Monthly Archives: October 2009

I have noticed an increase in traffic to my blog recently. Much of the search engine traffic is directed here because of the quote by Umbertoumberto_eco_narrowweb__300x450,0 Eco that I have used as my blog title. I have always had the urge to provide the context of the quotation, which also adds to the reader’s appreciation of the text. So when i saw people driven to the blog for the quote without having the context, i found a reason to provide it. Here’s an excerpt from the interview where Eco talks of filling empty spaces, he further goes on to explain the idea. .

An Interview with Umberto Eco, by Mukund Padmanabhan, Sunday, Oct 23, 2005.
Source: The Hindu.

Umberto Eco…”I work in empty spaces”

Mukund: The English novelist and academic David Lodge once remarked: “I can’t understand how one man can do all the things he [Eco] does.”

Umberto Eco: Maybe I give the impression of doing many things. But in the end, I am convinced I am always doing the same thing.

Mukund: Which is?

Eco: Aah, now that is more difficult to explain. I have some philosophical interests and I pursue them through my academic work and my novels. Even my books for children are about non-violence and peace…you see, the same bunch of ethical, philosophical interests.

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.

Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! (Laughs).

Read the complete Interview here>>

Read my article on Filling Empty Spaces in your Life: A Secret to Success here>>

Who says creative writing  doesn’t have a market? Fine you can’t earn your living being a poet but sure there are a lot more opportunities that can come your way, and a bit of money. I came across these few sites that pay really well with every poem/ flash fiction/ book review selected for publication. Though the number of such sites/ publications are few as compared to the flooded non-fiction market, also, creative writing does not offer much when you go for freelance writing yet if you are among those who love writing poetry, fiction and would even love better to have them published and earn a few bucks with it, check out these few sites.

 

Pedestal magazine

Accepts almost all the genres: Poetry, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Book The Pedestal MagazineReviews, Interviews, Slam, spoken word, poetry with music, and performance poetry.

Pay Rate: $40 per poem, Pay Rate: $.08 per word Length: up to 4,200 words for Fiction, Pay Rate: $.08 per word, Length: up to 1,000 words for Flash Fiction, Pay Rate: $.02 per word, Length: 850-1,000 words for Book Reviews, Pay Rate: $10 per track for Slam and other genres. Check out Submission Guidelines.

 

Riddle Fencefeature_riddle_more2

Riddle Fence accepts previously unpublished poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and reviews for publication. Upto 3-4 poems or 1 piece of prose, maximum 5000 words in length can be submitted at once.

Pay Rate: $30 per printed page (prose and poetry). Accepts only snail mail submissions. Read Submission Guidelines.

 

Vestral Review The Vestral Review

Accepts only flash (short-shorts) fiction. It says “In our definition, a flash story is no longer than 500 words and it has a plot. If it’s longer than 500 words and/or has no plot, we are not interested. The reading periods of this magazine are February-May and August-November. No submissions are accepted in the month of December, January, June and July.

Pay Rate: Stories up to 100 words (excluding the title)–10 cents a word, Stories between 101 and 200 words–5 cents a word, Stories between 201 and 500 words–3 cents a word, Stories of great merit receive up to $25 flat fee; 3 cents a word is a minimum pay in any case.In addition, every contributor will get one free copy. Read the submission guidelines before submitting your work.
Send your submissions to submissions@vestalreview.net?subject=Submission.

 

Blue Mountain ArtsThe Blue Mountain arts

Blue Mountain Arts is interested in reviewing writings for publication on greeting cards. They look for highly original and creative submissions on friendship, family, special occasions, positive living, and other topics one person might want to share with another person. Submissions may also be considered for inclusion in book anthologies.

Pay Rate: $300 per poem for all rights to publish it on a greeting card and $50 if your poem is used only in an anthology.

 

Cappers

Cappers encourages Free and light verse. Traditional, nature and inspirational poems are purchased. Poems should be  easy to read with down-to-earth themes. Five or six poems are used in each issue. submissions should be limited to batches of 5-6, length 4-16 lines.

Pay rate: $10-$15 per poem on acceptance.
Raed the Submission Guidelines.

