The value of critics In a recent post, I talked about the cost of a scathing review I received from an anonymous reviewer. I did not mention that this was a review I solicited as in paid for. The cost I spoke about wasn’t the money, it was the denunciation, the rebukes…the heat in my […]
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Watching the unfair calls on Lebron James during the second game of the final NBA playoffs helped when I received a scathing review of my first novel. A little anyway. We’ve been told that life isn’t fair since we were small tykes. But does it help when three flagrant fouls in front of the referee
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Remember Big Hairy Audacious Goals? Made famous a couple of decades ago by management and leadership gurus like Tom Peters, BHAG stands for big, hairy, audacious goals. I was reminded of my love hate relationship with goals by Dan Pink while listening to a podcast of his speech to the 2014 graduating class of Northwestern
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Pete Carroll as a Coach of writers or supplier of 5 writing lessons is not well known. For good reason because football coaches don’t teach others how to write, they teach others how to play football. And yet Carroll’s coaching philosophy, one which landed him and the Seattle Seahawks into two successive Super Bowls, is
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It’s been a week since I saw McFarland, USA but still within the first five minutes of talking with friends, I find myself exhorting him or her to see this movie. The film is an allegory for our lives, here is why:
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Joy and Sorrow: Essential Paradox During those years in which I considered myself an atheist, I discovered the writings of Kahil Gibran (only after I joined the Catholic Church did I learn that Gibran had been Catholic) ; there was one meditation of Gibran’s in particular that I loved: On Joy and Sorrow. Your joy
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Strange word, deadline: Sounds somber even grim. Of late, I’ve been thinking about goals, targets, and yes, deadlines and mind games. I need to complete my latest book. Mostly because those who know I’m working on it are asking, ‘When will you finish the next book?’ Simple question, right? Not loaded with animosity, simply curiosity.
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Friends and family who know me well have referred to me as a food Nazi either sotto voce, tongue-in-cheek, or jokingly. And the sobriquet (love that word and only rarely get to use it) is fitting for those who don’t care about GMO, dwarf grain, epigenetics or much of the information on nutrition I find
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After four months on the central coast of California, we are back home here in the high desert. I am acutely aware of the disorientation that travel causes for a host of reasons; fatigue, loss of familiar places and even, a process of re-acquaintance with our new surroundings, amplified by major topographical changes: The Pacific
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Why should I listen to you? “Why should I listen to you?” was a rhetorical question asked and answered a few decades ago when I decided to stop watching the news. Initially, my reason was a simple one. I lived alone with my first Doberman during the time of a series of home invasions in
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