Podcast Listening and the “Bad” Guest
The other day I listened to one of my favorite podcasts—one that unfortunately had a bad guest. What do I mean by a bad guest? In this case I mean one who speaks in platitudes without relaying any useful, interesting or actionable content i.e. feel-good jibber-jabber....
What Photography can Show Writing About Finding “Voice”
In photography, if you want to find your voice then you focus on mastering the tools of the craft. This takes time, patience, curiosity and volume. I suspect the same goes for writing.
Creativity and Permission
One thing I’ve observed in my recent photography class: in a group of people who don't know each other well, most people need permission to be creative. When a photography assignment is given a set of certain restraints or rules, if just one person goes to the edge of...
Chaos ⇏ Creativity
Chaos doesn't necessarily lead to creativity, or to something "better." Random solutions rarely are effective for problem solving —and much of creativity is problem solving. In practice what this means is when we increase chaos we increase the number of random...
Create, Market, Relationships, Think
I like to divide my creative life into four domains: creativity, marketing, developing relationships, and thinking. Usually, in a given week, my percentages look like this: Create: 10%Marketing: 30%Relationships: 5%Thinking: 55% (Unfortunately, by Marketing, I am...
Vulnerability
One retrospective benefit of my progressive hip arthritis and the first few weeks of my subsequent hip replacement? It was a good reminder of what it felt like to be physically vulnerable—something I haven’t had to contend with since my “being-bullied-days” of junior...
The Keyboard: A Writer’s Tool
Tools matter. Tools matter for writing. And one of the most important writing tools? The keyboard. A 50,000-word novel, if you consider spacing, editing and rewriting requires at least one-million keystrokes. That’s a lot of finger-work! For example, I recently...
My 2023 Writing Platform Change?
I am beginning to get a handle on what I want to do for a platform change. I am moving towards the idea of changing my daily blog to a weekly blog, going much deeper into tools for physician-writers. This may involve a weekly podcast, concurrent LinkedIn posts, and...
Writing’s False Summit
In mountain climbing, are false summits. These are the ridges that seem to rise out of nowhere at the end of the climb which the climber falsely believes to be the actual summit, only to be disappointed when. after reaching it, to realize the hard part—the crux of the...
Bookmark Twitter Bookmarks!
Sometimes simple tools can be the best tools. Lately, I’ve been using Twitter’s Bookmark function more frequently. Specifically, I am using it to capture content around one specific business topic I need to understand more deeply. It’s now become a critical part of my...
Office Surfing and Writing Breaks
During long stretches of writing, I usually write in fifty-minute blocks with ten-minute breaks. And what do I do in those breaks? Lately, I have been going to my balance board for five of those precious ten minutes. I am not sure it helps my creative process, but it...
Writing Time
I am trying to increase my daily writing time. Currently I’m roughly at two hours a day, but in November, I hope to increase it significantly. But what do I mean by writing time? What does it include, and, more importantly, what does it exclude? My writing time...
Am I a Writer or an Author?
Am I a writer? Yes. I have blogged every day for nearly two years just on my blog, and on other healthcare domains, I have written over 500 blog posts. But am I an author? The answer to this question is less clear, but I am asking it for two reasons. First, how should...
Hyphens: Am I a “Physician Writer” or a “Physician-Writer?”
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate, that is the question. I am a physician who writes, and a writer who is a physician. My question: Am I a physician writer or a physician-writer? First I tried Google. No help there. “Physician Writer” gave me 53,200 hits,...
How I Became a Sloppy Blogger
My blogging has become sloppy lately—filled with grammatical errors and poor sentence structure. Why? Because "to save time," I stopped doing my one final check: printing out my blog post in the WordPress Preview step, and physically going through a hard copy with a...
A “Twitter Rabbit Hole” Near Miss
I nearly got dragged into an Twitter argument ((Twurgument?) about semantics the other day, although saying I was “nearly dragged” is disingenuous: It’s more accurate to say I came very close to voluntarily starting an argument. The interesting thing? The potential...
My Morning Person Dilemma
I am a morning person—a 5 A.M. morning person. I am also an Eat That Frog! kind-of-guy. (By this, I mean I believe in Brain Tracy’s advice to always do my most important task first.) My dilemma? I am trying to decide whether to first do a 5 A.M. workout or to first do...
Paraphrasing James Patterson
I just watched James Patterson’s Masterclass on creative writing . Here is one of the jewels he dropped—paraphrased: Know what you like to do. Learn how to do it well. Do more of it. Now that I am writing full time, I get it.
Creative Energy’s Law of Amplification?
Right now, most of my creative energy is focused on writing—especially in the fiction arena—but this week I have also started a course on one of my creative hobbies: black and white photography. Here’s an odd thing. Despite having committed to completing two of my...
Words are Like a Potter’s Clay
In the recent Write Now with Scrivener podcast episode Rashelle Isip, Professional Organizer, Ms. Isip talked about how similar writing is to pottery, how words are like clay, and how essential it is to get this clay on the potter’s wheel as the necessary first step...
Why I Don’t Argue on Twitter
For me, a good argument—one which I will grow from—requires three things: Being with someone I know well and respectBeing about a subject I care aboutBeing in a private place The last reason is why I choose not to argue on Twitter.
The Three Groups of Twitter Tweeters
Before I engage someone on Twitter, I try to put them into one of three Twitter groups: givers, neutrals, and bullies. The first group, the givers, are rare. These tweeters are consistently putting out helpful content and amplifying others in a positive way. The...
One Of Twitter’s Greatest Strengths
Twitter can be problematic, but let me share one of its greatest strengths: its ability to translate and connect an “in real life” (IRL) connection in the digital domain. Here’s an example. Let’s say you attend an in-person writing conference, and you hear a literary...
Doing The Scrivener Tutorial—Again!
I’ve used the writing software Scrivener for several years, and I am comfortable with most of it’s basic functions, but over the last week I did the tutorial again. Why? Not to learn how to use the software—I already know that—but instead to review how I think as I...
Passion + Habit = Success
In best-selling author James Patterson’s Masterclass on writing, he states that the key to success is passion plus habit. I agree. Passion acts as the emotional energy, but habit is the discipline that allows one to harness it. I am reasonably solid in both, but if I...
My Desk Totem For My Writing Space
My desk totem for my writing space—my creative space—is a baby dragon hatching from an egg. It’s the one personal item I have on my desk. I selected it for a specific reason: It is a reminder that no matter how powerful an idea will become, at birth it can be fragile...
SEO, Email Lists, and Newsletters
Although I’ve blogged daily for nearly two years, I haven’t focused on SEO, I haven’t created an email list, and I haven’t done a newsletter. This has been an intentional choice, since the principle purpose of my blog was to strengthen a daily habit of writing. But as...
Nerves
I started a new, significant writing project on Oct 1st. And now? I have “nerves.” Not quite the first day of medical school nerves—and not the first day of a 24/hour shift as an intern in a Level I Trauma Center nerves—but nerves all the same. Why? Because I know the...
A Podcast Jewel and a Novel as a Quilt
In the recent write-minded podcast episode Craft-minded series: Craft as Shaper of Story, featuring Morgan Talty the cohost, Grant Faulkner, made the following insightful comment: A quilt is a good metaphor for a collection of linked stories…Grant Faulkner Indeed he...
My Favorite Blog Post from September
My favorite post I wrote in September 2022 was Nietzsche’s 12 Qualities of a Scholar. Nietzsche was a master observer of the human condition, and I think he understood the scholars of his time better than they did themselves. Not only that, I think his list applies...