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In Praise of Software Scribes
How automated transcriptions empower authors and everyone on the Internet.
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Let’s Get It: Author Motivation 101
When I look at the money I make from writing, I can hardly believe my eyes. So I don’t. I turn on Thug Motivation 101, and listen to Jeezy say the same thing he said when I was in high school, “You gotta believe…”
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Process Your By-products
Whatever you’re selling, you’re also creating something valuable that you haven’t sold yet. It probably looks like waste. Process it and sell it!
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Story-Driven Pitching: 6 Steps for Better Pitches
For writers, entrepreneurs, or anyone who wants lead thinking, I’m going to show you my story-driven approach to pitching.
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Documenting Lost Documents
In Praise of Rescuing Lost Stories Whenever I come across a broken link, I gasp. I pull up Archive.org, the vast backup of broken links, and I indulge the impulse. I noticed this first in 2012, when I tried finding full footage of the Watch the Throne documentary. I caught wind that there was a…
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How I Wrote a Book in the Pandemic
When the pandemic first started, some of us drew inspiration from how Shakespeare wrote during the plague, or how Isaac Newton invented calculus while in isolation. The idea was aspirational—perhaps we, too, could make great things during the pandemic. It was a relief. While I didn’t aim to be Shakespeare, I did need to write…
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Longcutting
There’s a time and place for shortcuts, but here’s a call to actually doing the work. It’s the opposite of a shortcut; it’s a longcut.
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Learn a Book’s Best Ideas in 20 Minutes
Why you don’t need to read an entire book to learn from it. In The Creative Habit, author and choreographer Twyla Tharp writes, “I read for a lot of reasons, pleasure being the least of them.” Tharp, probably like us, reads for specific, transactional, purposes. For example, she’s often looking for concepts, patterns and situations…
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 2): The Future
“My greatest award is what I’m about to do. I’m always thinking about the future,” the Grammy website quotes Kanye West. Kanye is, very much, a quintessential American CEO. He positions himself as a creative genius and innovator. More importantly, he invests vast amounts of resources into backing his claims up with the projects and…
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Own Your Marketing, Own Your Income
A Moment of Clarity In the Business of Content Creation Who Is This For? Content creators (i.e., anyone using social media to make money). People like Greg Isenberg and Peter Yang have asked, how can the average content creator make more money? It’s a real problem—TikTok influencers are trying to forecast their reach/engagement projections to…