Villains: They're crazed, they're flamboyant, and they're the smoggy, sparking engine that keeps many a story chugging along.

An amazing series of interviews edited down to this interview by Kurt Vonnegut VONNEGUT I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid [on Dresden, Germany], which must have cost tens of millions of dollars.

THE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow tunnel leading to the Chauvet caves in southern France were rewarded with magnificent artwork to rival any modern composition.

For my first thirty years I was the writing guy: good at English in school and college, Masters in Literature, and a working journalist for The Irish Times and other publications in Ireland, the US and UK.

You create your own imaginary boxes simply by living life and accepting certain things as "real" when they are just as illusory as the beliefs of a paranoid delusional.

Virginia Woolf's mind is a marvel to behold. No two books are alike. "Not this, not that," she seems to be saying as she rejects convention and hones her technique in a lifelong experiment to portray consciousness and the character of thought.

The popular craze of technology these days has driven forward a demand for products never dreamed of a couple of years ago.

Some find them ridiculous but I call them beautiful. They are six-word memoirs. Six-word memoirs? Yes – pithy little verbal packages that convey more than you might imagine.

Today, Men with Pens blogger James Chartrand revealed that "he" is actually a lady with a laptop. After working under her real name for years, Chartrand was still struggling to make it as a freelance writer. Not only was her income negligible, but "I was treated like crap, too.

Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs.

I've been using my iTouch for a while now and I've downloaded numerous applications with an eye on productivity, entertainment, and knowledge. Through the cacophony of the iPhone App popularity game, on a rare occasion I'll give voice to a product worth the hype.

In an Ann Coulter-worthy bit of self-undermining, sex writer and new owner of Britain's Erotic Review Kate Copstick says women don't know how to write about sex.

Now that the rain has stopped Quietness abounds Living creatures huddle underground Hoping somehow the Seasons might grant us reprieve But Icarus has flown; he has taken his leave Still, now and again our eyes search the skies Where gentle clouds no longer cover stark, b …

The word "essay" is defined as "a short piece of writing on a particular subject." "Photojournalism" is defined as "the art or practice of communicating news by photographs." So, it's logical to me to define a "Photo Essay" as a "short communication on a particular subject which includes both the written word and photographs."

Why bother with a definition? Why not just do it?

Well, I'm glad I asked, and, my answer is: "Depending on the subject(s), a Photo Essay can get quickly out of hand and find the reader/viewer wondering 'What the hell is this all about?'"

As a former newspaper editor, I did a great deal of "photojournalism" and learned early on how easy it is to get buried and lost under too much and too disorganized information. I also learned that a "personal" photo essay such as the "My Vacation" type, generates some of the most creative excuses from friends as to why they haven't come to see you for a while!

Having said all of this, let me now see if I can put together a "photo essay" on my vacation (wait, wait...come back!) but present it in such a way as to make it interesting and useful in a generic format.

First, I will give the essay a TITLE that will draw you in rather than turn you away - and it will be an, honest, descriptive one for many, but not for all! Keep in mind that no topic will fit all - it's not personal so let your prospective audience know up front what the story is (literally and figuratively); don't discourage future audiences by giving them a "bait and switch." They will resent it, and you - not worth it."

MY TITLE: "NINE DAYS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD IN ORLANDO, FLORIDA"

No editorial comment - those who have been to WDW might look to see how others see it or to reminisce; and, for those who haven't been there, they might want get an idea as to whether or not it's for them. I'm not pushing Disney nor doing a travelogue, and unless there's something I really loved or really hated about my nine day visit, I'll be fairly objective and let the viewer decide. If I take a side and I'm wrong either way, the "misled" traveler will blame me!

CONTENT: DON'T TRY AND SHOW IT ALL - IN MOST CASES IT CAN'T BE DONE ANYWAY AND YOU WANT YOUR PHOTO ESSAY TO BE INTERESTING FROM START TO FINISH - NOT TO BE A CURE FOR INSOMNIA.

SHOW "REPRESENTATIVE" IMAGES - SELECT CAREFULLY

You don't need nor want ten shots of Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom when one really good one will create interest and curiosity at the same time. Watch out for overkill!

MACROCOSM and MICROCOSM - establish a balance. This will vary greatly from topic to topic.

"Macrocosm" shots would be those that represent "the whole of a complex structure" - think of these as your "wide angle" images.

