Quilt Writing

Some time ago, I revealed all kinds of juicy secrets about getting published in magazines, (quilting magazines in particular, but it applies to many smaller publications as well). Secrets so juicy I may never work in that business again. Since I wrote that for newbie, unpublished writers, I thought it might also be of some help to have some tips about the actual writing of an article. How you turn an idea about trampoline-enthusiast quilters into an actual article may seem like a big mystery, but maybe we can shed a little light on the process and help get you started. If it doesn't go well, we'll just resort to Tom Hiddleston pictures.

Did you ever see the movie, The Big Chill? (If you're as old as I am, you've seen it a hundred times.) Jeff Goldblum's character works for People magazine and when one of the others asks him what it's like to be a big-time journalist, he answers,

"Where I work we have only one editorial rule: you can't write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap."

I've always wanted to cross-stitch that and hang it on my wall.

Anyhoodle, here are my tips for writing articles in the quilt world:

1. This isn't actually a post about quilt writing. No, the point of all that above (which is taken from an actual post draft) is to tell you about a website that has been posting my blog content without my permission. In fact, I believe they have been doing this to many, many quilt bloggers. It seems that they are taking the content from our RSS feeds and posting it as their own. They are not linking to me. they are copying my words and images and by doing so implying that it is theirs.

This pisses me off.

From now on, all my posts are going to contain this graphic:

The site in question is quiltpatternspro.com. I urge you, if you are a quilt blogger, to be on the lookout for this site, and to take steps, as I have done here, to try and protect your content from this kind of piracy. The idiots have a search box on the page, so you can easily look up your work.

If you do have a blog, or are connected with many quilters on Facebook or other social media, please help spread the word about this site and lets shut them down by showing them that we will not tolerate this shit and that we are damn good at exposing thieving assholes for what they are. Please feel free to link to this post or to share the above graphic as one idea of how we can subvert this kind of piracy. And if you have any other ideas, please post them in the comments.

The site is apparently hosted by GoDaddy and they have procedures for dealing with infringement. Please go here to see what you need to do if your content has been taken. The more people who do this, the more likely it is that the site will be shut down.