We live in an age of distraction. Silicon Valley’s brightest engineers deliberately design apps to be addictive and monopolize our attention. “It’s as if they’re taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you coming back,” former Mozilla employee Aza Raskin told BBC, “Behind every screen … Continue reading
On one of my favorite Q & A shows, Lori, a long-time watcher, asks for advice. Like most of us who are ambitious, she suffers from a widespread malady- heart-breaking disappointment at the revelation that her dreams aren’t manifesting in the way she wants: “I’m clear on my goals and take daily action toward my … Continue reading
When Cheryl Strayed was 33, she sat in a hushed cabin in the Massachusetts woods to write “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” the book that would eventually earn her dazzling literary success and worldwide acclaim. She, of course, had no way of knowing that her memoir would go on to sell … Continue reading
On one of my most beloved advice shows, viewer Renee writes in complaining that her work lacks deeper meaning. After working in healthcare for several years, she worries her work as an artist won’t make the same kind of real-world impact. “I’m a little bogged down with the realization that my purely aesthetic work won’t … Continue reading
It’s always hard to get back to the page, especially when our writing routine has been periodically interrupted over a long stretch of time. If writing is a way of reconnecting with oneself, not having anything to say feels like a terrible kind of muteness. Like a traveler eager to book a hotel room, … Continue reading
French-Russian novelist Francine Du Plessix Gray always begins her writing classes by asking students to compare the following sentences, the first from Nabokov’s memoir of his youth in pre-Revolutionary Russia, Speak Memory, the second from Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. “She turned on the steps to look back at me before descending into a jasmine-scented, … Continue reading
As I focus more on my writing, I find myself more concerned with whether or not my work is original. Reading my writing, I see the glaring marks of other authors: the figurative language of Plath, the gorgeous but conversational musings of Anais Nin. I turn to my blog and I see most of my … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 