A research-based approach to dealing with cravings by letting them go past rather than trying to “turn them off” – either by an act of will or by giving in to them. Basically, it’s about creating a space between the thought/feeling and the action, and being OK with pausing in that space.
This is very similar to the “welcoming practice” that I’ve used to deal with powerful feelings.
How do you warn potential future civilizations not to open your nuclear waste storage facility?
http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/
If I needed a cover right now, I would be all over this. Look into it.
Originally shared by S. A. Hunt
I’m still doing 50% off book cover arts for a few weeks. If you want to get in on it before the price goes back up, now’s the time.
Contact form and portfolio at:
http://www.sahuntbooks.com/art.html
#amwriting #art #books
I happen to believe that good writing and being happy in life are not mutually exclusive. (I have to believe this, because otherwise I would be doomed to be a bad writer, and that would make me unhappy.)
This post is wordy – you can skim – but it’s a useful pointer to what psychologists who study happiness have found about things you can do to improve your happiness. A surprisingly large proportion of our happiness is able to be changed by these techniques (I forget the exact figure, but it’s tens of percent), so even if you’re a naturally unhappy person, there are things you can do to improve your experience of life.
Originally shared by Tim Brownson
#happiness #happy
Ken Liu (incorrectly referred to by the OP below as “Lee”) is a prolific short story writer and, as of recently, also a novelist. He uses an apt metaphor to point out what those of us who write in both forms generally discover: they’re structurally different, and the skills involved in writing them are not all the same.
Originally shared by Kantuck Nadie Nata-Akon
Two interesting writing articles.
The one from Mr. Lee sums it up best for me. I posted this to an IM to a writing friend.
(10:06:16 AM) Kantuck: Mr Lee writes: “When I write short stories, I generally don’t outline at all. I can proceed by instinct and experimentation, feeling my way and sculpting the story piece by piece while the shape of the whole is held in my head.”
(10:06:47 AM) Kantuck: I’ve said before I can write a short story or micro fiction because I can see it all in my mind. But a novel? almost impossible.
(10:07:09 AM) Kantuck: although I /do tend to get a bit wordy, once a story starts going./ Case in point my last one 🙂
http://www.space.com/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html
and
from TV tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale
I think I can scale this down to help get more of a scale. Imagine me, living in Kentucky USA and want to walk to Juno, Alaska. According to Google maps that’s 3,315 miles. At 15 miles a day, that’d take me around 8 months.
Now scale that up to just the size of the solar system and go to Pluto. 7.5 billion km; uh…jezz…12,962,962.96 years.
Looks like I’ll need a couple more hiking boots now.
http://www.space.com/32384-writing-scifi-requires-a-sense-of-scale.html
A long article (I haven’t had time to read it all), but the main point is: women took all kinds of roles in historical times; they can do so in fiction, too.
Originally shared by Cora Foerstner
For those of you who write epic fantasy or are interested, I found this interesting article. It’s long but worthwhile reading.
These points are a good summary. I have a fuller explanation here:
csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
15 Ways to Use a Comma http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-commas-a-summary
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-commas-a-summary
Seeing people we can identify with in media, especially when we’re young, helps us build our identities and make choices.
Via Josh Roby.
Originally shared by Laura Anne Gilman
I’m not crying, you’re… I’m totally wet-eyed.
The things we call “phones” are advanced sensing platforms with location awareness that we carry around with us in large numbers.
This – and other massive data, such as tweets or Google searches – can, in aggregate, reveal surprising things about the world, without building any new infrastructure, deploying any additional devices, or asking people to provide any extra data. We can just mine the data that people are already creating by going about their daily lives.
There are obvious privacy and data ownership issues from this.
(28 minutes.)
“High status groups, mainly white men, are given freedom to deviate from the status quo because their competence is assumed based on their membership in the high status group. In contrast, when women and nonwhite leaders advocate for other women and nonwhites, it highlights their low-status demographics, activating the stereotype of incompetence.”
– Harvard Business Review. Includes a real-world study and a confirmational experiment.
Originally shared by Walter Roberson