 

Strange Horizonsstrange_horizons

Strange Horizons is a place for you if you can submit high-quality, extraordinary Science Fiction, fantasy, horror, and “slipstream” poetry. It also accepts Fiction, Reviews, articles and art exhibits.

Poetry

About the kind of Poetry Strange Horizons’ looking for, it explains “We want poems that have some literary depth but aren’t boring; poems that are unusual yet readable; poems that balance inventiveness with traditional structures. We like serious works, as well as poems with wit and humor that don’t collapse into pure silliness.”
Pay rates for new poetry will be $20 per poem.
Email poetry to poetry@strangehorizons.com.

Read Poetry Submission Guidelines.

Fiction:

Read this before submitting “We want good speculative fiction. If your story doesn’t have a clear fantasy or science fiction element, or at least strong speculative-fiction sensibilities, it’s probably not for us.” Strange Horizons is not generally interested in horror (especially stories in which the main goal is to evoke feelings of terror or revulsion in the reader), stories that explain a scientific or technological phenomenon in great detail, stories we see too often, stories with twist endings.

Pay rate:  5 cents/word, with a minimum payment of $50.
Read the Fiction Submission Guidelines before submitting your work.

Articles.

Non-fiction articles, including: interviews with authors of speculative fiction; articles on aspects of science (such as astronomy, ballistics, artificial intelligence) or technology (historical or futuristic) that would be of interest to readers and writers of speculative fiction; criticism of books, movies, games and any other media relating to speculative fiction and articles on history and culture that relate to speculative fiction.
Pay rate: Pieces in the 2000-5000 word range will be paid at a flat rate of $50.00 per piece. Pieces shorter than 2000 words will normally be unpaid. Pieces longer than 5000 words will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Read the article Submission Guidelines
Art Gallery

The Magazine plainly sets its preferences “We love art that is stylistically distinct while maintaining the essence of speculative fiction. Abstract expressionism, impressionistic, photorealistic, just about any approach, are all considered, provided that the speculative fiction theme is at the core. One theme we are looking for is material that captures the dramatic nature of speculative literature—think about it: alternate realities where magic can yield power similar to potential technological achievements a million years in the future, where a single person can change the outcome of an entire world, or where nature in all her majesty outwits human ingenuity yet again.”
Read the Submission guidelines before submitting your work-

Reviews

Strange Horizons publishes in-depth reviews of speculative art and entertainment, especially books, films, and television, three times a week.
Pay Rate $20 for reviews of at least 1000 words. Read the Review Submission guidelines before submitting your work.

 

Jim Baen’s Universe: a professional science fiction and fantasy magazine.Jim Baen's Universe

Pay Rates: For the first 5000 words, we’ll pay 25 cents a word. That comes to $1,250, or the next 5000 words (i.e., from 5-10K), we’ll pay 15 cents a word. That comes to $750, or a cumulative payment of $2000 for a story that was 10K words long., For the next 10,000 words (i.e., from 10-20K), we’ll pay 10 cents a word. That comes to $1000, or a cumulative payment of $3000 for a short novella that was 20K words long, For the next 20,000 words (i.e., from 20-40K), we’ll pay 8 cents a word. That comes to $1600, or a cumulative payment of $4600 for a short novel that was 40K long, Anything longer than that, we’ll pay 6 cents a word.

Read the Submission Guidelines

Please note that Jim Baen’s Universe magazine is not accepting any submissions until 2010.

Poetry Market.

Duotrope

Duotrope’s Digest is a free resource for writers that primarily offers an extensive, searchable database of current fiction and poetry markets. We also offer a calendar of upcoming deadlines, submissions trackers (for registered users), and some nifty reports compiled from the data we’ve accumulated.

Poetry Market at Fiction Factor

Fiction Factor publishes a list of sites, magazines, ezines which are updated periodically.

You can submit articles that offers aspiring writers tips and advice on honing their skills, and helping new authors to break into the publishing field at Fiction Factor. Pay Rate: $5 US via PayPal only for each article accepted and published Read the submission Guidelines

Note: Fiction Factor Does not accept poetry submissions.

Poetry Market at For writers.com

Another site that periodically publishes Poetry market listings. It also has some useful links to writing lessons,techniques, prompts etc.

