Need a kick in the pants?
The Guardian got 29 professional writers1 to offer some ‘tips for successful authorship‘.
via The Book Bench
- Including Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Frantzen, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood and other favorites. [↑]
The following is a list with an aim is to make you a better painter or artist in general.
PRACTICE!
Draw every day all day and then some more. Get a sketchbook, use it. Use it often. Set up a space for the sole purpose of art. paint there, draw there, live there.
Screenwriter John August, whose blog was a great asset when I was writing my first screenplay, offers up some tips for outlining stories with index cards.
As somebody who has crashed and burned with index cards—pathetically—I am eager to see if any of these work for me.
Playing to your mind’s strengths.
Via Airbag
By History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson. This guy sounds like a hoot.
Once you get past how much you wouldn’t want to hang out with this guy, though, you’ll find that he’s actually got some great advice to give. So read his fucking piece.
Here’s my favorite link from yesterday’s Gladwell piece: Late Bloomers, or, why we tend to see a correlation between genius and young fame.
Follow this advice and you’re sure to fulfill your dreams of Broadway stardom in no time, without all of the trifling effort and emotional sacrifice.
Playwright Llewellyn Hinkes dispenses with a hapless write-in question. Sure, there’s a lot of snark in there. But there’s also seems to a good point buried beneath all the shrillness. Plus it’s hilarious.
Michael Erard on the troubling effects of entertainment that rewards short attention spans.
We need a Ronald Reagan of attention, someone to inspire us away from the fight over smaller and smaller pieces of the attention pie. Someone who will inspire us to make the attention pie bigger.
via Ideas.
According to an article recently published in Scientific American, creativity is somehow tied to our personal feelings of distance. And yes, all definitions of ‘distance’ apply here – physical, mental, emotional, make-believe.
Now, if I could just find a way to harness this awesome power for the good of all mankind…or profit.