Think for a minute about the creative work you do. Which of these categories best describes your creative work? With these categories in mind, let’s consider two questions: are you the author of your work, and are you growing and learning? Are you the author of your work? Who deserves the byline on what you…
I give away a lot. Free expert advice. At Forrester, we charged for content and advice. I found that constraining. I’d rather just give it away and help people. You might think that if you give things away, you lose control over them. Certainly, I can’t stop people from stealing what I give away. But…
It’s usually free to talk to me. My tagline is “I help nonfiction authors succeed.” And I mean it. If you’re a nonfiction author, I’m nearly always ready to spend half an hour on Zoom to talk about the endlessly confusing alternatives for writing, positioning, and publishing a book. I recently got an invitation to…
One summer about 13 years ago, I decided to test myself. My family was scheduled to drop off my youngest offspring at Wildwood, a nature camp run by Massachusetts Audubon, located in Rindge, New Hampshire. Getting there from my home in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts would mean a beautiful 65-mile drive through hills,…
People think developmental editing is about improving words. It’s not. It’s about feelings. I’m sure that sounds like it makes no sense. But it’s actually the most important thing an editor does, and no machine can do it. How a developmental editor works I start my developmental edit on your manuscript by reading it. As…
We live in a world where I tend to view anyone who approaches me with compliments skeptically. All too often, what follows “I think you were great” is some sort of spammy appeal to get something from me or get me to buy something. It’s a horrifying world that we live in where even something…
Do you ever feel a twinge of regret before you click on that button at the bottom a web form that says “Submit”? When I tap on it, I feel as if I am finalizing my submission to a machine. “Submit,” it says, “Give up your agency, and you will be rewarded.” We are all…
Ten years after leaving Forrester Research, I got a chance to reflect on what it did for my career at the Forrester reunion, which took place yesterday evening. The reunion took place in Boston and was organized by several Forrester alumni who left the company years ago. George Colony, Forrester founder and CEO, also participated….
Peace on earth. Goodwill towards men (and women). This includes people who are not just like you — people who don’t look like you, people who disagree with you, even people whose idea of what they’d like to see are at odds with what you’d want to see. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men…