"Microcosm" - "a situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger." These are your zoomed-in shots. Want a great example of how to create interest and a hunger for more in a photo essay - go look at MALAMUTEMAN'S photos of DOORS! Go...NOW...I'll wait.

See! I told you. MAL created a "sense of place" artistically and minimally! Looks easy but it takes discipline and organization plus a good "eye."

MARKETING AND LICENSING - Some caveats.

Photographs of "Intellectual Property" can be tricky or worse. Disney is quite protective of its characters and attractions and rightly so. Placing images in an EDITORIAL or EDUCATIONAL NON-COMMERCIAL format is one thing, trying to SELL or LEASE/LICENSE their use is something else. Note that some of the images with this article will have © A Macarthur while others will have "Photo by A. Macarthur." I will not put my copyrights symbol on an image containing someone else's property unless I first obtain a property or model release. I have three or four agencies that represent my images and I leave it to the agents and publishers of one of my photos to obtain permission from the Disney's of the world.

LIGHTING AND OTHER CONDITIONS

Sometimes you only get what lawyers call "one bite at the apple." Bad weather and poor lighting can diminish a photo essay (or trip). Take the pictures anyway and use a photo editing software like Photoshop to "save" them if they're all you have. I'll give some examples.

OK - enough preaching. Let's do this; because this is primarily a "tutorial," before I put up all of the photos I intend to, those who might like to try a photo essay...please...read over my article first then come back tonight as I begin to place photos that go with the concepts (in CAPS). If this seems like it might be your thing, maybe down the road, we can talk about doing your own BOOK - really - full color, cover-to-cover, photos, text, you're the author, layout person, photographer and publisher! Really!

But now - first-things-first.

A. Macarthur

Tributed to my late cousin Benjamin L Fleeharty as well as all those that died in service. America, the land of the free, But where arte thou brave? Some still walk among us, Others sent to an early grave.

I am thinking about writing a book about life as a Buddhist. it will basically start off from the basics of where i came from and grew up and it will go up until now and some future aspirations. what do you think? should i write a book or shouldn't I

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations."~Isaac D'Israeli

Stephen Hawking barely needs an introduction, but his recent direction does. He is packaging the universe for the younger generation. With his daughter Lucy Hawking, he has branched out into writing children's books. More Articles

I Hate And it extends Up the root Around the tree Down the vines And through the leaves —It extends Right back to me Karma is An angry leaf Never to green Filled with grief Fallen to ground And the till goes 'round —No point In ever hating then

The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them. More Articles

The sun filters through colored windows staining the sheets of dust deep reds, blues, and yellows. My footsteps echo on the floor. Runners of carpet snake up and down the aisles, cutting-up the tile floors into neat rectangles, one for each column of pews.

I step through the doorway trembling. You should understand something-- in the box, you've got two options. Sun filters through colored windows, staining the sheets, Soaring like maniacal birds through the pews. My grandfather stumbles to his seat. He is born...so am I.

From the hoarfrost of Father Winter's spittle I sprang into being, fresh and alive and rode upon the North Wind as far as my muse would allow me to traverse.

Arthur Rimbaud, one of the most revolutionary poets of 19th-century France, grew up in a small town, Charleville, in the north-east corner of the country near the Belgian border.

A history of sugar, an account of Canadians fighting in the First World War and the unusual story of a young female assassin during the Russian Revolution are finalists for the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction.

You've been my muse all morning. I wrote this and the note on your page as a thank you for the poem below this one on my main page! I hope you enjoy them both! ******

Shall darkness dwell within this shell of mortal flesh and bone? As long as air these lungs do share I fear it's found a home. In sympathy I'll hang my head and with the morning's sun I'll dread to toil within these shoes I've tread until I reach Valhalla.

The New Year's Resolution tradition dates back to the early Babylonians, whose most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment. In Judaism's holiest holiday, Yom Kippur, one reflects upon his/her wrongdoings and seeks and offers forgiveness.

Mind twists anxious Resting on an idea Taking two breaths, spacious Pondering the release Often quiet, jumping still Selection is purpose Cause is the effect Pause is the deflect Caution needs release

TURNING PAGES Lend me your time and I'll tell you a story, lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song. There isn't any answers until there's a question. The journey begins when you come along.

Flash fiction comes in different lengths and forms, but being able to create it successfully can make you into a better writer. There are two basic rules. First, your story must have at least one character, a beginning, a plot, and a good ending.