E Zines

A List of Poetry and Literary magazines, ezines compiled byFrederick Glaysher. Very useful.

Must Read-

PS: Please make sure you read at least one issue of the magazine you submit your work to. This will give you a good idea of the kind of works being published by the magazine. Don’t feel disappointed if your submissions are rejected, you might be at the wrong place.

I organize papersfire_or_ice
carelessly scattered
on my study table.
There is one paper
bearing burden
of a heart-
eleven year old.
I read it again, a hundredth time.
The world of stars
and galaxies
has shrunk itself
in pink and blue
four lined paper.
Just a few words,
poetry
of a boy- little lone.
He is asking me, over and again

“Will you tell me madam
what is the definition of a family?
Mother says
there is
a destinyuniverse460x276
a dream
yet to be fulfilled.
A sole journey
to eternal happiness
Destiny
yet to be accomplished.
She says
‘When you really want something
the whole universe conspires
to help you achieve’.

Madam will you
tell me
‘Does universe conspire for everyone?’
We all have dreams
my parents toocosmos
have one
or should i say two?
Different dreams
Directions different
‘Are different universe
conspiring for them?’

Or-
Is it just one
in many roles.
Wretched universe
where is mine?
No geography
No Physics
No mathematics
could answer me
just so simple
a question.”

Just to ease
his troubled mind
I asked him
the other day
What he wanted to beuniverse4
when he grows up
like all of us.

“An astronaut.
madam-
for i will go
too
in search
of my own universe.
May be of my parents too.
I will reconcile
both of them
and find a destiny
that everyone shares.”

This might not be the right place to say it, but let it be, I must tell youwp this. I am not very glad to have a blog at wordpress. I think i would have made a better choice with blogger. why? well, i keep having a lot of problems with formatting here. Lately i discovered all my widgets going awry. There was a long list of categories column out there, repeated heaven knows how many times. I gave bone good hour fixing my blog to its original but that was not to stay. Many of my pages went missing for a long period of time and then suddenly surfaced one day. I used to have page titled my library with a link to myLibrarything book catalogue. I lost it long back and haven’t cared to put it back. Off and on i see some widgets added into my blog and it often takes me a lot of time to get my blog to its original shape. Since i am not very good at programming, html and other stuff i choose to leave the matter at wordpress’ will.

I keep my posts as simple as i possibly can. Don’t want to bother myself with missing videos, pictures, tables etc.For one of my posts  inserting a table became a dire necessity. I went all crazy cut pasting the table content keeping the rows and columns in place. When i checked out the support forum, i discovered to my utter disappointment that wordpress doesn’t offer tables insertion into posts. After reading a few similar complaints i set on to find out sites where documents could be uploaded.

rSince i am a member of Redgage, I gave it a try. Hopeless. That’s what came to my mind when i juggled with uploading file with .rtf format. So, even Redgage doesn’t offer .rtf uploads. wonder, some people even had problems uploading .doc format files. But before i found that out i had already downloaded a file convertor. Even wordpress has a plug in called Wp file uploader. But i know little how to activate it. So after all that fuss I found Scribd. Scribdsc is a document sharing site that allows users to create PDF, easily publish and share documents with the world. You can embed your Sribd documents into your WordPress blog with a plugin. It is simple and easy to use. Find in the post below a document uploaded with Scribd. Now after doing a considerable research on this I know what went wrong, I must activate that box.net sharing widget on my blog, isn’t that also a file sharing tool? That’s what it is, we often go in search of treasure we have at our door step. but the journey was worth it. Now, i have a .doc convertor software which i might need sometime, i have discovered this real good site for file sharing and all that it offers ( still to find out which one’s a better option: box.net or Scribd), and of course i have another blog post for the day.

I’ll appreciate your support if you let me know what’s up with this formatting chaos..can’t take this any longer.

studyingPreparing for a competitive examination is lot more than studying diligently. You have to plan your strategy, keep yourself updated on the admission procedures of different colleges, find the score of exams you must sit for and a lot more. If you are a novice you has just decided to pursue B.tech or B.E and don’t know how and where to begin you must do considerable research about the options available to you. This takes a lot of your precious time. But if you have everything at handy, right people to guide you, right places to begin your journey with, right material at one place, it becomes a lot more easy.

