We lost Tim Curry this week. He died at age 80. Tim Curry knew exactly what he was — a showman. He wasn’t going to win you over with the subtlety of his acting. He was going to suck you in with a knowing smile and a plummy delivery. He wasn’t a character actor —…
Newsletter 163. Why the most successful people crack wise and act wisely. Plus, Berrett-Koehler’s hybrid imprint, Anthropic indelibly marks its content, three people to follow and three books to read. Silly serious One principle explains all of my success and the fact that I’m still working and happy past normal retirement age. I’m seriously silly….
Herbie Hancock is 86 years old. Some time last spring, I notice that he would be playing in Portland, Maine, where I live. It would be a stretch to say I’m a Herbie fan or even a jazz enthusiast — he just seemed to me like a guy who made interesting music. My daughter, who…
Newsletter 161. Writers have always used text as a sort of code, to program the mind of the reader. Can AI do that better? Plus, deciphering publishing jargon, a college where the instructors are chatbots, troubling questions about the thriller Daggermouth, three people to follow, and three books to read. Prose is code Large Language…
I do a fair amount of work for free or below market rate. It’s usually working on committees that are creating useful things. Here are my criteria: It’s pretty simple. If it fits these criteria, I enjoy the work, I enjoy the people, and I can look back on the work I did and find…
I have many clients and many professional collaborators. I have few true partnerships. Here’s how I pick them. My clients pay. That’s not really a partnership. A client is someone who I help for a fee. It’s popular to describe people in a commercial relationship as partners. That’s not really right. When money changes hands,…
Writing demands ordered thinking. Writing practice builds thinking skills. Math demands logical thinking. Math practice builds reasoning skills. History creates context for current events. History learning builds perspective. Science searches for truth. Science learning builds a foundation for understanding truth. Every day I write, reason, and build my opinions on science and historical context. I’ve…
I attended a publishing conference last week in which many of the meeting rooms were provided with the Avalon water dispenser you see here. Based on the buttons and displays, you’d probably imagine that this device dispenses hot, room-temperature, and cool water. And it does. But whatever you guess next about it, you’re probably wrong….
I’ve been writing professionally for 46 years. I’ve written everything you can imagine. And it all made me smarter. From writing software documentation, I learned to be brief, logical, and clear. I also learned what it took to turn a bunch of text into a manual, which is, after all, a book. From writing research…