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Quote of the day
Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.
~OLIVER BURKEMAN, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
WRITING
The Inciting Incident: Problem vs Opportunity, Write on Sisters | Tweet
I confess I’m having trouble with my Act I. This is unusual for me. Typically I find setting up the story the easy part compared to Act II & III. So what’s wrong? After picking my first half dozen scenes apart and rewriting them multiple times, the problem finally became clear: The Inciting Incident lacks a certain “oomph!”
Are You Waving The Novice Writer Flag? by Rayne Hall, Romance University | Tweet
Editors can tell if a writer is a novice or a veteran from the words appearing on the first page. New writers unconsciously share the same word set. No matter how much you polished your prose, it probably still contains ‘beginner flags’ – and you may not want to draw attention to your inexperience.
Fiction Writing: How to Write Your First Novel
How an Unemotional Writer Writes Emotions, Go Teen Writers | Tweet
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard authors say, “Oh, I just bawled while I was writing that scene!” Or even, “If I don’t cry when I’m writing my black moment, then I know I haven’t written it right.” So many authors will say they laugh at their characters’ jokes. Or they get angry at the villains. So many writers write from an emotional place. So that’s their gauge–if their scenes evoke their emotions, then they’ll evoke the readers’. But…what about those of us who don’t cry at all, much less over our stories?
The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
2 Steps: How to Be a Better Writer, The Authors’ Nook | Tweet
1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. Need more to go on? Okay.
The Classic Guide to Better Writing: Step-by-Step Techniques and Exercises to Write Simply, Clearly and Correctly
SCREENWRITING
Indiewire celebrates the director’s birthday, plus the upcoming release of “Crimson Peak,” with a list devoted to his most wildly imaginative creations.
Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions
- SCRIPT INDUSTRY EXPERT Q&A: Meet Corey Mandell of ‘Reel Story’, Script Mag | Tweet
Corey Mandell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written projects for Ridley Scott, Wolfgang Petersen, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Warner Bros., Universal, 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000, Fox Family, Working Title, Paramount, Live Planet, Beacon Films, Touchstone, Trilogy, Radiant, and Walt Disney Pictures. Corey teaches screenwriting at UCLA and offers private online classes using real-time video conferencing.
SELF-PUBLISHING
The Secret to Sales Without Selling: Your Author Newsletter, Elizabeth Spann | Tweet
I once surveyed all the authors I knew about what they wanted most for their writing. The universal response was “Someone to do my marketing for me.”
Promo Bytes: Author Newsletter and Goodreads
Is Marketing Harder Than Writing?, Books by Women | Tweet
I used to think writing a book was the hard part. I was wrong. Getting your book read is the hard part. I’d tinkered with short stories and penned a few poems over the years, and there was no denying my love of the written word but the thought of writing an actual book – a whole 300+ pages of text – with content interesting enough that others might actually want to read it, seemed too overwhelming to contemplate. And so I didn’t write a book. Instead, I wrote a journal.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
- How to never get angry: 3 New secrets from neuroscience, Barking Up the Wrong Tree | Tweet
They’re one inch from your face, boiling with rage, screaming and yelling at you. And all you want to do is scream and yell back. But you know that’s not going to be good for anyone…
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
LEARNING
New evidence suggests that we can learn while we sleep, but do we really want to put our hours of rest to work?
Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening
PSYCHOLOGY
- Lessons Learned from Working with Gifted and Creative Kids, The Creativity Post | Tweet
The author, a psychologist with over 35 years experience in the lab, classroom, and clinic, shares two lessons that he has learned in his work with gifted and creative kids.
The Survival Guide for Gifted Kids: For Ages 10 and Under
COMMUNICATION
Knowing what happens when you meet in person can help you decide when it’s justified, and when it doesn’t matter.
Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently
LEADERSHIP
It’s impossible to visit the battlefield of Gettysburg without being deeply moved. The Union and Confederate armies together suffered more than 50,000 casualties during the three-day battle. The course of American history was changed forever by leaders making strategic decisions under grueling circumstances.
The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential