PicoBlog

This week we talk about consuming other people’s products. I don’t know about you, but I’m always downloading, trying, talking about, and am first on the waitlist for all the stuff you’re shipping. This curiosity is a big part of why I’m good at this job. When is the last time you’ve downloaded something just to PLAY EXPLORE VIBE with it? I went viral on TikTok last week because I occasionally dabble with content creation mostly to understand how TikTok works.

If you have a manuscript that needs an edit, a writing project that’s stuck, or a query/submission package that needs some eyes on it, let’s chat. I’m going to be raising my coaching rates for 2024, so book now! Also coming up in 2024 (in addition to those rates, hey-oh), I’m offeringSolving the Second Draft, an intensive developed for Writing Co-Lab, focused on getting writers all the way from work-in-progress to finished draft.

There are many things that I’ve discovered since I started posting on Instagram back in 2016. The first is that efficient phone charging is essential for a job in social media. It’s a bit like being addicted to smoking when you’ve only got two cigarettes left in the packet - the moment my phone goes below 50%, I’m rushing for the nearest plug point li… ncG1vNJzZmikmaiupa3WrKanZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe8eormasn2Kws7HArZxmmZ5ivK%2B4yKecZqWfpLFurs6aqZ0%3D

Hello everyone! The week flew by (as usual) and despite feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list (who isn’t?), there were wonderful victories and developments, like: Convincing my husband that we need luggage packing cubes for an upcoming Asia trip, then actually ordering some (so many sizes, colors, and functions!). Reading that the 10,000 recommended daily number of steps for healthy living was likely used to sell pedometers. The number is fuzzy, as described in this JAMA article.

Last week, I asked our readership here to provide some advice as to how best to manage an angry or an upset person, knowing that these are two different sentiments. I loved reading the responses (some were sent by mail or on other channels). I put all the words together and came up with a word cloud that clearly identifies that it’s anything but easy. The word “try” came to the fore.

Hi friends, A few weeks ago we talked about how to do an anthology. And I know some of you were probably turned off by that, and I’m sorry not sorry. It’s hard to do an anthology and if you aren’t 100% ready to go full throttle with it, then it’s best not to. There are plenty of other kinds of books to write. One of those is the essay collection!

If you want to draw portraits of great apes, you have to approach them in the proper way. You can’t just march up to a great ape enclosure and start staring at them, or they’ll get all shy and disgusted and turn their back on you, because staring is a threat to them. We went to the North Carolina Zoo, the third largest zoo in the U.S.A. We got there earl…

Great ideas are hard to find. Drawing makes it a lot easier. And fun. How? In a creative process drawing can play four different roles. Let’s say, we want to come up with ideas for a new flower pot. To prepare for our ideation we first draw what we want to think about. These study drawings are realistic images. They force us to observe our subject closely and absorb as much knowledge as possible.

We can control whether we merely endure our days or experience and enjoy them. We can control whether we arrive on our deathbeds feeling like we've wasted our time or end up satisfied with how we've spent our brief moment in the sun. -Catherine Price During my darkest moments in the pandemic, my therapist told me that I had to find joy to keep going. These days, I feel deeply hollow inside.