The Showbear Family Circus

Author: Lancelot Schaubert

  • Quick S.E.O. Fixes for WordPress

    I’m no SEO guy, but I do hang out with SEO guys often. Here are a few quick things I learned about SEO on WordPress: WordPress does most of the hard work, but you should still register. Your domain is registered, all of the metadata is factored in easily, but you still should take advantage…

  • Emerson’s Catch 22

    As many of you know, I’m reading my way through Harvard slow and steady. Right now, I’m in the thick of Emerson’s Essays and English Traits. The American Scholar seems to be the kind of article all American scholars should read as it hits on nearly every major point of anxiety they may come across…

  • On Your Calling in Life

    No one, not even Milton, ever made a living off of writing good poetry. Only those who were patronized by the rich could ever afford to do only poetry, but even then they did not generate an income off of the sale of their poetry. That’s a historical “never,” which are pretty hard to come…

  • Quick thought for your maiden voyage as a nonfiction writer

    Several of my clients have started nonfiction works recently and asked if they should go the memoir route or the how-to route. I pushed a couple of them toward a memoir-heavy blend. If you’re in an industry with an established audience and are approached as one who could make an “easy sell” or if you’re…

  • Bad Thinking: “It is what it is.”

    The phrase “it is what it is” feels like looking at a new species of flower and snorting or discovering a new planet and grunting and then moving on to my bag of Doritos.

  • Creativity Prompt: Incarcerate

    In which I attempt to prompt creativity from a readership of creatives…

  • Missing Lemony Snicket?

    Have you seen these around town? This campaign combines two of my favorite things: innovative marketing and literature. See, I hate ads unless they’re really really good. My dad used to hang these things up all the time to sell things or to distribute information, but to use one for a bestselling YA series?!  Oh…

  • ,

    Thresholds at HONY

    I mention thresholds on here a lot not because I believe buy into the monomyth of Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces (on Amazon), but rather because I believe great stories and great changes in life all involve thresholds. Literal thresholds are also crossed in every single fantasy/fairy story that’s ever been written. Tolkien talks about…

  • ,

    Engineers use SciFi writers to revive American Innovation

    Hieroglyph is a space for SciFi writers, engineers, scientists, and artists to collaborate on creative, ambitious visions of the near-future. Neal Stephenson noticed a serious void in the optimism of science so he helped create an online collaborative between the people who dream things up and the people who make dreams real. Right now, they’ve…

  • Fleep: Using Curiosity and Concern to Pull Readers Along

    Curiosity powers the questions, “What’s is that? What did I just witness?” Concern powers the question, “Will everything turn out okay?” And both lead to the question “What’s next?”

  • The Book Seer

    Plug your most recent read into The Book Seer’s formula and see recommendations of similar reads.

  • Left Brain/Right Brain Visualized

    You’ll want to click on the pic to magnificate the words and images. Originally here.