Category Archives: Craft

In defense of Humility or; Confidence is no Measure of Competence

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man,1871 For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately concerned with my level of metacognitive skill. It was the reason I gave the first story I ever wrote for public consumption to my best friend to critique, ...

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Review: How Not to Write a Novel, H. Mittelmark & S. Newman

We all know that the best way to teach is to engage and entertain with the material – this book does it ...

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TED Tuesday – The Science of Happiness

Even if we don't write historical stories, or military suspense with technical details, all writers have one subject which they must all research: happiness and how humans pursue it. Even the most evil of evil villains, we believe, is ...

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How did you learn about beginnings, middles and ends?

A post at Betsy Lerner’s wonderful blog, today, asked why those of us afflicted with narrative disorder at a young age began to write. It sparked a memory of the very first ...

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TED Tuesday – J.J. Abrams

For those of you in the midst of NaNoWriMo and for the rest of us in the midst of writing anything, here is J.J. Abrams talking about the blank page as the ultimate "mystery box" and how technology inspires him. What mystery boxes are you ...

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On humans and the creative mystery (also, TED Tuesday)

This week’s talk is from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat,Pray, Love” and many others and is a must watch for all writers or anyone who loves a writer (or artist for that matter) and would like to understand ...

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TED Tuesday – Ideas Worth Spreading

In my RSS travels, I recently discovered a source of inspiration about which I am no doubt very, very late on  the uptake. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) I just didn’t know there was a place ...

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Why Twitter?

SHELDON It must be an emergency; everyone at the university knows that I eat my breakfast at 8 and move my bowels at 8:20 LEONARD Yes, how did we live before Twitter? - from

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The Blood Red Pencil – a publishing blog.

I have several blogs on my RSS reader by working writers and editors. Recently, I started following a new blog put together by several of those publishing-types called The Blood Red Pencil and I'm loving ...

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Review – The Lookout

This is how you make a movie about coming to terms with  disability into a gripping, edge-of-the-seat action flick. This is how you make a movie about a shoot-em-up bank heist into a subtle study ...

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