Aditya Shevade » Linux

Beginning Freelance Writing

Aditya — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:30:35 +0000

There are a few good Linux magazines around the world which publish content submitted by the readers. I have been writing for a few myself. A lot of people emailed me and asked me the details – how to contact, how to propose your idea, how to get it approved. You could be a brilliant writer, the next Shakespeare perhaps, but they don’t know that. Unless you contact and present yourself and market your idea to them – they won’t know. So I figured, I might as well an article about the procedure. Heck, I do it almost once every month (write proposals and guide aspiring authors).

Where to Begin

I am focusing on Linux related topics and Linux based magazines in this article. To begin, you should target specific magazines. A plausible list of magazines is,

Linux for You
Linux Magazine
Ubuntu User
Linux Format
Linux Journal
LWN

Once you target a magazine, you should know what you want to write about. Ideas usually come to mind if you are passionate about a subject. There are a number of ways to inspire yourselves with ideas to write about. One of the frequent tools I use is StumbleUpon. Stumbling through Linux/Unix topic throws a bunch of ideas at you and you can, hopefully, get hang of the situation.

This approach may not work well with some magazines since they have a theme they follow for the months to come. Linux Journal, for example, has a list of topics they intend to cover in the upcoming issues for a year. Similar lists are available on websites of other magazines also. If you have no idea, or if you want to improve your chances or approval, you should probably start here and find something that interests you and think on that.

The Proposal – Initial Draft

Even though technical, these magazines require strong writing skills on your (author’s) part. They have editorial teams which edit your submissions but it’s always a good idea to improve your written communication and make the drafts as perfect as you possibly can.

If you have an idea of what you want to write about, it’s time to draft the initial proposal. Usually all the magazines require you to introduce yourself in a few lines. You should write your qualifications as a writer here and something that sets you apart from the average Linux user. Any experience you might have had with Linux, writing (technical writing experience would help), what makes you a unique person to write on the subject. This is a place to market yourself and sell yourself to the editors of the magazine.

After that, describe the topic you would like to write about. The general overview of the subject. Introduce the topic to the editors. Assume they know nothing about the topic and in a couple of lines, describe it to them. Then conclude the section with the target audience. What sells the idea? Why would people be interested in it?

Then you should clearly state what you wish to achieve from this article. Is it a review? Is it a case study? What would be the outcome of the article? Is it just an informative article or a do it yourself type of article? What should the readers expect from it?

These 2 paragraphs about the article should not be longer than a couple of lines each. After these 2 paragraphs, optionally introduce the topic at an abstract level and then write an outline of your article. Right from introduction to a conclusion. All the main points and sub-points included. Elaborate on each sub-point in a line or two.

Conclude the proposal with possible changes, improvements or additions, keep the topic open for discussion (from the editors). Make sure there are no spelling mistakes or typographical errors in the proposal. Make sure you format the proposal clearly. Different magazines may have different proposal formats which you should look into before submitting it. Clearly state the subject as ‘Article Proposal’ or the subject format that the magazine uses (you can find this information on the websites of the magazines).

Write for Us

Here are some links to the Write for Us pages of few of the magazines you can write for. They have the email IDs of the editors and a guide for authors submitting their proposals.

Linux for You => Linux for You is a magazine published from India in over 5 countries.
Linux Magazine => Linux Magazine is one of the best Linux related magazines today, published by Linux New Media
Ubuntu User => Ubuntu User is another magazine from Linux New Media, focused towards the Ubuntu operating system.
Linux Format => Linux Format is a UK based magazine that focuses on the average home user.
Linux Journal => Linux Journal – probably the most well known Linux magazine ever.
LWN => LWN is an online magazine focused towards Kernel development and security.

Get to Know Your Employers

Generally, the editors can tell if you actually read their magazine. Reading the magazine helps you understand the goals, style, target users and the general philosophy behind the magazine. I strongly suggest you pick up one yourself and read it to get to know it better.

Now What

Now you wait. What you must remember is, most of these magazines are international magazines which sell in multiple countries. There are a lot of readers who wish to contribute to the magazines and are, like you, writing to the editors. With such large amount of proposals, the editors may take a long time to reply (but they won’t ignore your proposal). Be patient, they have a lot of work, they will reply. Send a follow up email after a week if you wish.

Second thing you need to do is to be ready for refusals. Especially with these magazines. The reasons being the same that there are literally thousands of proposals being sent to each one of these. Unless you sell yourself correctly, be ready for a refusal – and be ready to send new proposals. Keep trying, it’s not as hard as it looks.

If your proposal is approved – well done and congratulations. It’s time to start writing.

Inceptualization

Aditya — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 03:48:59 +0000

Inception – the movie which changed the way many people look at things. At least that was what I heard when the movie came out. Everyone was talking about it. The graphics, the soundtrack, the acting… the story. It is a good movie, one of the better movies of late and I respect Nolan for that.

Many people have raised questions about the movie. The initial concept, lack of information about the device that lets you tap into someone else’s mind, the dreams within the dreams… People say he has not explained things clearly and that there are a lot of lose ends to be tied up. One of the questions everyone asks is – what exactly is the device? How can you go into someone else’s dreams? I don’t want to get into that argument in this post. There are a lot of movies which do not answer a lot of questions.

Then I stumbled upon an episode of SouthPark. Insheeption. It’s a parody of Inception and I like it more than the movie in a way (I know I am comparing Linux with BSD here). The way they have done things is unique. The dialogs like taco inside a taco inside a Taco Bell inside a McDonalds inside a mall…. you get the point. It’s a very funny, well written and properly executed script. A must watch for all Inception fans and haters alike.

Those of you who follow me on twitter would know that I have been on a good virtualization machine hunt for a long time now. I tried VirtualBox, XEN, QEMU – nothing was good enough. My friend recently brought it to my attention that the current version of VMware player, the free one, allows VM creation. I installed it. It runs smooth, fine without any problems. It is awesome. I just compiled the kernel modules for VMware and installed it on Arch, my primary system.

This led to some pretty good results actually. Incepted an idea in my mind. What I did was, I went in a dream inside a dream. I installed a virtual machine, inside a virtual machine. That is a 3 level deep virtual machine. It’s like a taco inside a taco inside a Taco Bell inside McDonalds which is in a mall… The similarities are uncanny.

Just like in the dream world, there is time dilation. What the host can do in 1 clock cycle now takes multiple of the host cycles and the 3rd level takes even more cycles per cycle of the host cycle. Then the waking up part – if the host crashes, so do all the levels down below. The limbo is the BSoD. It’s only time before the deepest level starts a process overloading the levels above it leading to a system crash. They’re coming, the war is coming – 4 8 15 16 23 42….

Reincarnation of the Blog

Aditya — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:42:29 +0000

Aditya Shevade

Hello there! To all the readers who have landed on this blog in search of some of my old favorites, I regret to inform you that the old blog no longer exists. I finally went ahead with the move I was planning for. This blog will now contain only non-technical articles.

The move was smooth and I am very happy to announce the launch of noob2geek. A website where we turn newbies into geeks. You will be able to read lot of articles about Linux, Windows, Web Designing, SEO of your blogs. In addition to all this, we also provide occasional tools to bring out the best web designer in you. So, for all the technical articles head over to noob2geek.

For all of you looking for the non-technical articles (my world famous Movie reviews for example)… I am sorry, but the old reviews no longer exist. I will import them as an when I get time from my archives, but currently, they do not exist.

This install of wordpress is still fresh. I am configuring all the required things right from plugin choosing till the theme building. I plan to make lot of changes to the ready-made theme. Once all the changes and the tweaking are in place, I will start with the import and posting. Till then, stay tuned.