Matthew Arnold Stern's Blog, page 58
March 11, 2014
Habits in fact and fiction
I finished reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. It’s an excellent and useful book (especially because I need to change my eating habits). This book also helped me understand character development in fiction. Here’s a brief summary of what Duhigg says about habits. …
March 7, 2014
WritersUA 2014 Day 4: A community, not a crowd
This tweet best summarizes WritersUA this year: The #writersua crowd really feels like a COMMUNITY – not just a crowd.
March 5, 2014
WritersUA 2014 Day 3: “What do I do now?”
Another benefit of coming to WritersUA is that it’s helping me write my new novel, Amiga. There’s a scene where my narrator is looking at Workbench, the Amiga user interface, for the first time. He is perplexed when he looks at the screen. (Keep in mind that this happens in 1985 when windows and icons …
March 4, 2014
WritersUA 2014 Day 2: An open letter to Amanda
Dear Amanda: I’m sorry that you had an unfortunate experience in your technical communications class. There are a couple of problems in teaching technical communications. First, outside of the quality technical communications certificate programs taught at some universities and STC, technical writing often isn’t taught well. There are instructors who don’t realize that technical writing …
March 3, 2014
WritersUA 2014 Day 1: Del Taco and learning
When I went to Palm Springs for WritersUA, I made a commitment: I wouldn’t eat at Del Taco. We’ve been eating there a lot lately at home, and if I were going to drive all the way to Palm Springs, I wanted to eat something different. I had a few moments before the conference started, …
February 28, 2014
WritersUA 2014 Pre-Show: Why go to conferences?
I’m going to my seventh WritersUA conference, which will be in Palm Springs. I’ve also attended and spoke at STC, CES, Help University, and other writing and technical conferences over the years. Why do I consider conferences such a big deal? Why are they worth the time, effort, and expense? Conferences are important because they …
February 24, 2014
Blogging Tips
I attended a wonderful talk by Sonia Marsh, author of Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island and My Gutsy Story Anthology: True Stories of Love, Courage and Adventure from Around the World (Volume 1). She talked about blogs as a promotional tool and asked the audience for our …
February 21, 2014
“Outside the fence, we’re all friends…”
Five years ago this week, I stood at home plate at our Majors baseball field and gave my first opening day speech as president of Saddleback Little League. I told the assembled parents and players: Inside the fence, we play hard to win. Outside the fence, we’re all friends and part of one community. It …
February 19, 2014
How to tell a story where everyone knows the ending
While I wait to hear how The Ghosts of Reseda High does in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, I’m starting work on my next novel, Amiga. This book describes the early days of the personal computer industry. But it is a story where we already know the ending. Commodore went out of business in …
February 15, 2014
What do you contribute to society?
It would be easy to write off Tom Perkins and his $1 in taxes paid = 1 vote idea. It would be easy to dismiss him as an entitled elitist who would be among the first to get his head chopped off in the next peasant revolt. However, he raises an interesting question: How do …
