Time to Write

Sunday Not So Funnies: Childhood

Anybody else remember feeling this way?

Quick tip if you love cartoons & comics

If you love cartoons, in this case strip or single panel, not animated, check out theNib.com. 

They offer cartoons that are political, journalistic, or just plain funny. 

You can also sign up for a daily email infusion of cartoons.

Summary books: parasites or time savers?

What do you think about summary books? I've noticed more and more of them popping up on Amazon lately. 

For instance, consider the book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, by Amy Cuddy, 352 pages, £8.99 in the UK (about $12) and, unusually, more for the Kindle version (£9.99). Its ranking is 2,237 in books.

One summary version is by "Ant Hive Media," 30 pages. The price is £4.89 (about $6). Its ranking is 95,072.

The other is by "Instaread"and says it includes analysis, but still comes in at only 34 pages, for £5.23 for the paperback. Its ranking is 342,857.

I guess summary books could be useful for someone wanting to save time, but I can't help feeling they're feeding on somebody else's the hard. Shouldn't a percentage of the proceeds go to the original author?

 

 

 

 

When will headline writers stop misusing the word "insane"?

How you noticed how often clickbait headlines use the word "insane"? As in, get insane results, one insane trick to help you lose weight, etc.? Here are a few real examples:

"How Pokemon Go is Driving Insane Amounts of Sales" (Inc.com)"

'Insane productivity" (insaneproductivity.com)

"41 Insane Facts You Definitely Didn't Know About Disneyland" (popsugar.com)

Here's one that throws in another favorite clickbait word for good measure:

"This Seinfeld 9/11 script is insane and incredible" (splitsider.com)

I just ran across perhaps the most inappropriate use yet, on Psyblog, of all places--a site that reports on new findings in psychology:

"10 Science-backed Steps for Insane Mental Focus"

Enough with the insane, already! You're driving me...annoyed.

 

A simple question to help you understand what your characters would do next

When you're stuck for what a character in your novel or screenplay would do next, there's a simple question that can help you decide.

As novelist Lili Wright ("Dancing With the Tiger") points out in an interview in The National Book Review, how you phrase the question is important. She credits it to screenwriting guru Robert McKee:

"Don't think, What would I do?

Or, what would the character do?

But: If I were him or her, what would I do?"

It's when you put yourself into the character's shoes and interpret the situation from his or her perspective that you're most likely to hit upon the most logical and true next action.

For instance, if you (the writer) came across somebody fell into some bushes and obviously is in need of help, probably you'd go to their aid. But what about your character's reaction to such a situation?

Let's assume your character has a good reason to want to stay out of the spotlight.

If you ask yourself simply, "What would the character do?" you might conclude that she hurries on, hoping someone else will come along and help the injured person.

However, if you imagine yourself to be the character and create that image of the injured person in your imagination, you might find that simply leaving the injured person and doing nothing else makes you feel too guilty.

As this character, what else could you do? For instance, maybe you'd hurry on but, keeping your head down, say to the next person you encounter, "I think there's somebody over there who's injured," hoping that person would choose to look and help. 

Vividly imagining any situation from the perspective of your character allows you to tune in to their emotion as well as the logic of how they'd react, and that will make it more authentic.

A better formula for creating your passwords

A mistake people make when changing their password is just changing one element or adding one character to their current password. Apparently, hackers program for that.

A better option is to have your password made up of four unrelated words, like this:

Bunnygymfocuselevator

You can remember it by creating an image: picture a bunny going to a gym and it's blurry but what suddenly comes into focus is an elevator. 

Of course, if you have lots of sites with passwords, remembering different combinations for each one gets harder.

Instead of writing down the actual passwords, you could do it with doodles like this:

If those fell into the wrong hands the person finding them probably wouldn't be able to figure out the passwords.

However, if you look at your pictorial clues after not used it for a while you might think the password is rabbitbarbellmagnifyinglift.

Or you can use password software. I'm using Dashlane and so far I'm happy with it.

How many days does it take to establish a new habit? (And how to do it)

Are there any new habits you'd like to form? Writing every day, making time to read every day, exercising, or keeping your home office tidy, for instance? How long would it take, and what are the best ways to do it?

21 DAYS IS A MINIMUM

For a while, the conventional wisdom was it takes 21 days to form a new habit, which actually was a misstatement of the conclusion of personal development guru Maxwell Maltz, who said it takes at least 21 days.

In 2009, a study at University College London found that how long it takes depends on how difficult the behavior is, but the average was 66 days. That is, you have to do the new thing 66 days in a row before it becomes a habit and make it feel stranger not to do it than to do it.

HOW TO DO IT

There have been several books about habit formation lately and what most of them advise is:

* Be sure this is a habit you want to develop (rather than something somebody else thinks you should develop);

* Be specific--"writing more" is too vague. Instead, we might decide to "write at least 500 words a day" or "spend at least 20 minutes a day working on my novel.";

* Set up a cue or trigger that reminds you to do the desired behavior. If you want to get into the habit of drinking more water, you can link that to brushing your teeth (you'll drink a glass of water afterward) or making it the first thing you do during your lunch break, for example. 

* Make the new behavior as easy to do as possible. If you want to eat at least 1 piece of fruit a day, make sure the fruit bowl is where you can see it every time you go into the kitchen. If you want to have fruit instead of eating a candy bar, don't keep any candy bars in the house.

* When possible, do the behavior at the same time every day or the same day every week;

* When possible, combine a new habit with one that's already established. For instance, if you already go for a 15-minute walk every day and you'd like to get into the habit of learning a few new words of a foreign language every day, you could listen to language tapes while taking your walk. 

* When possible, get someone else to be your new habit partner--for instance, someone who will go on a brisk walk with you every morning or be your gym partner three times a week.

* Give yourself a reward to reinforce the new behavior. For some people, just checking the item off a to- do list is enough. Food is a powerful reward, but can also be a dangerous one if you're watching your weight. The ideal reward is one that you don't get normally.

* Have specific rules for when it's OK not to do the behavior. For instance, if your goal is to exercise at the gym every day, how sick will you have to be in order to have a good reason not to do it? Feeling a little tired probably isn't a great reason, being in the infectious stage of an illness is. If these rules are in place when you start, you'll be less likely to rationalize exceptions.

* If you miss a day, don't let that be an excuse for lapsing for longer. Resume the next day.

DON'T FORGET THIS ONE!

* Finally, and this is the one most people forget about, if the new habit takes time, decide what you will stop doing, or will do for less time, in order to free up that time for the new behavior.