With habits, we don’t make decisions, we don’t use self-control, we just do the thing we want ourselves to do—or that we don’t want to do.
~GRETCHEN RUBIN, author of Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
WRITING & SCREENWRITING
- Are you making these capitalization mistakes?, Men with pens | Tweet
Those of us who are passionate about grammar have our personal pet peeves, an everyday error that sends you into a red-pen rage whenever you encounter it. For some, it’s the serial comma or the rampant misuse of the word “literally”. For others, the bugbear is “their”, “they’re” and “there”, or “which” and “that”.
- Your novel in ONE sentence–Anatomy of Story. Part 5, Kristen Lamb’s Blog | Tweet
Creativity and vision are not enough. Architects need to learn mathematics and physics. They need to understand that a picture window might be real pretty, but if they put that sucker in a load-bearing wall, they won’t pass inspection and that they even risk a fatal collapse.
→What Is Your One Sentence?: How to Be Heard in the Age of Short Attention Spans
- The Zen of organized writing: 5 steps you can take today, Write to Done | Tweet
How can you organize your life as a writer so you can spend more time writing? What’s the best way to manage writing alongside other projects? Why is it so hard to balance the act of writing with the day-to-day demands of life?
→The Organized Writer is a Selling Writer
The writing process is rarely a straightforward one. It always comes with periods of self-doubt and lack of inspiration. Most authors struggle to know how to handle these challenges. This is why we decided to interview a specialist on writer’s block: Tom Evans.
→Writeriffic II: Creativity Training for Writers
- Begin your novel with action: A good rule?, Jane Friedman | Tweet
You’ve probably heard the adage that you must begin your novel with action—even if it’s not the main action of the book. While this rule is fairly well-accepted in fiction teaching circles, not everyone agrees with it.
→Novel Beginnings (Essential Writing Skills Series Book 11)
- When good dialogue goes bad, Part two, Script Mag | Tweet
The handcuffs were snug, though not quite cutting into my wrists. And the backseat of the Redondo Beach PD cruiser smelled like funk. As I sat waiting for whatever was to happen next, I had a moment to reflect on how the hell I got there.
→Dialogue Secrets (Screenwriting Blue Books Book 10)
SELF-PUBLISHING
- Defining your publishing goals, Author Marketing Experts | Tweet
First and foremost, you must define your goals. It’s important to note that your goals should be identified early on and will often help define where and how you’ll publish. This goal-seeking exercise will also help you define how much you should invest in your book to get it to market, and then to market it to the audience.
- How to pitch a literary agent at a conference, The Write Practice | Tweet
It’s rather nerve-racking for writers because, unsurprisingly, most of us prefer to express ourselves in writing. Nevertheless, it was still a great opportunity to put ourselves out there.
→Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
- Why you should be tracking your habits ( and how to do it well), Life Hacker | Tweet
Easily the most rewarding thing about tracking habits is when I can stop tracking because the behavior really has become automatic—a sign of a strong habit. I read fiction every night before I go to sleep now.
→Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
HEALTH
- The startup that wants to cure social anxiety, The Atlantic | Tweet
This Bay Area company says its website can treat the debilitating mental illness—and clinical psychology doesn’t disagree.
PSYCHOLOGY
Shade can take many forms–a hard, deep look that could be either aggressive or searching, a compliment that could be interpreted as the opposite of one.
→Insult Me If You Can: The Art of Defending Yourself from Verbal Aggression
LEARNING
- The only technique to learn something new, Boingboing | Tweet
I had a friend who wanted to get better at painting. But she thought she had to be in Paris, with all the conditions right. She never made it to Paris. Now she sits in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, filling out paperwork all day.
BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS
A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance–how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got to into a ‘good’ school–the same way their husbands were rewarded at investments banks.
→Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir
