Mark Frauenfelder and Kevin Kelly recently invited me onto the Cool Tools podcast to share some of my favorites apps and services. I’d welcome any excuse to chat with Mark, one of my favorite authors from my publishing days, and Kevin, whose work I’ve always admired. I’m

> The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.—Carl von Clausewitz In high school, I didn’t participate in any extracurriculars. Doom wasn’t going to play itself, after all. It was only when college applications rolled around that I realized I’d made

Last week, I misspelled meshuggaas [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meshuggaas]. It was a real meshuga thing to do. What a pisher I am.  Sure, I’ve fixed the post [https://mavengame.com/2019/09/accepting-the-mishigas/], but what’s that worth? Bupkes. I am both a shlemiel [https://www.youtube.

In response to my essay a few weeks back about how the easy way is actually the hard way [https://mavengame.com/2019/07/one-of-two-ways/], Nancy Larson, author of The PARDA Process [https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781634920315], wrote to me about the difficulty of writing and publishing her first

The Japanese firm Somenotsukasa Yoshioka [https://www.textiles-yoshioka.com/eng/] has produced textile dyes since the Edo period, but until the fifth-generation head of the family, Sachio Yoshioka, took the reins, the company operated like any other modern dyer, whipping up its colors in test tubes. Easier, faster, and cheaper,

This week is short and sweet because we’re heading out to the Berkshires and I’m trying to tie up loose ends before we go. The problem is, in the writing business, it’s all loose ends. (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds right, doesn’

> Nobody calls me chicken.Marty McFly, Back to the Future Part II Our capacity to write is a precious resource. Some days a single good hour, fluid and focused, can feel like a gift from above. Of course, writing is my full-time occupation, so an hour a day won’

> Just hold that happy thought, Peter! —Tinker Bell, Hook I’d always imagined a pupa as something straight out of the original Transformer s cartoon, the caterpillar sealing itself up in its chrysalis only to BI-BUH-BO-BOO-BUH [https://youtu.be/i1Nj1pEz6A0?t=11] into a beautiful butterfly. Turns out, no.

The opera singer Farinelli [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farinelli] (1705–1782) sang comfortably in all vocal registers, tenor through soprano. He was a European celebrity of the highest order, an 18th-century Beyoncé, and while Her Beyness can sing across four octaves to Farinelli’s three, I doubt she can

First: my friend Michael Margolis has a new book coming out in October: Story 10x. It’s about getting your business’s story straight—an admirable goal. In announcing the book to his mailing list, Michael mentioned “Moldawer’s Rule” (technically, Moldawer’s Law, but I forgive you, Michael): authors