The Vandal – Derek Haines

Writing is one thing, but preparing your writing for readers is another. With so many writers now being given the wonderful opportunity to publish their work, there are many who are either sloppy and lazy or are lacking in the grammatical and orthographic fundamentals necessary to write well. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a poem, a short story or a blog post, accuracy is essential. Whether it be for print or for Internet posting, the same care and effort should be taken to ensure that a writer presents them self as competent. Of course it’s easy to say that writers should use an editor or reliable proofreader, but in

Big Brother is watching you! It’s very easy to forget as we lie back on our sofas with our laptops, iPads and smart phones, Tweeting and Facebooking away that we are being continuously monitored. Unaware of the possible consequences of out little text exchanges. As happened recently to a young Saudi newspaper columnist, whose Tweet has him into seriously, hot water. The newspaper report indicates that the young man could possibly face the death penalty. In some ways, it is very easy to imagine that all the social media and social networking choices we have available to us now on the Internet were actually started by intelligence gathering agencies. What better

Writing is akin to being naked in the street baring yourself to the world. This paraphrases the thought expressed to me by a friend recently when we discussed publishing one’s writing. The analogy is very good in fact as what we write are our thoughts, which normally are of course politely and extremely well hidden from public view and safe from prying eyes and ears. Our thoughts are without exception, the most private parts of our body. An exquisite result of water, cells and electricity that produces these invisible, untouchable and deeply hidden notions. So deeply hidden that we have difficulty sharing them with even the closest people in our