Category: By Guests

‘Make Those Around You Better’ : Collaborating Effectively

As creators become ever more connected to the people responsible to bringing that work to light – from producers to fans – we must deal head on with the process of collaboration. Every software interface seems designed to put us in communication with our peers and our idols. Even celebrities are jumping on the crowdfunding bandwagon to fund passion projects. There has never been a better time to get a team of people working on your ideas.

Many of us writer-folk tend to shudder away from the idea of collaboration because we want to protect our ideas until the “right person” comes along to lift us from obscurity and place us on the Oscar podium where we belong. And yet there is little evidence to support the notion that great work is made a vacuum. Reading the autobiographies of those who have succeeded in the biz, it’s impossible not to notice the formula:

Meet Someone + Work Together = Meet More People + Work Together + (repeat until sickeningly wealthy and famous). read article

Thinking Man Reviews: Boss – Pilot

By Anthony Medina

**Be aware this review contains spoiler** 

Season 1 Episode 1

“Listen”

read article

Rural America Looks at TV

This article was written by a colleague of mine back in the day when I wrote a weekly column on the wonderfulness of being a city writer leading the country life. Live! From Paradise! was one of the most enjoyable gigs in my writing career, and I was crushed when Gannett Newspapers decided that Live! From Paradise Sound!, which would have been a continuation of the column about life in a small town in the Pacific Northwest didn’t float their boat.

Sonny Garrett, however, remains a highlight of newspaper writing and editing in the South. And even though he canned me, I’m a big fan, especially when he writes something like this, which proves to me with absolute certainty that he’s been reading my mind:

Sonny Garrett’s Odds & Ends: Must-see TV? Not in your wildest imagination read article

LB: Peggy Bechko Writes About Writing

My friend, the novelist Peggy Bechko has one of the most helpful blogs for new writers on the web, especially writers of fiction. I apologize for not recommending it till now, but I let way too much time slide between my last visit and one I paid today.

Here’s a sample:

Writing, Writer & The Writer’s Life – by Peggy Bechko read article

Strong Female Characters Trump Sexual Violence

…Nonviolently, of course. (Hence our use of the word “trump” in the title, instead of “beat,” “kill,” etc. Ah, it’s good to be entitled enlightened. Excuse the Freudian slip.)

Study: We Benefit From Seeing Strong Women on TV – by Lindsay Abrams read article