I’m working today. A lot of you have today off. But I’d never trade my independent life for a job again. Here’s what it means to be an independent freelancer. It means I get to savor the joy of concentrating on work for a whole day today while the rest of you are at the…
There’s a graphic making the rounds; I first saw it posted by Jeremiah Owyang. It’s about the “Japanese concept” of Ikigai, or “a reason for being.” This graphic attracts us because the circles — what you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can make money at — are…
In the last decade I’ve been intimately involved with 11 nonfiction book projects. I wrote or cowrote four, edited five, and ghostwrote one-and-a-half (one is not yet complete). These were the most rewarding experiences in my career. Here’s what I learned: the keys to success in a book project are planning, passion, trust, perseverance, and…
I hate fluff. I also hate wimpiness, cliched platitudes, endless bloviation, and bad grammar. This affects how I behave as an editor. It reduces the number of clients I have, and changes the way I approach content. Let’s say you come to me with a potential editing job. I look at what needs to be…
On Monday, in Helsinki, Trump said he couldn’t see why Russia would hack our elections. Yesterday, he said he was wrong. Even if you believe him, switching from denial to acceptance isn’t a step forward. Let’s look at the transcripts. At the joint press conference in Helsinki, Vladimir Putin denied interfering in the election: Putin:…
There’s a new Bitcoin blackmail scam circulating — this time based on passwords from website breaches. This extortion email is likely to be less effective than the paper letters because it’s full of obvious errors. My post last April about the Bitcoin blackmail letter in my mailbox has become popular. It generates over 300 views…
I talk about the bullshit in what we read all the time. I’m so deep into it that I’m inured to the whole concept. But I had an experience yesterday that helped me recognize just how pervasive the problem of bullshit is. Here’s the scene. I’m running a plain writing workshop for a group of…
This is not a politics blog, but politics is part of my subject matter. So here’s what I hope is a very clear statement of my principles. I write about anything associated with writing quality, analytical thinking, truth, and influence. These are “meta-analyses.” I’m generally writing about how people think and communicate, not whether those…
I’ve been on vacation for two weeks. I’m writing this at 6 a.m. on my first day back. I’m eager to get started. The page proofs for a book I’m working on have come back. I’m eager to review them, so we can turn this manuscript into an actual book. This is where my knowledge…