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The reason is not because they are too old for Tech. Some of them just prefer their first draft to be handwritten like I do before polishing the final draft on a word processor. Meet those writers-who-still-refuse-to-use-computers:

PJ O’Rourke
Oliver Sacks
Lee Rourke
Jon McGregor
Patrick McLean
Orhan Pamuk
Kazuo Ishiguro
Niven Govinden
John Le Carre
Tess Gerritsen
JK Rowling
Michael Ondaatje

Learn more about the writers from here:
http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.org/blog/2012/12-writers-who-still-refuse-to-use-computers/

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Why are many creative writers alcoholics?
I don’t think I’ll be one but I admit I’m a hard drinker. The pressure and anxiety produced by the publishing business is one reason said one writer. I think writing under influence helps us concentrate and ‘think freely’ too.

‘It’s unclear. Great American novelists have been hitting the bottle pretty regularly over the last few decades. According to one study, 71 percent of prominent 20th-century American writers at least flirted with alcoholism. (Only 8 percent of the general population abuses alcohol.) Ernest Hemingway once wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Of course you’re a rummy. But you’re no more of a rummy than Joyce is and most good writers are.” Despite such colorful anecdotal evidence, it’s extremely difficult to prove that booze helped these writers along. Many have suggested that great writers tend to suffer from underlying psychiatric disorders that increase both their creativity and their likelihood to drink. Others note that both writers and alcoholics are typically loners, so it’s no surprise that the categories would coincide. Laboratory studies have failed to settle the debate. It’s difficult to measure creativity and even harder to establish a placebo group—the subjects are often college students, who have a keen sense for whether or not their drinks have been spiked…’
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/12/christoper_hitchens_claimed_drinking_helped_his_writing_is_that_true_.html

Cover of To Train Up A Child

Preacher’s Spanking Book Linked to 3 Child Deaths
But author says he is not to blame

‘The pastoral mood in the hills of Tennessee offered a stark contrast to the storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child discipline, which advocate systematic use of “the rod” to teach toddlers to submit to authority. The methods, seen as common sense by some grateful parents and as horrific by others, are modeled, Mr. Pearl is fond of saying, on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

‘Debate over the Pearls’ teachings, first seen on Christian Web sites, gained new intensity after the death of a third child, all allegedly at the hands of parents who kept the Pearls’ book, “To Train Up a Child,” in their homes. On Sept. 29, the parents were charged with homicide by abuse…’
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/us/deaths-put-focus-on-pastors-advocacy-of-spanking.html?_r=2&hpw

Dickens More Relevant Than Ever
So do yourself a favor and read him
By Michael Levenson

‘Dickens! Should’st be living at this hour and should’st be writing for Slate and publishing fiction online. The world needs vivid laughter, wider vision. Even just to recall the names of characters—Smike, Scrooge, Guppy, Copperfield, Nell—is to wake to lost possibilities of what novels can reach and do. All our talk of the middle class these days is fine, but Dickens knew the higher and the lower, the much lower: the mudlark, the wasting orphan, the prison child, the crossing sweeper, the dun, the dustman, the shabby clerk, the street philosopher. He knew the textures of their everyday lives, their talk, their walk, and the urban abyss yawning near…’
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2011/11/why_now_is_the_perfect_time_to_read_dickens_.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Funny Thing with my Freelancing
While my contract with a resort client is apparently still alive, another resort site subscribed to my weblog Plato on-line. And it’s fortunate that there’s no question of loyalty with me since both sites are on different locations. But my main point is what do you do with a client which doesn’t respond to draft submissions for weeks? At least it’s not the payment yet I’m waiting for.

Public Awareness / Avaaz.org
My WebIt link: http://bit.ly/cqt5Fs

Writers who seriously edit their precious manuscripts should read it aloud to be sure the ‘tone’ is right. Here’s a free great tool that would read your drafts aloud for you.

ClipSpeak is a portable, lightweight text-to-speech tool with a minimal user interface that speaks text copied to the clipboard. It is compatible with all SAPI5 speech synthesizers, and can also be used to convert texts to MP3 files.

Features
Speak text copied (or cut) to the clipboard.
Stop ongoing speech with the right-control key.
Quickly enable and disable ClipSpeak by hitting the right shift key and the right control key.
Select the synthesizer used. If you want a free synthesizer that supports quite a number of languages, check out eSpeak.
Customise voice parameters.
Save to MP3 function lets you put your texts on your MP3 player (using LAME MP3 encoder).
Fully portable.
Small size (under a megabyte).
http://whatsonmypc.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/clipspeak/

‘Online retailers such as Amazon that do not have a physical presence are not required to collect sales tax like brick-and-mortar businesses. Big companies like Wal-Mart who are taxed see this as an unfair advantage and are paying lobbyists to push what is now called the “Amazon tax” or the “affiliate nexus tax.”
‘In short, this affiliate tax states that online merchants can in fact be taxed if they have a “nexus” or connection within the state. Affiliate marketers are one of the groups of people viewed as a connection. As a result, state governors in the above-mentioned states are signing a law that taxes Amazon and other online vendors through its affiliates. They are now being treated as having a physical presence and are subject to pay taxes.