This post is a small attempt to bring to use the information and material i collected for my brother who appeared for IIT-JEE and AIEEE 2009. He is now pursuing Mechanical Engineering at NIT Warangal. I was about to delete these files from my unpredictable PC before they evaporate to god knows where that it occurred to me to bring them to some use. This article focuses only on the homework to be done before you decide for the exams you are going to sit for. Many students just sit for IIT-JEE and AIEEE and think it’s over, when it’s not. There are many other Engineering entrance exams you must keep a note of.

 

2007121150060201Once you have decided to pursue B.Tech/B.E the first thing to look for is the colleges offering it. Fine, we all know about the prestigious IIT’s and the boggling IIT JEE. Same with AIEEE. But there are many good colleges which take their own exam. BITS, VIT, Osmania among others. While there are others like Harcourt Butler which takes students through UPTU. Many students insist on not taking up examinations other than IIT JEE and AIEEE. For simple reason, that most of the good colleges take students through these exams. well, this is not entirely true, there are few good colleges which take their own exam and one mustn’t miss them. Sitting for all the exams is always a better and safer option.

IIT jee

Though there is no dearth of blogs, articles, forums on B.tech/ B.E admissions but the vital thing is to get to the right place without wasting a lot of time. All I have done is put everything at place for you. Hope you find it useful.

1. College ranking.

To find the best colleges offering the subject of your choice the first thing you need to look for is the college ranking. well, you will find the college ranking taken by many magazines like India Today, Forbes, Outlook among others. But the important thing is to find the authentic ones. You cannot rely on the ranking of just one magazine, no matter how authentic the magazine is. The best way is to take ten years ranking from all the important magazines and of course, take the parameters of the ranking, and tally them. Here’s a link to the analysis and survey of the last few years Top T Schools ranking.

College Ranking and student’s impressions-

Data Quest India India’s Top T Schools : Complete Survey.

Outlook India’s Top T Schools

India Today’s ranking of Top T schools.

Other useful links: Though the ranking over the years is more or less consistent, check out the links below for comments from the readers.

successcds

college ranking

college ranking

college ranking

 
2. How to apply.

You’ll find the College ranking all over the place, but you will have to know how to apply for the colleges offering the subject of your choice, the exams you must sit for and other important things.

Well, colleges that take students through IIT-JEE/AIEEE aren’t a great fuss. The question is many people miss out on good colleges which either take students through AIEEE but does not have central counseling (they have their own counseling) and the other colleges which have their own admission tests. This is the area which needs proper research. So, you must know the exams you are sitting for. You might miss a lot of good colleges if you do not know how to get through them.

Here’s my compilation of Institute wise ranking along with admission procedure and important dates

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List of Colleges that take students through AIEEE/CCB Central Counseling.

3. BLOGS related to IIT-JEE/AIEEE

Though the internet is flooding with blogs that will give you the information required. But you can’t be missing these. The bloggers of these blogs are very helpful and responsive. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about getting admission to a good engineering college. You even get to meet students who are, like you, preparing for the same exam, you get to talk to them and discuss issues related to your field. Book mark these blogs. They are very helpful. Visit them and you’ll know.

Ankur Mttal’s blog

Ankur Gupta’s blog

100percentile

4. A few things you must follow so that you don’t miss out on an exam-

a. Subscribe to admission updates on your e-mail or mobile. successcds.com is a good place.
b. Talk to the students who are studying in the college you are applying for.(once you are thorough with the exam and have cleared it)
c. Take a good counseling help from the blogs mentioned above to choose an institute in accordance with your AIR(All India Rank).

Good luck.

What is there
To say,
to listen to.
talk it over
and sort out.
To recollect,
recognize
blotched faces.
Hold on to them
or let slip
in cascade of time.
Wander in search.
To imagine
having found
massacred moments.
March a funeral
never to talk about
or talk only to explain
and be together.
Suddenly
to hear a word
that makes you run scot-free.
To sit back
clean down
greasy gossamers,
to bait past
with shredded souvenir
hook it up, and
put on display.

© Copyright by tina rathore