The Idea Farm's Blog

  The Jane Austen Writers' Club: Inspiration and advice from the world's best-loved novelist, by Rebecca Smith (New York Bloomsbury, 2016). While creative writing manuals use examples from twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, The Jane Austen Writers' Club is the first to look at the methods and devices used by the world's most beloved novelist. Austen was a creator of immortal characters and a pioneer in her use of language and point of view; her advice continues to be relevant two centuries after her death. Rebecca Smith examines the major aspects of writing fiction such as plotting, characterization, openings and endings, dialogue, settings, and writing methods. Smith shares the advice Austen gave in letters to her aspiring novelist nieces and nephew and providing many and varied exercises for writers to try, using examples from Austen's work.

The United Nations is holding a memorial ceremony at the General Assembly in Manhattan, New York on January 27, 2023, and other memorial events are scheduled around the globe. “The story of the struggle to save tens of thousands needs to be a part of the chronicles of the people of Israel,” said David Gur, 97, one of few survivors still alive. “It is a lighthouse during the period of the Holocaust, a lesson and exemplar for the generations.” Gur is the author of the memoir, “Brothers for Resistance and Rescue” where he recounts how the Jewish underground broke him out of the central military prison in a rescue operation. Brothers for Resistance and Rescue -  Gefen Publishing  House Hungary was home to around 900,000 Jews before the Nazi invasion. Its government was allied with Nazi Germany, but as the Soviet Red Army advanced toward Hungary, the Nazis invaded in March 1944, to prevent its Axis ally from making a separate peace deal with the Allies. Over the next 10 months, as ...

Instagram is Helping You Focus With Quiet Mode Instagram is launching ‘Quiet mode’ to help people focus, and to encourage people to set boundaries with friends and followers. Once enabled, you won’t receive any notifications, your profile’s activity status will change to ‘In quiet mode’ and we’ll automatically send an autoreply when someone DMs you. Instagram users have told them that they sometimes want to take time for themselves and are seeking ways to focus at night, while studying, and during work or school.  With quiet mode one can simply customize hours to fit your schedule and once the feature is turned off, we’ll show you a quick summary of notifications so you can catch up on what you missed. ‘Quiet mode’ is available to everyone in the US, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and Instagram hopes to expand to more countries soon. Instagram Supports Teens’ safety with Updated Parental Supervision Tools Instagram aims to help parents be more aware o...

  15 Best Writing Blogs for Writer’s to Follow in 2023 These are the best writing blogs from thousands of blogs throughout the web. These blogsites offer varied information from grammar to submitting your work to publishers. They are helpful to up-and-comers as well as more established writers. 1. The Creative Penn Bath, England, UK You will find resources to help you write, publish and market your book by Joanna Penn - New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, voted one of The Guardian UK Top 100 Creative Professionals 2013.  She was also voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers and one of the Top 10 Blogs for Self-Publishers. 2. Daily Writing Tips Daily Writing Tips - Daily Writing Tips as the name suggests publishes daily articles to help writers enhance their skills. Daily articles on grammar, business writing, spelling, misused words, writing basics, writing quizzes, vocabulary, punctuation, fiction writing, freelance writing, and more! 3. Live Write Thrive Santa ...

  According to a NewsLab study, 80% of journalists use social media in their daily work 1 . Journalists told us that they’re using social media to complete a variety of work-related tasks, including story promotion, networking, sourcing information, and receiving PR pitches. Naturally, time management becomes a challenge and social media burnout is imminent. On top of the rising demand for content output, journalists are expected to be always listening and always engaging. Monitoring the latest news and user-generated content and promoting their own stories on social media can take up a large amount of time in a journalist’s day.   So how can journalists find and maintain a balance between staying on top of the latest news, connecting with their audience, and getting everything else accomplished? When you’re checking social media platforms daily for your job, how can you tell when you’ve reached your mental limit? To help you recognize some signs of social media burnout a...

Ryan Reynold’s is typically known as an actor and comicbook superhero Deadpool. But the Hollywood star has a lot going on in the business world. He is also one of the most in-demand and influential creators in advertising. The Canadian-born star is the cofounder of film production company and digital marketing agency Maximum Effort and has had a string of viral campaigns with advertisements he’s co-produced and written since the firm’s inception in 2018. Reynolds sold the company to ad tech company MNTN in 2021 but still plays a hands-on role as its chief creative officer. He and a partner, George Dewey, formerly senior vice president of digital marketing at 20th Century Fox, co-founded Maximum Effort initially to promote “Deadpool,” a film Reynolds fought ten years to get made. That’s where the iconic black and red suit came into play. “We then started marketing with the suit and having fun with it without giving away pieces of the film, and it turned out to be really successful,” sai...

LONDON, Oct. 20, 2022 -- Talenthouse will invest up to $7 million in cash and shares in Nerve, an embedded banking solution for the US creator economy. This is the first time Nerve will be providing their embedded banking proposition on a private-label basis. TalentPlus, Talenthouse's one-stop-financial app built for Creators has partnered with Nerve Banking as well. Through this investment and partnership, TalentPlus plans to introduce in the US in late-November and move into several markets in 2023 including the UK and Latin America to lessen the financial burdens of Creators. Furthermore, TalentPlus plans to add personal banking services to its offering in 2023 across all markets to benefit the Creator Economy. Made possible with the dawn of Open Banking in early 2018, TalentPlus is a vertical banking solution that supplies a financial suite of services for Creators that goes beyond the offerings of commercial banks. The concept emerged from a Talenthouse pilot program called E...