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J.K. Rowling Begs Fans To Stop Sending Her Paper
From: www.writerswrite.com

" Remember when J.K. Rowling bemoaned the fact that it was hard for a writer to find simple, lined paper in the middle of Edinburgh? Well, her fans hear her loud and clear and have been deluging the author with gifts of lined paper.

"Be careful what you wish for," says JK Rowling, "it might come true." In a message posted on her website earlier this week, she called a halt to the deluge of paper sent in to her by loyal readers. The deliveries began last month after Rowling complained - to the consternation of local shopkeepers - that she found it difficult to buy "normal, lined paper" in the middle of Edinburgh.

"What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realises, to her horror, that she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag?" she asked, horrified at the thought that Edinburgh university students have abandoned pen and ink for laptop computers.

Her legions of fans, terrified at the prospect of any delay in the publication of the next - and, indeed, the final - installment of the Harry Potter saga, or perhaps anguished at the thought of a check to Rowling's inspiration, took pity on her plight and began sending in books-worth of the stuff. "Some of you sent single sheets," explained Rowling, "others entire pads, one enterprising paper merchants sent a large stack of notebooks embossed boldly with JK ROWLING, which I might not use in public, but which are very lovely all the same."

Others, realising that the multimillionaire author wasn't so much having a problem buying paper as getting hold of it when on the move in Edinburgh, sent in recommendations for particular shops. The more thorough "even enclosed maps". Rowling has now called a halt. "I've now got enough paper to write several book sevens," she says, "so no excuse there."

The average cost of employer-provided training is about $950 per employee across industries, according to the report, but it can range from online tutoring programs to full-scale writing workshops.

"We're likely to send out 200 to 300 people annually for skills upgrade courses like business writing or technical writing," said one unidentified respondent quoted in the report.

Another said they provide training in business writing and documentation but not basic writing. One person noted that they have offered in-house programs on improving writing and communication skills for several years and even brought in a college professor to develop six courses for the employer.

A fourth said that their employer, who found in-house training too complex, spends between $2,500 and $3,500 on training per individual when it's "absolutely necessary."

"Writing skills are fundamental in business," observed one unidentified respondent quoted in the report. "It's increasingly important to be able to convey content in a tight, logical, direct manner, particularly in a fast-paced technological environment."

Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative whose unmasking led to a federal investigation and the indictment of a top vice presidential aide, has agreed to a book deal with the Crown Publishing Group. Financial terms were not disclosed, but two sources close to the negotiations said the deal was in the low seven figures. Several publishers had competed for the memoir, scheduled to come out in the fall of 2007 and tentatively titled "Fair Game."

In 2003, White House adviser Karl Rove reportedly said Plame was "fair game" after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence about Iraq to justify going to war. "She will tell her whole story, absolutely," Crown's publisher and senior vice president, Steve Ross, said Friday. "This book will be the first time the public will get to hear about her work and the surprising role she had in intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the war in Iraq."

Ross also said that Plame would tell of "being a high ranking woman in the male-dominated intelligence community." He said Plame would write the book herself and that "one of the most pleasant surprises was the quality of her craftsmanship and the richness of her storytelling" in the book proposal she submitted.

How much Plame, now retired from the agency, will reveal could be complicated by two factors: The CIA, which reviews the manuscripts of former agents and has reportedly become stricter about what it will permit, and next year's scheduled trial of I. Libby Lewis, the former chief aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Tweezer-thin Maureen Dowd thinks she gained weight from those hotel- room snacks on tour for her hilarious book Are Men Necessary?.

"At 5 p.m. it was Oreos, at 8 p.m., the Pringles," Dowd confessed to us last week.

SmashPhone will soon roll out Girls & Sports and The Meaning of Lila, with help from Creators Syndicate, a provider of comic strips to newspapers. A new comic strip called Mostly Heads will debut, too. The free service will run on an advertising model, where the ads appear before the comic strip.

The Meaning of Lila was created and written by John Forgetta, editorial director at American Greetings. Girls & Sports was created by Justin Borus and Andrew Feinstein, a former Warner Bros. animator. Mostly Heads is a new comic strip created by Darren Jones, a former E! Entertainment Network producer, and SmashPhone co-founder.

SmashPhone will charge advertisers 5 cents per frame, said co-founder Robin Rowe. "We're aiming for the top 100 companies to advertise," he said. "The usual ones like General Motors and Procter & Gamble."

Seventy-two percent of all respondents said they followed the news closely, including 67 percent of those 18 to 24 years old.

Asked to name the news source they most trusted, without any prompting, 59 percent of Egyptians said Al Jazeera, 52 percent of Brazilians said Rede Globo, 32 percent of Britons said the BBC, 22 percent of Germans said ARD and 11 percent of Americans said Fox News, each leading their respective nations.

The most trusted news brands globally were the BBC, Britain's publicly funded broadcaster, and CNN, which is owned by the world's biggest media conglomerate, Time Warner Inc..

Three Internet portals -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft/MSN -- received the next highest trust ratings across the 10 countries, when respondents were prompted with 16 different brand names.

Although trust in media has grown in most countries over the past four years, the survey found, 28 percent of people across the 10 countries either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement: "In the past year I have stopped using a specific media source because it lost my trust."