One of the most creative things I do is to help authors select titles and subtitles for their books. While doing a book titling brainstorm yesterday, I asked the AI writing tool ChatGPT to come up with suggestions; it did a creditable job and generated some subtitle text we may end up using. But is…
John Logan, the scriptwriter behind two of the latest James Bond movies, is worried that when Amazon buys MGM, it will ruin 007. But data and corporate control doesn’t necessarily ruin creativity. It all depends on who’s making the creative decisions. John Logan’s lament for 007 Here’s some of what John Logan, co-writer of “Skyfall”…
Whether you’re doing a blog, a podcast, a video series, or a book, it had better include new information. Otherwise, don’t bother. This is, after all, the era of social media. If you like what somebody else wrote or posted, you can easily share it on Twitter or Facebook. Posting stuff that isn’t new is…
Creativity emerges from the interplay of wonder and rigor. That is the central message of The Creativity Leap, a fantastic little book by Natalie Nixon. She taps into a background in cultural anthropology and fashion to create a book that struck me as somehow fundamental, connected to the core of what it means to be…
The intersection of human evil and Facebook algorithms has created the evil-amplifying social networks we now share. Facebook says AI can solve the problem. So far, it can’t. If it ever does, heaven help us. The New York Times published a revealing profile of Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s CTO. He’s the man whom Mark Zuckerberg has…
I help people with book titles and taglines. It’s not a linear process, and progress is impossible to measure. That’s a feature, not a bug. I had this insight recently when working with a client on a tagline for his business, along with some other language. (A tagline is a short description of what you…
You can write about and extend other people’s ideas. You can come up with your own, independently. But even if you think you thought of it, you’re better off checking first. Because ripoff artists are the worst. This week, Amy Chua is publishing a new book, called Political Tribes. Here’s the cover, along with the…
I blog here every weekday. I could lie to myself and say I do it for you, my readers. I don’t. Sorry, but I do it for me. Since I became a freelancer, there is no one to tell me which jobs to concentrate on, which deadlines to meet, which directions to head. Sure, there…
Breaking rules is necessary, because if you follow all the rules to the letter, you’ll never accomplish anything new and original. Ironically, though, every piece of advice on the Internet — including my book and my blog — is setting up new rules (“Avoid the passive voice! Build your personal brand! Floss!). So should you break the…