Merce Cardus's Blog, page 77
August 31, 2015
TUESDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: Switch


Knowledge does not change behavior. We have all encountered crazy shrinks and obese doctors and divorced marriage counselors.
~CHIP HEATH, author ofSwitch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
WRITING
How to Create Workable Scene Outlines for Your Novel, Resources for Writers| Tweet
Although most novels are divided up into chapters, the scene is the fundamental unit of fiction. Each scene is a mini-story, with a main character, a problem or challenge, and a beginni...
August 30, 2015
Slow Is Beautiful
We live in the age of speed. We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point.
In Praise of Slownesstraces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation.
The Annual Conference of the Society for the Deceleration of Time
Wagrain, a reso...
The Science of Why Nature Is Beautiful to Us

Science and art are complementary disciplines. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek, author of A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design,explains how, together, they allow us to explore whether the world embodies beautiful ideas.
What is the world? What is beauty?
People sometimes ask, “What does it all mean?” And that’s a very hard question to address because it’s not clear what an answer would look like. A question that I found much more fruitful, that I think one can a...
MONDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing, and Better Living: Forgiveness

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Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us.
~SIDNEY B. SIMON, author ofForgiveness: How to Make Peace With Your Past and Get on With Your Life
WRITING
The Pixar Way to Think About Story Conflict, Helping Writers Become Authors| Tweet
Conflict, conflict, conflict! It’s like this mantra among fiction writers, right? And we all nod our heads in agreement, because we all know story conflict is integral...
August 27, 2015
The 7 Most Important Play On Words Techniques
With Comedy Writing Secrets, 2nd edition, you can master the fundamentals of humor writing and turn your comedic talent into a well-paying pursuit.
More than 50 percent of all humor is based on plays on words (POWs). The POW is a device usd by all humor writers. Plays on words are the basis of practically all puns, limericks, and clever witticisms.
Here are 7 Most Important POW Techniques:
1. A double entendre
Is the use of an ambiguous word or phrase that allows for a second–usually racy–i...
Why You’ll End Up Marrying The Wrong Person
InEverybody Marries the Wrong Person, Christine Meineckediscusses the twenty misleading beliefs about roma
ntic relationships,
You’ll try not to of course – but you will, unwittingly. At least there is comfort in knowing you’re not alone.
Here are some reasons, according to The School of Life:
1. We don’t understand ourselves
We’re all crazy in very particular ways: neurotic, unbalanced and immature… But we don’t know the details.
No one encourages us too hard to find out. Our friends just w...
WEEKEND LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: The Heart Of Hidden Reality

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Quote of the day
Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.
~EDWARD FRENKEL, author ofLove and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
WRITING
How Outlining Can Bring Out Voice, Jane Friedman| Tweet
“I got some rejections where the agents said they liked the premise but it lacked voice. How do I fix voice?”
Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success
There are lots of lists out ther...
August 26, 2015
What Your Stuff Says About You
Do the things on your desk betray the thoughts on your mind? Does your dining room décor carry clues to your character?
Award-winning psychologist Sam Gosling has dispatched teams of scientific investigators to poke around bedrooms and offices, check out iPods, and peek at personal websites—to see what can be learned about us simply from looking at our belongings.Snoopis a captivating guide to our not-so-secret selves, and reveals how intensely connected we are to the places in which we live...
THURSDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: The Mathematics Of Love
Scientists have known for a long time that our body language will mirror that
of someone we are attracted to. Our pupils will become dilated, the words we use in conversation will adjust to mimic the language patterns of the other person, and our laughter will begin to synchronize. All of this happens within a matter of minutes, and all of these signs can be used to quantitatively define a connection between two people.
~HANNAH FRY, author ofThe Mathematics of Love: Pattern...
A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy Of Success
Alain de Botton, author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work examines our
ideas of success and failure — and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.
Some of the reasons why we might be feeling anxiety about our careers
We live in an age when our lives are regularly punctuated by career crises, by moments when what we thought we knew — about our l...