Writing
Why the Middles of Projects are Tough (Part 2): Plus, How to Have Fun Revising!
Middles are Tough. Last time I wrote about how the middles of writing and other projects can be difficult, citing Dante’s Inferno, which begins “midway upon the journey of our life,” and John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, in which the protagonist, Christian, literally bogs down midway, in the infamous “Slough of Despond.” Middles are…
Read MoreLast Call: New England
If you’ve wanted to take my Grub Street Writers class NOW is the time. I am moving to Michigan in September (more on this later!), and August’s class will be the last for a while. It will be held August 12-15 (Monday-Thursday), 10:30am-1:30pm at 162 Boylston Street (2 mins from Boylston Street T; discounted parking…
Read MoreWhat To Do If You Are Stuck in the Middle of a Project
Middles are tough. It’s no accident that Dante began The Inferno, his allegorical journey through Hell, thusly: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Or that Christian, the pilgrim in John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, encounters the bog called the…
Read MoreIra Glass on Developing Your Creative Skill: Go for Quantity, Not Quality
The below 2 minute video of Ira Glass explaining how the secret to artistic quality is to do a lot of art is well worth your time. Bayles and Orland make the same point in their terrific book Art & Fear. They tell a (true, I believe) story of two pottery classes: One class was…
Read MoreMargaret Atwood, Anne Enright, and Garry Kasparov, on Failure
Meditations on failure, from some leading writers. I like this quote from Margaret Atwood: Failure is just another name for much of real life: much of what we set out to accomplish ends in failure, at least in our own eyes. Who set the bar so high that most of our attempts to sail gracefully over it…
Read MoreGood Apps for Distraction-Free Writing
Here are ten apps that let you write on a “clean” screen without distracting menus or other junk.
Read MoreSeth Godin and Jennifer Crusie on Artistic Legitimacy
Following onto the post about Amanda Palmer’s exhortation to legitimize yourself as an artist, instead of waiting for gatekeepers to do so, here are marketing guru Seth Godin and best-selling romance author Jennifer Crusie on the same topic. First, Godin: No knight, no shining armor “Sure, Seth can do that, because he has a popular…
Read MoreAmanda Palmer on Artistic Legitimacy
Musician Amanda Palmer recently gave a keynote at Grub Street Writer’s Muse and the Marketplace Conference. She’s whip smart and really “gets” this brave new world of social media, and so we should always listen to what she has to say. Her talk at Grub was about something much more important than social media: it…
Read MoreErasmus on Writing
Courtesy Grub Street Writers
Read MoreUseful Apps for Mac and iOS Users
Ph.D. student Reid Leamaster reviews some useful writing productivity apps, including several for taking notes and organizing information. His latest review is an app called Flowstate, which, if you stop writing before the end of your designated interval erases everything you’ve written. Yes, you’ve read that right. Sounds crazy and coercive to me, but…
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