You’re Only One Bad Assumption away from an Elegant Plot Twist

Some plots are simple.  Plots based on a Joseph Campbell structure are simple.  Each step follows directly from the last.  “Once upon a time, there was a dude who was wrong about something.  He went on an epic journey to teach him humility, which made him right—and being right made him strong.”  There is one […]

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Anxiety and Depression: Two Loopholes.

I think I’ve found an answer (for now) for the pair of questions that’s been bothering me over the last year.  I’ve been chipping away at both of them; depression worked itself loose much more easily than anxiety. The questions: What to do/take advantage of when I’m depressed? (What is the min/max approach to dealing

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Full Nerd: Finding current, defined markets

So I have enough confidence in  my stories now that I feel like it’s “okay” to market and promote them.  (For some reason, I got over the hangup of publishing them long ago.)  I’m learning that with marketing the stories, it’s useful to make sure that they a) have a current, defined market, and b) the cover,

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Options for Impossible Dilemmas

Dilemmas usually defined as when you have to decide between two impossible choices.  Mine are almost always between “I can’t do this” and “I must do this.” Some options: Avoid the situation (and thus cognitive dissonance related to it), but incur a heavy personal cost of lost or damaged trust and relationships.  Ghosting. Tell the

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The Eisenhower Principle: a simple system for an anxiety attack

That grid that has “urgent” along one axis and “important” along the other axis (the Eisenhower Principle) is driven by fear.  It takes an overwhelming mass of all the things and turns them into “yes, but these two things are the only ones you actually need to panic about today.” The problem is, what do you do

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Strategies, Tactics, Long-Term Planning

Most of us don’t have conscious end-goals for our lives.  We don’t have principles that we can state.  We don’t know ourselves all that well.  Sometimes we think we have these things and we don’t:  the things we deeply, truly believe in are often beyond our grasp. So maybe starting off with long-term planning as

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