‘Amazon has reacted immediately. Wanting to avoid being subject to costly tax inquiries from the government, they are cutting connections to every state that passes the affiliate tax by terminating agreements with all affiliate marketers, leaving many bloggers with decreased incomes and some with no incomes from their blog. As long as there are states that do not tax its sales, Amazon has stated that it will continue to avoid affiliate marketing in the states that do. As of June 30, 2011, California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have been affected by the nexus tax…’
How you can make an impact in the Amazon tax battle:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/09/21/why-bloggers-should-pay-attention-to-the-new-affiliate-tax-laws/

My WebIt link: http://bit.ly/cqt5Fs

1. Omitting Hyphens in Phrasal Adjectives

Some phrasal adjectives (including “civil rights,” “stock market,” and “high school”) don’t require hyphenation when they appear before a noun; they’re so well entrenched in the language that no risk of ambiguity exists, and their status is enshrined by inclusion in dictionaries.

But when two words team together to describe a noun, they’re usually hyphenated. (Leave them open after a noun, however.) If you can’t find them in your well-thumbed dictionary, attach them — and don’t hesitate to link more than two words: “The company instituted a pay-as-you-go plan.”
2. Adding Hyphens to Compound Words

Compound words come in three forms: open (“sand dollar”), hyphenated (sand-blind), and closed (sandbag). As you see from these examples, compounds including the same particular word are not necessarily treated the same; compounding is a random process related to usage. (Popular treatment of long-hyphenated compounds changes so rapidly that dictionaries change them in new editions to reflect prevailing usage; pigeonhole — formerly pigeon-hole — is just one example.)
3. Adding Hyphens to Prefixes

Prefixes, on the other hand, are almost always closed up to the root word. Exceptions include when the root word is a proper name (pre-Christian) and when the prefix ends and the root word begins with an i (anti-inflammatory). Note, however, that this is not true in the case of e (preempt). Another exception is words beginning with c preceded by co-, because to many people, terms like co-chair look awkward without a hyphen.
4. Omitting Hyphens from Potential Homographs

Sometimes, prefixed words that would otherwise be closed up retain a hyphen to distinguish them from otherwise identical-looking words, such as re-cover as opposed to recover and re-creation as distinct from recreation.
5. Omitting Hyphens in Verb Phrases

Compound verbs, those consisting of more than one word, are hyphenated (test-drive) or closed (troubleshoot); the dictionary will let you know which form to employ. Note, however, the difference in nearly identical-looking compound verbs and open compound nouns: “I’m going to test-drive it tomorrow,” but “I’m going to take it on a test drive tomorrow.”

Also, consider the subtle difference between gerunds formed from a hyphenated compound verb that are followed, or not followed, by an object: “I was spot-checking the report when I found a serious error,” but “I’m going to do a little spot checking.”
6. Adding Hyphens to Adverbial Phrases

Adverbs are not attached to adjectives when they team up to modify a noun: “The slowly melting ice rendered the river crossing a perilous enterprise.” However, the presence of an adverb does not negate the need for a hyphen in a phrasal adjective that follows it: “Hers was an eloquently sharp-tongued response.”
7. Adding Hyphens to Prepositional Phrases

Phrases telling the reader to do something in which the first word is a verb and the second is a preposition are not hyphenated: “Sign in at the registration table.” (The phrase is hyphenated, however, when it modifies a noun: “Go to the sign-in table.”)
8. Adding or Omitting Hyphens When Referring to Ages or Physical Dimensions

When a person is identified by their age with the phrase “seven-year-old,” for example, the phrase is hyphenated whether it modifies child, boy, girl, and so on or the noun is implied. (Note that two hyphens are necessary and that, for the spelled-out form of a two-digit number, three are required: “twenty-seven-year-old.”) However, the constituent words are unattached when the phrase follows the noun: “The child is seven years old.

