Matthew's Blog
A Tweet-Craft Tip for Writers
In my physician days attending medical conferences, whenever I tweeted about the physician speakers I “mentioned” ( by using the @ symbol) both the speaker's Twitter handle and their organization’s Twitter handle. Example: I just heard a great talk from @DrX from...
The Internal Arena?
Most of us have run across Teddy Roosevelt’s “Arena” speech. Here’s part of it: “It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually...
One Of My Favorite Blog Writing Spots
The bench pictured above is one of my favorite early morning blogging spots. It’s about 5 minutes away from my home, located in a small park in Medina, Washington, right on Lake Washington. In the background is Mercer Island. It’s reasonable quiet, without any car...
Writing Tools: Rereading Until It Falls Apart!
My book, Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies For Every Writer, is falling apart. It's binding on the spine is torn halfway up, and this tear extends through several pages. It has stains and has been “dog-eared” throughout. It's a book on the last leg of it's...
A Great Idea vs. A Good Ideas Network
Having “The Great Idea”—and then implementing it—is a wonderful thing, and I think it is, in theory, the best way to achieve huge success. The downside, of course, is that truly great ideas are rare, and the ability to implement them is even rarer. Therefore, as a...
Risk Aversion and 100% Risk Reduction Rules
I don’t drink and drive. Ever. And I go to extreme lengths not to do so. For example, if I am going to the symphony and I think I may want to have a single glass of white wine at intermission, I will either: Arrange for a town carTake a taxi or Uber (both ways)Spend...
Is Personal Pivoting A Good Thing?
Here’s a link to some high-tech pivot success stories, including Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest: What is a Pivot? Top 10 Best Tech Startup Pivots Case Study. Certainly these were successful pivots. And certainly within high-tech there are many more undocumented pivot...
Blogging In My Car
Here’s one of my favorite places to blog: in my car, waiting for my wife as she runs an errand. Granted, my car isn’t a great place for experiencing the deep creativity I need for writing fiction or the focused organization I need for writing non-fiction or the...
Editing Out Color, Editing Out Words
In my photography journey, I mostly create black and white photographs. My editing approach for these photographs is as follows: Take the initial photograph in color at the highest pixel densityDo a rough cropConvert to black and white using an auto settingPlay with...