Musings
Some interesting things I’ve been thinking about…
Here are some things I’ve been musing on…
I’ve always found it fascinating how the collective stories we tell each other shape our view of the world, what is acceptable and what is not, and how people should act. That’s why I really liked this article in Aeon magazine, about how the morality of a “good guy” and “bad guy” in stories is a fairly recent phenomena in stories, and the impact that has had on our societies and politics.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-pop-culture-obsessed-with-battles-between-good-and-evil
Ever since I started freelance writing many years ago (I’m not admitting how long ago) I kept on running into clients (and potential clients) who had the attitude that they didn’t need to pay me to write, because who can’t write? That’s not real work… just get the engineers to do it… Well, this author understands my pain, and has put together an interesting, funny article about copywriting that everyone, copywriter or not, should read.
https://medium.com/@ClareBarry/everyones-a-copywriter-right-4dbbac741a4d
The awesome Austin Kleon on work-life balance, gender differences in its pursuit, and whether it exists at all. Definitely worth a read.
https://austinkleon.com/2018/01/23/the-best-thing-ever-written-about-work-life-balance/
Start something. I mean it. Go.
http://fortheinterested.com/start-things/
What I’m reading
Fiction:
The Silvered by Tanya Huff
Tanya Huff is one of my favorite Canadian writers, so I was quite happy to come across this stand-alone novel of hers that I hadn’t read before. Just as previously she had one of the better (underappreciated) takes on vampires — and before vampire fiction was the thing to do! — in this book she does a great take on werewolves. The Pack are shapeshifters who are a special division of the military, and their partners are all mages, known as the Mage Pack.. The main character is an underpowered young female mage who teams up with a young werewolf to go rescue several members of the Mage Pack who have been kidnapped by an invading Empire, because there’s no one else left to mount a rescue. The book shows Huff’s honed ability to weave a story that tells the unpleasant daily details, but uses the details to make it real, engaging and the characters empathetic. She creates an unusual and interesting story world, and draws the reader in. This book is worth reading — along with all of the rest of Huff’s books.
Non-fiction:
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
Chris Voss was for most of his career, one of the FBI’s top hostage negotiators. He doesn’t have formal training in negotiation from a business or law school, he has decades of talking emotional, desperate, and sometimes psychopathic people out of hurting other people or themselves. As a result, his advice about how to negotiate and get what you want is based on what truly works in the field, and not on theories that were thought up by people with no skin in the game, and taught as unquestionable truth. What he teaches isn’t about fleecing the other person though, or about taking advantage, or manipulating them into doing something that isn’t in their best interest, it’s about getting what you want, while also building long term relationships, friends and contacts. It’s about finding a solution to a problem based on compassion and fairness, and a powerful working knowledge of human psychology. This book isn’t just for business and law enforcement people, this is for everyone who ever wanted to persuade someone else to do something, and I haven’t yet met anyone who doesn’t fall into that category.
Have a great week!
