When Criticism is the Best Medicine

When you start writing, you have the ambivalence of a toddler who both wants help down the stairs and wants to do it himself. You know you need critical feedback, but you're inexperienced, unsure of your work -- which we authors often conflate with our selves -- and therefore wary of the sting. Those of …

How I Do It

One of the fringe benefits, I guess, of serializing longer works in shorter chunks, is that I've iterated a lot the last couple years. In fact, I'm about to produce my eighth title in the last 24 months. It's really taught me how I write. Not how TO write. But how I do it. Some …

(Curiosity) Your Brain is Not a Computer

This is a wonderful, lucid, and short essay on the fundamental flaw of contemporary cognitive science written by a preeminent psychologist. The empty brain: Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer Philosophy of mind, particularly human judgment and decision-making, is a big interest …

Elements: How I Approach Setting

I feel like I've crossed another milestone. I've had a realization recently about setting, which writing instructors will tell you is one of the key elements of fiction, along with characters and plot, but which I see a little differently. I'm a little skeptical, by the way, that one can learn how to write from a …

The Only Writing Advice

If you're learning brain surgery, it's probably a good idea to practice before diving right in. Same goes for auto repair. You don't want to be hearing later about how you installed those brakes wrong. But writing isn't brain surgery, or automobile maintenance, or even tax accounting. In writing, everything in the world you possibly need to know is: …

(Curiosity) The Art of the Collage: Visions of Excess

If you don't follow the art world, which is its own thing separate from the art itself, you may not know that the collage, once the pinnacle of fourth-grade art class, has made something of a comeback. The term collage derives from the French "coller" (paste) and was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo …