) & SW. Eng.
Email : ng411002@rediffmail.com
Web : http://www.brendynamics.com/gr
Country : India, Ms
Copyrights : © Nilesh B Gore.

Creative Writing: Tips To Make Your Creative Written Work Sell

Creative writing is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. However, you really don't need a special talent for it. What you need is a paper, a pen and a very good imagination that is worthy of telling your story to other people.

With good imagination, you can really capture your audience's minds and keep them reading your work. However, you have to know that a good imagination is simply not enough when you are writing. You also need to consider quite a few things first before you start writing.

It is a fact that many authors find it hard to write an article or a novel. So, if you are experiencing difficulty in writing an article or a novel, it is just natural. The first thing you need to consider is to have an appropriate environment in order for you to concentrate on work. Create your own writing environment to enable you to write more effectively and think more effectively. Consider the clothes you wear, the music you want to hear while writing, the temperature of the room, the lighting, the chair and a lot more. You should be comfortable with all these things. If you are, you will find it easier to write.

You will also need to have a writing schedule. You have to remember that nothing can be more frustrating when writing when someone is always barging in your writing time. You need to know when you can write in order to avoid interruptions from friends, family, co-workers or whomever that may interrupt you when you are writing. You have to concentrate on writing so you have to turn off anything that will interrupt you. Consider diverting all calls to a machine, turn off your pager, mobile phones, PDA and others that may interrupt you. Remember that you will be in another world in creative writing; you have to get out of the real world.

It is recommended that you should write when you are at your mental best or when you are not tired. However, some of the best novels were written on hours that would normally be your bedtime, try and write during these hours and determine if it will indeed affect your writing positively. If it doesn't, you should stick to your regular schedule where your mental state is at its prime.

If you are writing about a character, you should relate to them. Imagine you are that character and know their different behaviors and talk to an imaginary character. By doing this, you can effectively show your characters personality and will definitely make your readers think as if the character is real.

Writing is a very hard task to do. It will affect you physically and mentally. If you want to ease the tension, you have to invest in good writing tools that are readily available in the market. A fast desktop computer is a great way to start and as well as a writing software program that will enable you to write more effectively. It is also recommended that you purchase a large flat screen monitor to make it easier for your eyes.

These are some of the things you need for you to be able to write more effectively. Creative writing is a very tiring task to do, by following these advices, you will definitely write a good novel that everyone will surely buy.

About The Author

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information checkout http://www.ideacenter.com and http://my-updates.info.

Create Your Own Webcomic

Syndicated comic authors have been complaining about newspaper size restrictions, content censoring and similar issues for a long time. Comic enthusiasts have been increasingly irritated by the treatment their entertainment medium receives as well. Then along came the Internet, providing unlimited and unrestricted distribution possibilities. Thus the webcomic was born.

There are millions of webcomics out there, dealing with such vast topics as video games, college life, samurai, Lego men, identity and self esteem, depression, suicide, children and joy. People write them either for a living, for fun, as stress relief, for artistic expression, or often just for the hell of it. Then they stick their creations on the web and hope that just one more person will find and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

There seem to be several hundred new comics created each and every day. These often dwindle and fade after only a few months. Occasionally, however, a comic rises above the rest and gains such popularity that the creator is able to forgo all other work and scrape a living solely off the proceeds generated by their websites. Some examples of such are Penny-Arcade, PvP, CtrlAltDel and Squidi.net.

Many people, when introduced to the world of webcomics, think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool to have my own comic?" and a few go beyond this and create their own. So how can a newcomer ensure that their comic continues beyond the first few weeks of enthusiasm?

Now before I go into some useful tips it is probably worth noting that I am the proud owner of a failed webcomic. It went for a few months before hitting a few snags and then grinding into the ground. I have plans to return to creating the comics, but as of yet have not. So I'm not really drawing from a foundation of success, more of failure and an understanding of some of the main factors contributing to my failure.

For starters, you're going to need to plan a little. It's unfortunate, unfair and certainly not fun, but it is necessary. Sit down and think about your comic. Come up with a location setting, some characters and maybe even a few plots to test them in. Run the characters through some adventures and see how they react and how you react to them. Your characters will grow and change throughout this process, and continue to do so throughout the life of your comic but you need to get a handle on their basic character traits.

For some reason the majority of comics revolve around a group of people (usually guys) that are somewhat geeky and live together. Usually in a university dorm. I would imagine that this is because that's the general life of the majority of webcomic authors. The premise itself also makes an awful lot of sense for the basis of a comic. When designing my own webcomic the process went a little something like this: I designed the main characters, most of which were drawings that I had been playing with since high school. Then I needed a reason for them to constantly see each other and interact, so I got them living together. They needed character traits that I could relate to, so they become university-aged students that had at least a passing interest in the geeky side of life.

I drew my first few strips and showed them to some friends, who liked them, so started looking into putting them online. The initial line up included two guys who lived together, a female love interest for one of the characters and a talking animal (in my case a frog, because I had this frog that I'd been drawing for years and had become quite attached to him).

At this point I wasn't very experienced with webcomics, having only really read the syndicated newspaper comics that the syndicated press companies post online. So I started looking through some of the major comics, only to find that Sluggy Freelance had the talking animals, geeky guys that lived together and female love interest already covered. A bit more research revealed that the "university students living together" was covered in the large majority of comics. Furthermore, having a kind of wacky (and just a little stupid) character, and a more sensible and reserved one was practically a given. Then, to rub salt in the wound, I found that another comic had its main character design very similar to my own. So I got rid of the frog, removed the focus on gaming and university and otherwise left the comic as it was. Not entirely original.

