Slumped on the couch after a long day at the keyboard, I often turn to episodes of Seinfeld to unwind—comfort food from Tom's Diner. Recently, I re-watched "The Marine Biologist," which features one of the show's most inspired intersections between storylines. In search

A published book, good or bad, is the culmination of a staggering array of decisions, from scope to subtitle to, well, every single word of the manuscript. The sheer potential of any yet-to-be-written book, short or long, stuns and boggles the mind. Writer's block—ha! The problem isn&

The manuscript of a book is a hearty, unmanageable thing. Even a slim book clocks in at 40,000 words or more, and I’ve never written one shorter than 90,000 myself. Forget wrapping your head around 90,000 words. You might as well grasp the entirety of your

David Lynch came to a creative crossroads during the five-year production of his first film, Eraserhead. The project was coming together scene by scene, but the underlying meaning remained elusive to its maker. What, exactly, was he trying to say with this odd character and the oblique but compelling sequence

There’s a small photo studio in town, right off the main drag. This morning, I noticed that they’ve lined their front window with examples of the work they’ve done for other inhabitants of this fine little burg. Among these sample images were photos of a local teen

Something extraordinary takes place in an episode of Hoarders, the long-running reality series about people with hoarding disorder. After getting the preliminaries out of the way, the therapist calls the hoarder’s attention to the gorilla in the room. Except, in this case, the gorilla is a pumpkin. “What pumpkin?

Writing in England in the first half of the 19th century, Thomas Babington Macaulay was a glass-half-full kind of guy. In his History, he wrote: > The history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement.

Before you begin work on your next major creative project, let it simmer. Days, weeks, months. Wait until the urge to begin becomes an obsession. Then, go to sleep. So argues surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in his very strange book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship [https://bookshop.org/books/50-secrets-of-magic-craftsmanship/

In reference to last week’s essay [https://mavengame.com/2021/07/second-chapter-syndrome/], Maven Game reader and knitting enthusiast Zahava Shapiro [https://quotationmarkers.blogspot.com/] wrote to say that she’s experienced second-sock syndrome herself. According to Zahava, most sock patterns put the hard part—heel and toe—last. “This

> I can eat fifty eggs. —Cool Hand Luke Knitters dread “second sock syndrome” [https://sheepamongwolves.net/2018/09/second-sock-syndrome-what-it-is-and-how-to-fight-it/] : > Knitting the first sock usually goes quickly. But the second one seems to drag on, never gets completed or even cast on in the first place. Why does SSS