Author and productivity expert Dave Crenshaw [https://davecrenshaw.com/] and I met up the other day for a chat about writing books. We made a super-short video [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/davecrenshaw_authors-writing-publishing-activity-6557606359834198016-iJMM] . It was fun. It’s good to be reminded how weird I look on camera—it

Federico Viticci and John Voorhees of MacStories [https://www.macstories.net/] recently launched Dialog [https://dialogpodcast.net/], a podcast about creativity and technology. The first season features professional writers working across various genres: screenwriting, songwriting, etc. Since I love learning about niche writing apps, this show should be pure catnip.

That last essay, about the lost art of creative correspondence [https://mavengame.com/2019/06/the-lost-art-of-creative-correspondence/], struck a chord. I received (counting) five responses. That’s a spike, folks. Is the Maven Game finally going viral? This is probably the right time to sign with a top newsletter agent at

I miss sending and receiving letters. Lengthy, well-constructed epistles demanding careful thought and deliberation. Typed or hand-written messages of multiple paragraphs worthy of proper capitalization and punctuation. Forget paper, I even miss lengthy, properly constructed e-mails that begin Dear So-and-so. Nowadays, it’s all likes and emojis and beeps and

Strap on your leather aprons [https://mavengame.com/2019/06/stay-sharp/], guys. Time for a club meeting. There’s a new Shaft [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft_(2019_film)] in theaters. This one, Shaft (2019), is a sequel to Shaft (2000) which, itself, was a sequel to the original

My friend Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit, is conducting a survey of people who have published, or are working on, nonfiction books. Since he’s asking about publishing plans, expectations, goals, and outcomes and plans to share the results with all participants, I’d fill it out [https:

After Game of Thrones sounded the full depths of its creative nadir [https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a27522397/game-of-thrones-finale-plot-holes-twitter-reactions/] in May, society collectively scrambled for its next narrative diversion from the crushing daily grind of surviving the Darkest Timeline [https://community-sitcom.fandom.com/wiki/Darkest_Timeline], i.e. everything

A couple weeks back [https://mavengame.com/2019/05/when-mastery-is-all-the-rage/], I wrote: > Just because we don’t have an obsessive devotion to writing—or any other area of expertise—doesn’t mean we can’t get pretty darn good at doing our jobs. You don’t have to be

Over at Nautilus—which, happily, has secured funding to continue its print edition from a group of well-heeled superfans—Heather Berlin writes about time and the flow state [http://nautil.us/issue/61/coordinates/what-time-feels-like-when-youre-improvising] : > When our minds are under-stimulated, time often feels like it is moving in slow

If you’re looking for the ticket to mastery, I can’t help you. Plenty of books promise to show you how it’s done, but I don’t think mastery is something you can choose. That said, I might have a viable alternative. In Making Things Right: The Simple