Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 33

Ready Player One: On Writing Movies and Books

I read Ready Player One last year and loved it. I was very excited about the movie coming out.

I saw the movie last night and–as many critics have pointed out–it is very different from the book.

I won’t offer any critique or analysis here. What I find interesting, though, is that the author of the book, Ernest Cline, is listed as one of two screenplay writers. In other words, he was on board with the many changes in the movie.

I imagine myself working on a script that turned my book into a mo...

Writing Fiction with a Christian Worldview

I just finished reading S. D. Smith’s The Green Ember. Smith’s hashtag for the series is rightfully #rabbitswithswords. It is a middle grade fantasy novel about two rabbits who are thrown into an epic medieval tale of a broken kingdom that has hope in the coming of a new king.

I read the book because I’m setting out to write fiction for the first time this year. I feel naturally drawn towards science fiction and fantasy because that is the genre I read most growing up and still read today.

Ea...

Why Canadian Rock Band Sloan Didn’t Quit

In 1999 my closest high school friends and I were obsessed with a Canadian band named Sloan. No one we knew had really heard of them, but we loved everything they did. As a group we went to many Sloan concerts together in high school and then during college.

But in 1999 Sloan was wondering why they did not break through in the United States.

They were big in Canada, but hardly anyone knew them in the U.S.

Nineteen years later and they still haven’t had that U.S. “breakthrough” yet they contin...

Imagining Too Little

Hyperbole isn’t the worst crime. men suffer more from imagining too little than too much.

P. T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman 

Visionary leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs show us that the impossible is possible.

By default, we imagine too little until someone shows us how to see the world differently.

Have confidence.

Confidence is the key. It is the one thing that helps a visionary convince others to see what she sees.

Have confidence in your venture, your art, your business, your show, e...

Don’t waste a year writing a bad novel. Do this instead.

You can spend an entire year on a novel that turns out to be really bad.

Ray Bradbury offered some alternative advice for the beginner or intermediate writer:

Write 52 short stories instead of one novel. Write one short story a week for a year.

“I defy you,” he said, “to write 52 bad ones. It is not possible.”

At the end of the week, you will feel good. You will have actually accomplished something.

When you are writing a novel, you may not feel as good at the end of the week because you will...

Why We Don’t Keep a Budget

I am so grateful that we were given Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover as a newly married couple ten years ago. It gave us a road map to follow to find the financial security we have today. I became a big Dave Ramsey fan back then and listened to the podcast version of his radio show for many years.

Along the way, however, there was a point of contention between my wife and me about keeping a budget. I love spreadsheets and numbers and rules to follow so keeping a budget made a lot of sense t...

Clear Instructions

The other day I was helping my daughter with her math homework and we both had a difficult time understanding what to do. Internally, I found myself going through a cycle of thoughts that are shared by so many millions of people in school:

“I don’t get it.” “This is dumb.” “I can’t do this.” “I’m not good at math.” “I hate math.”

I actually love math. I was really good at math in school so I learned to love it. Why was I feeling this way now?

Because I didn’t get it.

I do not like poetry. I...

The Extra Coat in Your Closet Belongs to the Poor

“When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”

― Basil the Great

With all the talk of minimalism and decluttering these days people often forget that there are two sid...

Keeping a One-Sentence-a-Day Journal

At the very beginning of this year I heard Ryan Holiday tell James Altucher on a podcast interview that he keeps a one-sentence journal. Since it was the beginning of the year, I thought I would give it a try. I added it to my Morning Preview checklist and starting writing one sentence in an Evernote note every day.

Today was day 99 of the practice and I can’t see any reason to stop.

Here are a few thoughts and lessons learned from the practice so far:

Reliving the previous day is a pleasurab...

Content Platform and Communication Platform

To become a successful author today, you need to have a platform.

What does that actually mean?

I find this equation helpful:

Platform = Permission + Promise

You have a platform when you have permission from someone to deliver a promised outcome.

I have been successful building a platform of more than 40,000 email subscribers as a nonfiction author. As I plan to launch a new platform in the fiction space, it has me thinking about what a platform really is in its most basic form.

There must be...