By the same rules, words describing an object’s physical dimensions are similarly linked: “Cut the eight-foot-long board in half.” Note, again, that all the words describing the length of the board are attached: If the final hyphen is incorrectly omitted, the reference to a board that is eight feet long is erroneously changed to describe a long board with eight feet.
9. Omitting Letter Spaces When Using Hyphens

When you see a hyphen followed by a letter space, don’t assume the space is an error. “The assignment is a 2,000- to 5,000-word essay” is correct; word has been omitted after the first number because it is implied by its presence after the second number. (This usage is called suspensive hyphenation.)
10. Confusing Hyphens and Dashes

Many publications, for the sake of simplicity or because the producers don’t know any better, use single hyphens in place of em dashes or double hyphens (the less aesthetically pleasing alternative that is frequently employed online). But they look stubby and ugly, and this crime against aesthetics is compounded when letter spaces around them are omitted, producing abominations such as “The key-and this is important-is to keep stirring constantly.”
dailywritingtips.com

Wrong: Could care less
It always mean: Couldn’t care less

You almost never mean: Beg the question
You almost always mean: Raise the question

You might say: Less
You might mean: Fewer

You might say: Bring
You might mean: Take

You might say: That
You might mean: Which

You might say: More than
You can also say: Over

You might say: Each other
You might mean: One another
Excerpt from ‘How to Sound Smarter’ – rdasia.com

The Comma Quiz
Take this test and see how easy it is to commit mistakes with commas.
Do the following sentences require an additional comma (or perhaps two), the omission of an existing one (or two), or both? Answers and explanations follow.

1. The word breakfast literally means, to break the fasting period of your night’s sleep so you can refuel for the day.

2. The first scene takes place in a dimly lit, tactical command center, on an aircraft carrier.

3. The finishing stage is a series of asphalt “ski jumps,” only, the “skiers” are skiing the wrong way.

4. One of their biggest challenges was, coming up with a story that would resonate on a deep, emotional level.

5. Another English writer named Richard Browne used scientific reasoning to confirm the theory.

6. Among slaves, other popular instruments included drums made from hollowed logs, covered with animal hides or kitchen pots and pans.

7. They continued to run the establishment, and took great pride in the accomplishments of their sons, who kept in regular contact.

8. The storm inspired the title of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

9. As slaves were moved around, they encountered other tribes and dance forms, such as the Calenda, gained widespread intertribal appeal.

10. “Newspapers and polling organizations predicted that Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, would be America’s next president.”

Now see answers and explanations and how you did: dailywritingtips.com

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Tagalog (Filipino) is the national language of the Philippines. The continuing problem is how Filipinos interpret the word ‘wise’ among many others. The present Filipino generation interprets ‘wise’ as ‘educated’ or ‘matalino’ -which is definitely wrong. Anyone could be wise without being educated right? And the root word and literal meaning of ‘matalino’ is ‘talent’ and ‘talented’.

Even I just realized I don’t know the Tagalog translation of the word ‘wise’ so I researched. And I’m glad to find out that there is a Tagalog word for ‘wise’ which is ‘PANTAS’. Make a survey and ask young Filipinos what ‘wise’ is in Tagalog. I’ll bet you that not 10 percent could give the right answer (don’t forget to give me a share of your winnings).

I know for a fact and witnessed that Philippine dialects are dying. Now I’m scared that even our national language is dying too.

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It’s been 20 years now since the unforgettable catastrophe of June 15, 1991. My father was a native of San Marcelino, the town where Mt. Pinatubo is. When I heard that the explosion brought a major catastrophe, I asked a cousin if It’s possible to come and volunteer to help relatives. He told me coming is useless since all the roads around the province were blocked by ashfall and debris. Our relatives whose houses were damaged were walking for miles ‘like zombies’ trying to find food,water, and necessities.

I remember coming home from an office overtime (as usual) a few days after the eruption. My father told me that relatives from San Marcelino whose house was also destroyed are coming and would sleep with us for the night. To make them comfortable, I offered my bed and went back to my office where I could sleep anytime. Talking with the relatives could be done in the morning.

I was finally able to visit Pinatubo after two years. As I approach the provinces, I saw more and more gray lands covered with lahar. You feel as if you’re in another planet. There were still so many evidences of destruction many miles even before reaching San Marcelino. The majority of houses were still in ruins. In San Marcelino, the pile of lahar or volcanic sand was still about a six-inches high. While my cousins and I were drinking at the lawn, they noticed I was barefooted and asked why. I said the volcanic sand felt good on my feet like beach sand (later, lahar proved to be precious and became business material).

This disaster brought solid proof of man’s resiliency and survival skills. Imagine yourself virtually stranded without food, water, and power source. There was no recorded history of Pinatubo until 1991. Prof. Chris Newhall claims that the chain of events can be traced back to the 7.8 magnitude Baguio earthquake of 1990. Baguio is just about 100km away from Pinatubo. The Pinatubo disaster caused more than 200,000 people to evacuate and damaged more than 73,000 homes.
The shocking account of Peter Galace in rdasia.com inspired me to write about this.

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How many writers or artists do you know that were unrecognized or even ‘penniless’ before their deaths? Many of their relatives even became really ‘rich’ after they died. Here are some of the writers I’m referring to:
Henry David Thoreau
Edgar Allan Poe
Emily Dickinson
Franz Kafka

How would you feel if you abased a poor penniless writer (like me) which turned out to be famous? I just hope you don’t commit the terrible mistake.