Month: April 2016
A couple of friends have written in: “I know what my theme is, but I can’t figure out how to get it into my story.”
Read MoreIf you want to master communicating and building relationships with the gatekeepers, tastemakers, potential customers, etc within your industry, the first step is to leave your industry. About ten years ago, I ran across Michael J. Critelli’s Harvard Business Review article “Back Where We Belong.” I kept a copy of the article, surprised that a Pitney Bowes executive had mentioned the book The Sling and The Stone. I was repping the title and it was not a business book, nor one I had considered pitching to a business audience. However… Critelli’s attention to the defense world as a part of…
Read MorePicking up where we left off last week … I’m starting a new fiction project, very heavy with Resistance, self-doubt, doubts about the viability of the project, etc. I decided to keep a dream diary. Last week I posted the first two dreams. Here are the next two. This first one comes about a week into the work (3/28/16). Self-confidence in very short supply. I’m committed, but still feeling extremely tentative … I was a pilot. I had somehow gotten the training and become qualified. I was traveling via ship and train to Antarctica with my friend David and…
Read MoreI’m gonna take a break this week from our series on Theme (we’ll be back) to address an issue that’s happening with me right now. Dreams. I’m just starting a new fiction project that’s overwhelming me with Resistance, and my dreams have been really interesting. I’d like to share a few of them—and the whole interactive process between waking, working life and nocturnal who-knows-what—over the next couple of weeks. Maybe this will ring a bell with your own psychic adventures. Here’s the backstory: About two months ago I had an idea for a story. Immediately I was swamped with Resistance.…
Read MoreThere’s an important piece I should have hit when I started this series of articles about pitching: Why you have to pitch — or market — yourself. A scientist I spoke with this week said her peers go out of their way to avoid media exposure. To them, scientists who do a lot of press aren’t taken seriously. That perspective is why important work dies in academia and why certain sectors are plagued by consistent wheel-recreation. The messaging gets lost or forgotten. Unfortunately, the scientists aren’t the only ones doing it. If you want to make an impact, doing the work…
Read MoreMy answer will not surprise you. Theme. Theme is what makes the specific universal. Remember the first post in this series? I was relating a conversation with a friend who’s a literary agent in Hollywood. She represents screenwriters. She told me that she had read 500 screenplays in one year and couldn’t find a single one she wanted to represent. Why? “Because so many of them were not about anything.” What she meant, in crassly commercial terms, was this: I can’t sell a script unless the reader (studio, director, production company, actor) can either identify with it or…
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