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Quote of the day
Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.
~BRENÉ BROWN, author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
WRITING
- Tell better; show more, Writers in the storm | Tweet
What most writers really need to look at is how to tell better in the right places and show more of the character expressing emotion. It’s usually emotion that gets left off the page (and out of the scene). How do you do this?
→Show Don’t Tell: A Writer’s Guide (Classic Wisdom on Writing)
- What’s in your writer’s bag of tricks? Putting the writing process in context, Fiction Notes | Tweet
How many times do you read a novel before you send it out into the world? 5 times? 20 times? 100 times? I don’t know; I just know that it’s a lot of times and it reaches a point where I’m not re-reading what’s in front of me. My mind wanders off to anything and everything else.
→Writing Your Way: Creating a Writing Process That Works for You
There are two different ways you can blow your story stakes–and both of them have the ability to ruin your book.
→Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story
When you’re writing a character, it’s important to know why she is the way she is. Knowing her backstory is important to achieving this end, and one of the most impactful pieces of a character’s backstory is her emotional wound. This negative experience from the past is so intense that a character will go to great lengths to avoid experiencing that kind of pain and negative emotion again. As a result, certain behaviors, beliefs, and character traits will emerge.
→The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
SCREENWRITING
- 30 Things about screenwriting: Learn the craft, Go Into The Story | Tweet
Here’s one big problem with most of the screenwriting approaches I see floating around: Their focus is almost exclusively on writing a screenplay. Obviously this is important.
→Essentials of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing
- BEHIND THE LINES WITH DR: The Big Deep and Realizing Your Dreams, Script Mag | Tweet
Jaws
. You know the movie. I sure as hell do. That hot summer it opened, my parents took my sisters and I to see it at a local drive-in. I watched while lying on a sun-cracked lounge cushion set on the roof of my mom’s ocean blue Dodge station wagon. From such a perch it wasn’t hard to imagine myself afloat in the open sea, nothing but my wits and slammed eyelids to defend me from a behemoth Great White shark.
SELF-PUBLISHING
- A powerful book marketing strategy: start small with an insider group, The Write Life | Tweet
Book marketing is a chicken and egg situation: To sell books, you need readers, but to get readers, you need to sell books. Where exactly do you begin?
- The only self-publishing platforms you’ll ever need, Live Write Thrive | Tweet
One of the questions I am always asked by authors who wish to self-publish is, Who are the best companies to publish with? There are so many choices.
CREATIVITY
There are Facebook pages devoted to adult colorers. There are coloring clubs. People who motivate themselves to pay off debt by coloring. Game of Thrones is making a coloring book. What this means: Coloring is now a normal adult activity.
→Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Patterns
PSYCHOLOGY
A psychologist and former addict insists that the illness model for addiction is wrong, and dangerously so
→Rewired: A Bold New Approach To Addiction and Recovery
- Why vulnerability takes courage?, Psychology Today | Tweet
Vulnerability is not for the faint of heart.
→Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
PHILOSOPHY
- David Papineau on Philosophy and Sports, Five Books | Tweet
Sport can offer insights into philosophy and life in general, argues the philosophy professor and sports enthusiast. He chooses the best books on philosophy and sport.
→Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets
TIME MANAGEMENT
- How to win the day, James Altucher | Tweet
You are the alchemist of your life. The universe, perfect for 14 billion years, has given you everything you need to thrive. And yet…we often want to forcibly change the universe to fit our own selfish needs.
→The Power of No: Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Abundance, and Happiness