McDonald's Neglects Bacon on Bacon, Egg, Cheese Biscuit

George Tsongas lives to write and writes to live. It's a simple formula for a feisty, full-blooded 80-year-old poet, and it works.

Most texts which accompany contemporary art production are so twisted and woolly that they could easily pass for self-parody.

Let us give thanks to librarians.

A good pal of mine turned me onto LiveJournal's MAD APE DEN community, a forum dedicated to posts about any topic with the caveat that all submissions must not contain any word of more than three letters in length.

The subject could embrace the whole continent - there was a book published in the 1980s called Versailles: the View from Sweden - but here is restricted to a single relationship: Holland and England, facing one another as first-cousin cultures, linked and separated by the Narrow  …

Jemma Leech loves music, opera and writing. She goes to school, plays with her friends and someday hopes to win a Grammy, an Oscar and a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Book piracy on the internet could drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.

A few months back I wrote an article about my experiences of self-publishing..

Gawker recently covered a list of 20 "best" children's books of all time. The post is called, "What are the Best Children's Books of All Time?" Dont worry, it only gets better from here.

You know what I'm talking about, even though you pretend that you dont.

The moving trucks were there. The household was abuzz with activity. Hector was underfoot and being told to go in the other room. When they would move into the other room, he was told to go into the other room. This is how it went for three days.

Writing anthologies and contests are tricky business. Editors comb through vast amounts of submissions, and it's hard to know what they are thinking. Most recently, Stephen King and Zadie Smith both bemoaned the state of short story submissions.

What will web videos by writers look like in ten years? I hope they won't look like Hollywood movies or trailers for Hollywood movies. It's so silly to have this new lo-fi, do-it-yourself medium of web video and pretend like we need to imitate Hollywood movies

The edges of mainstream media are begging for the kind of literary impact that many here at Newsvine, and other places before and since, are already making.

If you feel swamped, hopeless, or writers-blocked, just go to a reading and meet some new writers, just like the Happy Ending reading series. Within five minutes of sitting down, I remembered why I love writing. That's all you need.

Got writers block? I'm going to fix you up in two simple paragraphs.

We've been doing a lot of discussion about music here on the 'Vine and I just discovered one of my favorite bloggers' 2007 best of list. Of course, since its ThePublishingSpot, its all from the perspective of music to write to. Check it out...

Allow me to toot my own horn here. After all, how often do I toot my own horn? My kids are readers. Not intense readers, not habitual readers, but fun-loving readers.

Book bloggers vs. magazine book reviewers, newspaper gossip writers vs. gossip websites--we could make an endless list of the new media conflicts between print reporters and the online communities that love their beats.

You can sit in your room pounding away on your computer all you want, but you won't publish a single word until you work with a quality editor, peer, or professional writer to polish your work.

If you grew up in America, it might surprise you to learn that a poet has ever had that sort of impact. Poetry here is best known for the simple, sentimental verses found in Hallmark cards and the lyrics of pop music. The word "poet" probably calls to mind some weirdo in a beret.

Too many people expect the job of "writer" to mean one thing--sitting around quietly working on your novel. Those people will get very hungry.

Can a book deal save your life?

Can blogs build homes for long-form literary criticism?

I think blog readers tend to be very loyal but a bit more critical than most. They have sought out an alternative to other sources or media which makes them selective about information and where it comes from.

Following the Million Little Pieces and Forbidden Love furores yet preceding the If I Did It hoo-haa, Lunar Park is Bret Easton Ellis's bizarre take on memoir.

The war is over. Finally literary bloggers and literary newspaper sections are combining forces, instead of fighting with each other.

"Competence can be a curse. As a capable young woman, Casey Han felt compelled to choose respectability and success. But it was glamour and insight that she craved.

This article, after a few paragraphs of loose and cocky notes on the "true story" behind the writing and the events that inspired the writing, directs us to a new review of On The Road, one by New York Times writer John Leland (the soon-to-be-released book threatens to be more st …

On Wednesday 5 September 1957, the New York Times published a lengthy review of On the Road, the second novel by the 35-year-old Jack Kerouac.

Australian speculative fiction writer and editor Alisa Krasnostein is inviting space pioneers to help populate the far-off world of New Ceres.

Like you, I juggle way too many jobs in the fight to keep writing and support myself. When I asked novelist Heather McElhatton (author of Pretty Little Mistakes) how she survived our frustrating lifestyle, she had a beautiful answer: ... TAKE A FRIGGING VACATION!

Writing is a hard, thankless, low-to-no-paying job, and it is hard to know how to survive the lean years.

Did YouTube kill the political star?

Think you write a punchy sentence? Imagine your next sentence projected in gigantic letters on the side of the New York Public Library.

Should you release your novel on your blog?

Meg Rosoff would never walk under a ladder. Not because she thinks something bad would happen, but she doesn't want to risk it, just in case. The London-based author's third novel, 'What I Was', will be published later this year.

'Write what you know.' That's what countless creative writing teachers told me as I struggled to write during my undergraduate years. Nowadays, as a new generation of web writers are cutting their teeth and looking for inspiration, maybe that advice still works.

Why waste all your time making silly comments in MySpace when you could be turning your MySpace friends into art?

Woody Wilson spent a whole year meticulously crafting a brand new comic strip for syndication--pushing hard to fulfill his dreams of being a comic strip writer. Every syndicate turned him down.

Feel like you aren't getting anywhere with your writing career? Feel like you spend too much time at the day job

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has beaten writers such as Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood to win the second Booker International Prize.

Lance Olsen: My rule of thumb during editing is simple, if cold-hearted: When in doubt, cut it out. What I adore is producing a large, sprawling, clayey mess of a first draft, then sculpting it down to something bright and sharp-cornered.

...If you plan to write for money or fame, do something else. Probably some of the best advice I have ever heard (and this is definitely not the first time I've heard it).

"A bit of advice is worth repeating: don't listen for praise, but for constructive criticism, the kind that you can take home and use to better your manuscript ...

Australian writer Margo Lanagan is best known for her short stories, with collection Black Juice winning two World Fantasy Awards and "A Fine Magic" picking up an Aurealis Award.

Prolific Adelaide-based science fiction writer Sean Williams kicked off his career contracted to write nine books in two and a half years, and hasn't slowed down since.

If you never read any Five Easy Questions interview in your whole life, I recommend that you read this Five Easy Questions interview.

"What if Heaven wasn't all it's cracked up to be? Friends Kate and Daniel find that after their untimely deaths, Heaven leaves them dissatisfied and itching for something... else. So they're off, with a passport to discover more afterlives, heroes and gods.

You can be brilliant, but it will take work. It's real work, the kind that keeps you thinking in detail about the intricacies of plot, character development, level of detail, setting, show-don't-tell, and structural word usage.

Is too.

Okay, enough bickering. The idea that "Writing is not a crime" was inspired by this story which has played out to varying degrees of publicity from about a week after the Virginia Tech shootings 'til now. Allen Lee was arrested at school for having written a creative writing assignment that the school regarded as threatening. Apparently, he's returning to school and will be allowed to fulfill his Marine Corps enlistment commitment provided he and the local state's attorney reach an accommodation, which seems likely. I'm guessing pre-trial probation or somesuch: Essay writer back in school: Student to graduate with classmates; unfortunately, that very likely outcome will leave unsettled forever the immediate and instant cause for outrage and debate--whether a fair reading of the essay by a judge or jury would have concluded that it reasonably constituted a threat. With a final legal judgment now likely to be highly ambiguous, we could debate it forever--and we almost did, here: 'Stab, stab, stab, stab': Teen's essay detailed, and here: Boy arrested for writing 'disturbing' story explains the story (with full text of story).

So rather than rehash that now endlessly mootable point, let us begin from First Principles. The idea that "Writing is not Crime" is in effect a moral claim about a theory of Art that declares: There are no boundaries to expressive conduct. Just like we have Doctors Without Borders, writers should be without borders. No "law" should apply. But that contention is unsustainable, both literally and figuratively.

To see how it literally cannot apply, consider Speech Acts (Kent Bach, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy), those acts of speech or expression that operate as behaviors or that directly operate upon behaviors in society, things like commands, promises and apologies, from stop signs, to marriage vows to ... well, no doubt, the apology Allen Lee will probably be required to provide as condition of the dismissal of charges. And threats. We can argue about Allen Lee's menacing but discursive comment about a teacher getting shot, but what about the following is not a crime?

Student Calls For Teacher's Murder On YouTube

Is there any artistic convention that student could have employed that would not have rendered it a crime? Would expressing the threat in limerick form have eliminated the act of expressing a threat?

