Matthew's Blog
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.