Quote of the days
Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you’re prone to disaster fantasies you may even find yourself caught in the middle, starting at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand it if you do.
~DAVID BAYLES, author of Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
WRITING & SCREENWRITING
- Planning a novel. Or not, My Bookish Life | Tweet
Planning a novel is relatively easy, but is it the best way to go? The question has been asked, and answered differently, time and time again. One opinion proposes that outlining a novel affects creativity, while, in the opposite corner, there are those who swear by planning, plotting, pre-writing, etc. Who is right?
Maybe you’ve heard of the Key Event as part of story structure. Maybe you haven’t. If youhaven’t, then you just might belong to the less confused of the two parties. One of the questions I get most often about the Key Event is: What the heck is it?!
→Powerful Premise: Writing the Irresistible (Red Sneaker Writers Book Series 6)
- Deep POV. Part two. Crawling inside your characters, Kristen Lamb’s Blog | Tweet
Just so y’all know, no one cares about the past unless it impacts the future. Not in fiction and, bluntly, not in life. The past has already happened. In real life, we have to pay people by the hour to care about our past. They’re called psychiatrists.
- Show, don’t tell: What to show and what to tell, Live Write Thrive | Tweet
Most of the time, a character’s routine is not crucial to the story. Habits such as hearing the alarm clock, shuffling into the kitchen for that first hot mug of coffee or tea, getting dressed, or other mundane activities may be commonplace for all of us but rarely make for exciting prose.
- Movie Analysis: Mad Max: Fury Road, Go into the story | Tweet
In a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, two rebels just might be able to restore order: Max, a man of action and of few words, and Furiosa, a woman of action who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland.
- Top ten tips for creating winning characters, Script mag | Tweet
Story generates plot; it informs what the narrative is about. The plot informs how the story unfolds. And it is your riveting characters who must inform and drive your plot forward.
→How to Write Great Characters: The Key to Your Hero’s Growth and Transformation
SELF-PUBLISHING
- Want to build an email list? 7 Newsletter platforms to choose from, The Write Life | Tweet
Communicating with your fans used to mean waiting for letters to the editor to arrive at the newspaper where you worked. Or you would rely on the local bookstore to promote your new book, crossing your fingers that fans would learn about the event and attend.
- Successful self-publishing by James Rose, Romance University | Tweet
Perhaps the best benefit of going the self-publishing route is the fact that the author no longer must convince some people in a corporate board room of the merit of his or her proposed work. If the creator believes there is significant interest in the subject matter then the creator can make the decision to introduce this subject to the consumer market.
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CREATIVITY
The best stuff comes when some little thing — an image or the sprout of an idea — lodges itself in his head and won’t let go, and at some point it’s just time to write it down. It’s the love of this spark that keeps Oberst going, and the faith that he’s got a lifetime of this kind of discovery to look forward to.
→Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
FOOD
- How to read a menu like a food critic, Washingtonian | Tweet
The ABCs of scoping out deliciousness.
→Food Critic Mastery: How to Judge and Write About Food like a Professional Food Critic
HEALTH
- What your birth month means for your risk of disease, The Washington Post | Tweet
Astrology may be bogus, but the month you’re born really does matter for your health.
MINDFULNESS
- The psychology of mindfulness, The British Psychology Society | Tweet
With its roots in various philosophical and religious traditions, especially Buddhism, mindfulness is usually defined as paying attention in a non-judgmental way to one’s experience of the here and now. Some psychologists’ and practitioners’ definitions are broader and speak of compassion for and curiosity about the world.
ART
- What else can art do?, The New Yorker | Tweet
Mark Bradford is the tallest artist I know—six feet seven and a half inches, and pencil thin, which makes him look taller. His paintings, as you’d expect, run large.
→Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking