Here in Corvallis, our friend Michael is a fan of perfumes. He’s a scent collector. He watches perfume YouTube videos, makes vacation excursions to buy perfumes, and otherwise educates himself on the subject. His enthusiasm for scent is contagious. Recently, Kim and I have met with Michael (and his wife, Rae) for a couple of …
While mindlessly browsing the web this morning, I happened this 15-year-old comment at AskMetafilter. It is, in essence, a description of what I’m going to call “the snowball method” for writing a story. Why snowball? Because the writing process builds upon itself, gaining size and speed as the work progresses. Here’s the entire comment from …
It’s been an interesting week here in Savannah. After Kim and I settled here six weeks ago, I slipped into a sort of routine. I’d get up in the morning, answer email, do a bit of work, go for a five-mile walk, come back and do more work, and then call it a day. Much …
Everything in life is a trade-off. If you choose to do one thing, you’re implicitly choosing not to do other things. If you choose to have children, for instance, you’ve made a tacit choice to forego many of the things you valued before. Or, if you choose not to have children, you’re making an indirect …
I’ve written a lot about building confidence and overcoming fear. It’s something I wrestle with all of the time. Despite all of the things I’ve accomplished, I’m always apprehensive about starting something new. People have liked what I’ve done in the past; will they like what I do in the future? Via Andy, here’s an …
I’ve loved words and books for as long as I can remember. As a boy, I was always eager for my parents to read to me: Harry the Dirty Dog, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Millions of Cats, Tikki Tikki Tembo, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The Giving Tree, …
More often than you might expect, I get questions about how to become a writer. Specifically, how to become a writer online. Just this morning, for instance, I spent half an hour on the phone with Kimberlee, who wants to make the move from academic to science writer but doesn’t know where to start. I …
Last week, I wrote about how I’m trying to focus on just one thing at a time in my professional life. Instead of tackling many projects at once — preventing me from giving my full attention to any of them — I’m instead devoting my attention to a single job. It makes me happier and …
When I was younger, I wanted to be a poet. In high school, I wrote poetry all the time. Some of it was actually okay — in a sophomoric kind of way. Most of the time, it was about what you’d expect from a nerdy high-school boy. Still, I managed to get some poems published, …
All day long, I think about Spanish. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I think in Spanish (though this never lasts for long). When I’m not working on my Spanish, I wish I were. And sometimes, like last night, I’ll stay up long after Kris has gone to bed just so I can read more Spanish or …