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The Dangers of Advice
A few days ago, I read the excellent article “Writing and Mortality” by Rachel Swirsky, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I recommend reading it and coming back here, but since I don’t...
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Favorite Musical (2/4): The Light in the Piazza, by Adam Guettel
Not enough people have heard of this little gem, even though it won the Tony Award for best original score in 2005 (Spamalot won the Tony for best musical that year, but let’s not even go there). The...
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Delusions of Grandeur
When I was a teenager, I enjoyed dreaming big. I wanted to be a novelist, I wanted to work on animated features at Disney, I wanted to write games at Sierra (this was back when they were still doing...
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Life as a Work of Art
A few weeks ago I read an essay by one of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, about how to think outside the box. The entire essay is well worth the read, and I might discuss other aspects of it some...
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Choose Your Own Adventure
I’ve been feeling all organized because last weekend I made a list of topics for my next several posts. And then this morning I read a blog post offering some misguided writing advice. (No, I’m not...
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Can Blogs Be Art?
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about art: how art can be defined, what its possible purposes are, what I am trying to accomplish personally as an artist. This exploration began many years ago when I...
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The ABC Trifecta of Writing: Art, Business, Craft
I’m writing this up in my hotel room at the SCBWI conference. I just heard an amazing keynote speech by Bruce Coville, who was in part saying what I said in my blog post last week about influence and...
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There Is No Magic Bullet
Sometimes when we are on the road to excellence, we get a little tired. We wish we were already there. We wish the road had a literal signpost saying “You have made it, and you can officially stop...
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Tell Me If This Is Art
In our discussion about what it means to be an artist, the question of the definition of art came up more than once. This issue–what exactly IS art?–has been the subject of all kinds of learned debate,...
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I Love Kickstarter
I’ve been somewhat injured the last week or two, so I’ve had some extra time on my hands. So I decided to poke around Kickstarter and see some of the awesome projects artists have in the works. In case...
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Why I Need Beauty
Ever since Rahul wrote about beauty and how we don’t have the language to discuss it, I’ve been wanting to write about beauty. But it turns out he’s right, and it’s surprisingly difficult to talk...
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Maybe what we’re looking for is a life of meaning that also makes us feel alive.
I was talking to an old friend this weekend about the meaning of life. You know, the way you do. It wasn’t even ridiculously late at night, and we didn’t take the morbid side path that’s usually an...
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