I used to play golf but I wasn’t very good. I rented a DVD, though, that taught me a better way to swing, and after watching it a few times and spending an hour or so practicing, I knocked ten strokes off my game. I can’t believe how much time I wasted when a simple DVD saved me years of frustration. I’d say something similar is true in my writing career. If you read these books, your writing will improve to the point people who read your work will begin to comment on how well you write. Sometimes the difference between an okay writer and a great writer is simple. I’ve read quite a few books on writing and here is, in my opinion, the collection every writer should have in their library. • The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: This book is aimed at writers, but it’s also applicable to anybody who does creative work. Whether you are a musician, pastor, teacher or in any profession that requires you to “put something on the blank page,” this book needs to be in your library. I read The War of Art about twice each year, and I’ll probably keep [...]

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05Mar, 2010

Academy Award Picks

It was a pretty good year for movies considering there is no money in Hollywood. I think The Hurt Locker was the best movie of the year, followed by An Education. Jeff Bridges did a great job in Crazy Heart (and the music by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham was terrific) but overall I felt like that movie was creepy. Perhaps Jeff Bridges did too good of a job portraying a washed-up-drunk-country-singer turned babysitter. Up in the Air was too sad for me. I don’t like traveling as much as I used to, and I saw that movie while on the road. It had it’s moments, though. I walked out on Avatar. I thought it was a good movie, actually, I was just home for Christmas and made the mistake of going to see the 10:30PM showing. I walked out when the bad men were cutting down the giant tree. Don’t tell me what happened because I’ll probably rent it at some point. The part that I saw was a spectacle, to be sure, and I felt like I was on a ride at Disney. Christoph Waltz was remarkable in Inglorius Basterds. He made everybody else in that movie look [...]

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04Mar, 2010

Recently I started reading the New Testament again. My friend Ron Frost recommends reading the Bible all the way through, then reading it again, and then again, until you die. So I am taking his advice. And I’m enjoying it. I didn’t start in Genesis this time, I started in Matthew, and so read the account of the Birth of Christ. Each time I read the Bible I’m taken aback by how much we dilute the power of its stories with sentimentalism. The story of Noah and his Ark has been reduced to a Children’s story (a God-orchestrated massacre of all humanity) and the story of the Birth of Christ into a regal pageant complete with gifts and robed choirs of angels (A poor virgin and her new husband delivering a baby in a manger of a stable. Followed by an angry king slaughtering all children under two years old to try to kill off the Messiah.) What I like about the Bible is it doesn’t clean up history. It isn’t a clean book, and God does not always look good (from our finite perspective) and yet it doesn’t hide or sell or bait and switch, it just tells the [...]

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03Mar, 2010

If you’ve read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and want to know more about the elements of story as they pertain to writing, I’ve got a DVD series called Into the Elements in which, in a little over four hours, I go through how the elements work in both fiction and non-fiction. It’s a great series for writers, bloggers and even speakers. We filmed the series here in Portland, at the historic Hollywood Theater. You can learn more by visiting intotheelements.com. After taking the course, you’ll find that structuring an essay or even a novel is much easier. You’ll intuitively know what is worth focussing on and what to simply let go of. The most important part of most literary projects is the story. That’s why guys like Stephen King sell so many books. James Patterson hardly writes any of his own books anymore, he simply outlines a story and sends the story to a writer. It sounds like cheating, but honestly, people really do read for the story. The text around the story is just furniture in a house. Building the house is most important. So if you’re a writer, give Into the Elements a try. A [...]

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01Mar, 2010

A couple months ago a friend came through town because his band was playing a show at the Crystal Ballroom. We got breakfast at his favorite spot in Portland (Mother’s Bistro) and then wandered around downtown where we ended up in a guitar shop. The guys in the band started going through pedals and amps, talking it up with the gearheads in the shop, when my friend turned to me and said “you don’t have anything like this, as a writer, do you?” What he meant was, there aren’t shops where writers go to geek out over equipment. The Mac shop at the mall doesn’t count, really. And neither does Best Buy. And I’ve never wandered into an Office Depot with my writer friends to look through old, used boxes of pen and paper. My friend was right. Well, sort of. I actually do use one piece of cool equipment when I write. I don’t use it all the time, but I use it lots. It’s a kitchen timer. And I thought maybe passing along my use of it as a writing tip might be appreciated. What do I use my kitchen timer for, other than for ready-bake cookies? I [...]

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