A great post from Rob Hatch on asking why asking an expert is usually better than just figuring things out yourself: wikiHow points out that a barrier to asking for help is fear of being ridiculed. But that almost never happens unless you're, (a) hanging around the wrong crowd, or ...

My Dad's finest hour may have been during the famous U.S. Postal Workers Strike of 1970. Per Wikipedia: "At the time, postal workers were not permitted by law to engage in collective bargaining. Striking postal workers felt wages were very low, benefits poor and working conditions unhealthy and unsafe. APWU ...

Following onto the post about Amanda Palmer's exhortation to legitimize yourself as an artist, instead of waiting for gatekeepers to do so, here are marketing guru Seth Godin and best-selling romance author Jennifer Crusie on the same topic. First, Godin: In case the "white knight" hinself isn't enough, here he ...

Children's author Deborah Underwood catches her cat Bella in the act of literally being a writer's block. (Sitting on one of Deb's notebooks.) Read an interview with Bella here. Like all cats, she's got opinions!

Last week I wrote about Amanda Palmer's excellent keynote speech for the Grub Street Writers' Muse and the Marketplace conference, where she made an impassioned plea for artists to validate themselves instead of waiting for a publisher, gallery owner, studio, or other gatekeeper's endorsement. She also had a lot of ...

A very good and honest piece from Inger Mewburn, a.k.a., The Thesis Whisperer, about waking up to racism in academia, and her own white privilege: At the time Joe and I were both looking for more permanent work in academia. It has to be said that neither of us were ...

Betty Ming Liu on making peace with her deceased dad: The war is over. Even though my father was a tyrant who made me miserable, I’ve fought hard to reclaim my life and get to happiness. So after all the years of weeping and blowing my nose at the shrink’s ...

In response to my recent piece on How to Get Over Procrastination in a Day, a reader wrote: "I want to thank you for your recent blog on how you avoided writing one day and had self-compassion. When I read it, I was having a "blank mind" day, filled with ...