NaNoWriMo Practice

Failing Into Practice

I do not remember the source of this story. A middle-aged woman, distraught, goes to the village wise woman. “I fear my husband no longer desires me!” she says. “He has not lain with me for months, and I do not know what to do!” The village wise woman says, “Listen carefully, for here is …

Continue Reading
Life

There is No Recipe for Success

In case you run out of time to read this blog, a writer for the Guardian pretty much summed up everything I’ve said or am going to say for the forseeable future: Spoiler alert: here are the secrets. Get up at 5am; commit to an exercise regime; practice mindfulness and time management; nourish your body …

Continue Reading
Life

The Logical Fallacy of the Futility of Passion

I am not a tremendously logical man. I wish I was; it's probably part of why statistics thrill me so much. It's taken me a while, but there was always something about the whole If you follow your passion, you're very unlikely to be happy or successful because you'll be financially insecure argument. With the …

Continue Reading
Life

The 5 Elements of a Great Life

The Narrative Recipe Recently I read an excellent article about the author Ursula K. Leguin. She spoke of “five principal elements,” which must “work in one insoluble unitary movement” in order to produce great writing. Quote: The patterns of the language — the sounds of words. The patterns of syntax and grammar; the way the …

Continue Reading
Life

Failure is Valuable Experience

Tangled Up & You My partner made a joke about me recently, pointing out how some of the ways you write the letter “G” could look like a circular arrow. We decided if I was an old-school rancher, my brand would have been “The Confused Arrow” and I’d never lose any cattle because they’d always …

Continue Reading
Practice

succeed by showing up

The Numbers Game, part 1 Any technique will work, so long as you relentlessly work it. It’s a numbers game. That is, success is a pure function of the law of large numbers. – Nick Murray The Universe likes to play with synchronicity. Ok, not really, but our brains like to pretend it does, and …

Continue Reading
Practice

Connect Your New Habit to an Old One for Success

‘The key to strategy… is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.’ —Cavilo, The Vor Game I hate writing. But I want to be a writer. But I really dislike writing. But I love having written. Let me tell you, whether it’s a clever tweet, a ridiculous filk song, a particularly …

Continue Reading