Category: bad thinking
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No, I won’t Google it. I’m asking you.
For the record, I’m not directing this post at you, Levi. See, Levi’s one of the cast members in this top-secret film shoot that 9art photography & I are producing. Poor guy drew the short straw and had to wake before dawn with me to do a sunrise shoot. As bribery, I offered to make…
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Bad Thinking: Yeah, But That’ll Never Happen, So…
Recently, I was debating a hot topic with a brother of mine and he responded with that classic line: “Yeah, that sounds great, but that’ll never happen, so what do you really think?” He was accusing me of using this informal fallacy often called “wishful thinking” or “the Nirvana fallacy.” I was raging against the…
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Why I Never Try to be a Dark Person
Many of the people I know, whether friends or acquaintances or neighbors, automatically give greater credibility to films, literature, plays, TV shows and the like when these things are filled with darkness. I don’t. These people, whether local or national or international, tend to say things like, “Man that was good. It was so dar-har-har-hark.…
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Casual Vacancy, Pop Fic & Rowling’s Intentions
Though I’ve yet to read The Casual Vacancy, I’m surprised at how often reviewers talk of Rowling as if she was born to tell kiddie lit alone. Last time I checked, Harry Potter fell into her lap. She intended to write for adults. In other words, I think of her as a literary author who…
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Rabid and Danse Macbre
Over break, I started Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and I must say it’s one of the most brutal pieces of nonfiction to cross my desk. Wasik and Murphy headed up a research team for years, digging into the origins of the disease that took down Old Yeller. (Sorry to…
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Bad Thinking: “Wait Until You Have Something to Say”
There’s a rotten thought running around lecture halls, councils and writing groups these days. That idea goes like this: “You’ve nothing to say when you’re young. Wait until you’ve lived a little, then you’ll have something to say.” People tell themselves this while staring into the mirror or preach this to others all the time. I…
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Write the Breakout Novel
Thanks to Ellie for another great rec to write the Breakout Novel. For one, Maass promises no short cut. Hard work pays. For another, he shifts the blame for bad book revenue from the editors, agents, publishers and publicists to where it should be–on the author. If your story does not sell, you have no…