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This piece hit about this time two years ago. Bringing it back today as the days grow longer and the snow days (hopefully) shorter. Ezra Jack Keats clipped a strip of four images from Life magazine in 1940. One child. Four endearing expressions and poses. As the next two decades passed, the little boy in the images remained the same age, with the pursed lips and ballooned cheeks so often worn by children no more than three years old. Bundled up in a long puffy jacket and pants, he lived on Keats’ wall as the artist illustrated one children’s book after…
Read MoreFor years I lived “the way the day took me.” I’m not knocking that, either as a temporary default mode or as a way of life. It can be fun. You can find yourself, in a good way, in places you never imagined you’d be. You can meet great people. You can learn a lot. But at some point, that kind of life ended for me. I ended it. Since then I’ve been on a mission. I’m like the Blues Brothers. The day doesn’t sweep me away any more. My inner world, my universe of intention, is completely different from…
Read MoreThere’s a certain kind of relationship that often seeks out and torments writers and artists. Maybe you’ve had one. Maybe you’ve had more than one. In this type of love, one of the partners has become aware of her Resistance and is taking active, courageous steps to counter it. She’s writing her novel, she’s initiating her startup, she’s turning her life in a positive direction. Her lover admires and respects this. He’s drawn to her by her drive and her commitment. She has an energy. Good vibes radiate from her. It’s fun and exciting to be around her. Her lover…
Read MoreIn last week’s post we were examining the idea that from a single modest fragment—a scene, or even a couple of lines of text—we as writers can extrapolate a big bite of the global work. Let’s keep biting. Here, to refresh our memories, are the two lines that popped into my head one day about ten years ago and that I knew at once were the opening sentences of a book (though I had no idea what book, or what that book would be about): I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. Last week we…
Read MoreRoger Sutton made waves this past week for writing “An open letter to the self-published author feeling dissed,” which begat “No, I don’t want to read your self-published books” by Ron Charles, itself a G-rated echo of Josh Olson’s “I will not read your fucking script.” If you care about my thoughts on Sutton’s and Charles’ pieces, read “Dearest Writer: Nobody Owes You Shit” by Chuck Wendig, who said exactly what I would have if I had his writing chops and wasn’t too lazy to write something myself. There’s one thing about Charles’ piece that I would like to discuss…
Read MoreIn his “Acting ‘As If’” post last week, Shawn wrote: “Our books are not Frontlist. They are backlist, evergreen, long-term commitments. So we spend weeks, months, years on every single one we put out there in an effort to reach what we think is the publisher’s job . . . getting the book into the hands of 10,000 readers. We have plans to promote all of our titles every chance we get, in any way we can do it, for as long as we’re around.” How is this accomplished? By getting on base and playing the long game. Getting On…
Read MoreToday I talk with Jeff about the actual filmmaking—casting and shooting Jeff’s web series, Camp Abercorn. Jeff talks about his first day directing (“I’m a learn-by-doing kind of guy”) and how he and his partners are working up to a full-on eight-week $500K shoot. To me, this is what being an artist in 2014 is all about and I salute Jeff and his team for doing it, on their own, not waiting for permission from anybody, taking their dreams and making them happen. (The transcript of today’s video is below.)
Read MoreThe Lion’s Gate officially hits shelves and sites today. Thanks for all of the comments to the mini-series running Mondays and Fridays. The series will run a few more weeks, with more background on The Lion’s Gate’s road to publication. Another thank you to all the First Look Access Subscribers who took part in the 100-copy, first edition, hardcover giveaway of The Lion’s Gate last week—and to readers who shared their feedback of the then-unreleased video series “Writing the Lion’s Gate,” which was included with the giveaway e-mail. The twelve videos are now available on the site (see playlist below)…
Read MoreIf you follow this blog, you know that I’m not a big believer in feedback. By that I mean “notes,” “critiques,” “comments” about one’s work from writing groups or editors or friends or just about any other source. It’s been my experience that very, very few people can read something and tell you accurately what’s wrong with it. And practically nobody can tell you how to fix it. Feedback from anyone else will just screw you up. Here, unexpurgated, is an e-mail exchange between me and a hard-working young writer named Michael G. S. Hesse. Michael has given me his…
Read More“To an engineer, fan belts exist between the crankshaft and the water pump. To a physicist, fan belts exist, briefly, in the intervals between stars.” —George Dyson That’s beautiful, I thought, after reading the quote above. But . . . What’s it really mean? Some background: This quote appears at the end of the following story, in the acknowledgements section of George Dyson’s book Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe: In 1956, at the age of three, I was walking home with my father, physicist Freeman Dyson, from his office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,…
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