Let us now consider Speech Acts not so easy to delineate as direct threats articulated by way of YouTube video, and operating under a tougher but more significant law: Crimes Against Humanity. For example, Leni Riefenstahl. Her films helped Adolph Hitler take, hold and grow power. Her Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) is a thousand, a million, a billion, a million billion times more truly a Horror film than every Horror film ever made by Hollywood combined because hers was intrinsic to the greatest crime ever perpetrated, the Holocaust. Her expressive conduct was vastly more important to Hitler's evil reign than some lethargic railroad guard on a transport of Jews to Poland. Are we to say that her Art is not a "crime" because we study it in film school, whereas the schlep of a guard is the epitome of evil and the perpetrator of crimes against humanity?

In the same vein, the great American poet Ezra Pound (Pound's Life and Career--by Clive Wilmer)--maybe the greatest American poet of the 20th century, was quite justifiably arrested for the Constitutional crime of treason at the conclusion of World War II. He made radio propaganda broadcasts from Axis territory in defense and support of both Mussolini, and to a lesser extent, Hitler all throughout the war.

During once such broadcast from Rome, he read "Canto XLVI". Are we to believe that all his political diatribes were treasonous but that the one on February 12, 1942 was not because it was a poem and "Writing is not a crime"?

In all these cases, the humane consequences of the act of writing seems to me to outweigh the dry and rigid principle that "Writing is not a crime." If we could trade Riefenstahl's films, brilliant though they may be, for Six million murdered Jews, would anyone but a monster choose the films? By the same token, although this is about boundaries, not a "crime" directly but indirectly consider these lines of poetry, from a poem called, "A psychological portrait of poetry":

Can't really explain, really not worth saying, what you may have said,

Though you misinterpret what really was playing, and what could have been read.

Hope it doesn't drive you insane, though you are so good,

That the thought understood, go beyond all expected of what really should have gone unsuspected…

Not bad, huh?

It's from a note left by a severely bi-polar and increasingly non-functional paranoid schizophrenic who threw off his medication and ran away. The author here has a chance to lead a happier, healthier and more functional life, and not be the danger to himself and his family that he may already be (and will probably become) if the torment evident in those lines is controlled by his doctors. But he won't write anymore, probably. Yet it would be criminal malpractice if the attending physicians allowed the writing here to take precedence over the mental health of the patient.

The final set of "crimes" I want to discuss, or boundary violations, are those that some writers are entitled to violate and others are not, or that writers must know they violating before they make a conscious, mature artistic choice to violate. The primary example of the latter, of course, is Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Does that mean I support the fatwa of death issued against Rushdie as result of that writing? Of course not. I may think Writing can be a Crime, but capital punishment seems a little harsh. I'm simply pointing out that writer as deep and brilliant an observer of the human condition must surely have been aware that the blasphemy entailed by his work would create outrage. It was a brave and heroic act by that artist. Removing the "crime," removes also the courage and heroism.

Ira Brooker, co-founder and co-editor of No Touching Magazine cites the bestiality in The Hamlet by William Faulkner to mock the idea that the content of a work of art reflects the impulses, desires, and criminal plans of the author. Although Booker also cites John Irving, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita better suits my argument.

In the hands of anyone except a literary genius who had invested a life and career developing their talent, such a sensitive and (occasionally) sympathetic portrait of such a monstrous pedophile would have been a crime. Young, naive and undeveloped artists are simply not prepared to approach such material barring extremely unusual personal circumstances (such as being either a victim or the perpetrator of such crimes). If the first, I'm willing to be convinced. If the second, is there a difference between vindicating such acts by declaring such writing to be "not a crime" and being in effect an accessory after the fact? In all ordinary cases though, the old cliche is still true: You have to know the rules before you can break them.

Young writers haven't paid their dues ... they don't know enough about the human condition to create worthwhile art from such themes. To borrow a phrase from Twain, such writing is invariably a "literary offense."

And there's one last reason to have "boundaries" or "laws" restricting writing: So that when broken by a Master, the Art kicks ass all the way down Main Street and up Third.

If you have HBO, you saw the The Sopranos: Chasing It last Sunday night. You know what I'm talking about. If you don't have HBO but you are cued into American popular culture, you know what I'm talking about. If neither, you still probably have some idea . . . Yeah, they crossed a boundary. Violated a "law" even of pay cable.

But without that boundary, the "crime" of crossing it would not have enriched us with such depth of feeling and insight into the human condition.

Stop reading! You need to write.

After a year of being the author for TheBizofCoding, Ujwal Tickoo shares 5 blogging lessons he has learned.