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Fear of Copying
Seth Godin makes a great point here about florists and photos. I think it also applies to the writer’s fear of stolen ideas. The bigger threats to new writers are not finishing and anonymity after publishing. Most writers never finish and there are many that finish but never get discovered by readers. Very few (relatively…
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Short Story Dispenser Kiosks
When my dad and his wife visited last month, they came across a cool thing. A printed short story or poem dispenser. You pick genre and length and it prints out a poem or short story on thermal paper (like cash register receipts). Below are some pictures. From the website above, it appears that the…
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Detailed Analysis vs Just Do It
How much craft does a writer need to learn before they start to write? Should you learn deep craft techniques or just write? One Saturday afternoon when I should have been doing chores, I fell down the rabbit hole of reaction videos. Various experts (see below) play a music video, supposedly for the first time,…
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Writing when Retired: More Experiences
One advantage of getting older is that we are not dead yet. Not being dead means we continue to accumulate experiences. The quantity and variety of these experiences become a resource for our creativity. We have more experiences, and therefore more creative resources, than we did yesterday, last year, or twenty years ago.
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Crossing the Rubicon
https://characterlab.org/tips-of-the-week/all-in/ Character Lab is co-lead by Angela Duckworth, author of Grit (a highly recommended book). This articles talks about the being “all in” on a decision, even though there will (will!) setbacks on any major decisions. That doesn’t mean it is the wrong decision. Here is a quote from the article that explains the “crossing…
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New Book! Writing into the Sunset
I made the decision to become a writer after I retired in 2019. My style is to learn a lot from those that have gone before me. This book has a bit of my writing story and a lot of what I have learned in my writing journey. This is my third published book, so…
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Only compare yourself to yourself
https://characterlab.org/tips-of-the-week/me-to-me/ This is a great article on the importance of comparing yourself to yourself, not to others. We do not have an objective view of our own capabilities. Also we only see the public view of others. Trying to compare ourselves to others is like looking at two paintings across the room when you have…
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Quantum Typos
Fact: if you have n readers check you work for typos, the n+1 reader will find a previously undiscovered typo with 42/n seconds of looking at the work. Fact: If you open your book and successfully fix a typo, you will introduce (6.5x-y)/3 new typos, where x is the number of keystrokes used to fix…
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Definitely Not
The Pet Shelter. And Children. An almost overwhelming combination. Almost. Written May 2019. Fiction. ~3000 words. I knew I was doomed from the start. The wide pleading eyes looking up at me. The little voice saying, “Please, Daddy?” But I also knew that I had to put up some kind of fight.
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Yeah, I suck, but I’ll get better…
I subscribe to the Havard Business Review (HBR) Management Tip Of The Day. About half the time, it is something that is applicable to my situation. This particular one hits both my work and my writing. The underlining below is mine. HBR Management Tip Of The Day When You’re Learning, You Should Feel Uncomfortable Being…
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Medical Product Outsourcing – An article I wrote back in 2005
This article was published back in the June 2005 edition of Medical Product Outsourcing magazine. As the article title says, it covers how a company’s IT infrastructure can help with its medical device design process.
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Travelog: Origin of the Flying W
Another travelog entry from our trip to Iowa. Winnebago is a well known name in the motorhome business and has been for years. Several publications have written up histories of the company. There are links at the end of this post to them. But no one has explained the origin of the “Flying W” itself.…