Anyway, the point is that you should probably try to be more original. Check through your concept and remove the whole university students living together with wacky talking inappropriately anthropomorphic sidekicks. You'll be better off in the long run and have a more original creation.

Before you jump headfirst into publishing your comics online, you should build up a bit of a backlog of comics. Try to draw at least ten or so quality comics that you would be proud to have on your site. If you're going to have a story-based comic then it would be a good idea to plan your first story arc. It is really useful to maintain this backlog of comics whenever possible, so that you can fall behind in the creation of the comics but still have content to post online. Nothing turns away readers faster than failing to provide them with content when you say you will. If you eat into the backlog, try to draw a few extra strips so that it doesn't get diminished.

As a helpful guide for your comics, decide roughly what format they will take (e.g. three or four panel gag strips etc.) and draw up the panels on your computer. You can then print these and draw the strips within the panels, ensuring that they stay neat and consistent. When the comics have been drawn, scan them into your computer and touch them up any way you like. It's generally the best practice to remove speech balloons and text and add these on computer, because it will usually be neater and easier to read. Remember to fit balloons around the speech, not the speech into the balloons. It's amazing how often this is forgotten. Some good fonts, free for non-commercial use, can be found at http://blambot.com. Don't get too stressed about your artwork, I found that most people don't mind slightly inconsistent and not overly fantastic artwork provided they enjoy the content of the comic.

So now you're ready to get going with the online side of things. Start writing your web page so that you can just upload it when you're ready. Webcomic PHP management systems are relatively easy to find. I personally really like ComicPro that, unfortunately, seems to have vanished from the web. If you can hunt it down it's worth a look. Web hosting is quite easy to find as well, you won't need much space to begin with so you can use one of the many free providers out there (including http://keenspace.com that provides free hosting specifically for webcomics), use the web space provided by the majority of ISPs or purchase your own web hosting plan (you can get a quite cheap one because you won't be needing many features to begin with). When signing up for any hosting package, make sure you have permission to change the read/write attributes of your files because the PHP comic managers will need this (this is done on Linux servers using CHMOD from your FTP program; In Windows you can Right-Click a file, select Properties and change security permissions there; or you may need to use a proprietary control panel provided by the host).

You're going to need to decide on an update schedule for your comic. It's probably best to start small and build up; maybe two or three updates a week. This way you have three to five weeks of comics in your backlog, which allows you to fall behind substantially before anyone notices.

While we're on the topic of deciding schedules, it will help you if you actually try and schedule an hour or so into your day to write comics. If you just try to fit them into the free time that you're "bound to have just after you finish just this one last thing" then you'll often find yourself failing to get a strip drawn on time.

Now that you have your comic online you can start promoting it. There are a huge number of comic directories out there that will help get you exposure. Get your friends excited about your comic and they in turn will get their friends excited. Read other people's comics and get involved in their forums. Find sites that accept guest artwork or comics and send some to them. The best promotion comes from getting people to read your comic and fire a link across their instant messenger program to another friend. My current list of "must read every day" comics came entirely from various people sending links to me. Don't expect instant success, look to sharing your vision with even just one new person every day.

Well, I hope that helps to give you a few ideas about how to make your comic and keep it running. When your characters start to grow they'll almost create the stories and jokes themselves and the strip won't be anywhere near as hard to write as it was when you first started out. Just keep drawing the comics on a frequent basis so that you don't fall out of the rhythm of your created world and above all else have fun.

About The Author

Daniel Punch
M6.Net Internet Promoter
http://www.m6.net
danielp@m6.net

Now You Can Create Your Own Desktop Icon! by: Paul I. Etkin

There are some people who put as much effort into customizing their computer desktops as they do into decorating the tops of their desks or even rooms. I have personally seen friends of mine spend hours looking for the perfect desktop icon which reference some show or other that they used to watch in their childhood in the 70s. And no matter how obscure or rare the desktop icon, someone, somewhere in this universe of ours has at the very least a pirate version of it, often as part of a theme. There are countless desktop icons floating around, that the number will probably never be known.

Certainly the best way to get all of your icons is as part of a desktop theme. Desktop themes comes with icons, background pictures, event sounds, and even color schemes all on the same subject to convert your desktop into a seamless color-filled, decorative scheme. For example, I used to have a Scooby-Doo theme, complete with a desktop icon for every character. There was even a mystery machine desktop icon with little rolling wheels that informed me when the computer was busy loading something. The coolest thing about that desktop theme was the little “zoinks” sound that it made each time an error occurred. And since I was running Windows, that happened rather frequently. The Scooby Doo desktop icon itself was way snazzy IMHO.

If (and this is a real IF) you really have a thing for desktop icons, the best thing to do is to create them yourself! How fun is that?! You can quite easily download a desktop icon creator, and you wouldn't believe how easy they are to make. Every desktop icon is really just a very small, fairly low-resolution picture. This means that you can probably create the perfect desktop icon with a little imagination and creativity, as well as one to two hours of your time.

I have also been told that certain desktop icon creators can shrink photos into desktop icons for you, saving you precious time that it takes to create them, but I do not know if this actually exists. The best thing is to try it out yourself if you are really interested. Like any other program, the desktop icon creator software can be found in either free or trial versions (just google it), so it not that difficult to get hold of and start using. So then you will finally have those perfect desktop icons you have always dreamt of having!

About The Author

Paul I. Etkin provides readers with up-to-date commentaries, http://www.articledirectoryzone.com and reviews for computing, internet as well http://www.getmarketinginformation.com related information.