I’m writing a feature about robotic farming and I’m watching a demonstration of how easy one of the major systems is to use. It’s pretty impressive, with huge trays of plants beings raised into multiple layers so more can be grown on less land. A few minutes in I notice that, despite the narrator talking[…]
Writers don’t stop writing. Beware of the first novel onlsaught.
I’ve started writing a recurring column about online political gambling. If you were to feed my talents and experience into an algorithm that would identify the perfect job for someone, I bet the Threadster column would come out. It’s wise-assy, it’s political, it benefits from pedantry, and there are, basically, no rules. Because it is[…]
I sold an article today I’ve been hawking around for six months. It’s something I really, really want to write about and I wasn’t getting a nibble. I changed the pitch every time, zeroing in on a way to explain something that sounded like it might be a term paper in an undergraduate marketing class[…]
“So, you’re a writer.” “Yes, among other things.” “What do you write?” “Lots of different things.” “Like, plays?” “Not plays. Magazine articles. Speeches. I ghost some op-eds for politicians.” “I hate politics.” “A lot of people do.” “Not as much as me. You should write a thing about how much I hate politics.” “Really?” “Yeah.[…]
Here’s something I love that I haven’t been able to squeeze into anything: Lisa Carver, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies, Queen’s University, Canada. Earlier this year she published the results of a study she constructed to determine people’s estimates of how old they feel. That is, as[…]
It was a throw-away, a 20 minute time investment in a countdown to election day. One of 45, plugged into Hootsuite to release on social media over a weekend when attention would be elsewhere. Two days later, the redress of a World War II poster had received more than 1,000 likes, been shared 11,500 times, and been seen by 562,000[…]
Lately, I’m doing a lot of ghost writing for people who want to be known for their carefully reasoned opinions and pithy commentary. It’s the nature of the beast that I can’t talk about who these people are or what I’ve written for them. Op-Eds, mostly, because I have a lot of political clients these[…]
Which is worse, too little or too much? I ask the question because I’m in the middle of a script project that has me swamped in potential content. It’s a 45 minute documentary covering a fair sweep of history. The client has provided three books, about a gigabyte of archived historic materials, and 600 pages[…]
I needed to dig around in my files for some old magazine work I did. The paper was torn and yellowed. The words on the page were encouraging. I’m a better writer now than I was then. I mean, one would hope, right? But my own published work from then read as if it were[…]