PicoBlog

I’ve asked a lot about wiping, and the requests have increased as there is a viral TikTok about wiping. Does it have to be front to back? What if you can’t reach? Is back to front okay? Wiping front to back for those of us with a vagina and an anus and who are past puberty is dogma. Some dude (almost certainly some dude, but I do not know for sure) likely wrote it once in a textbook a gazillion (okay, 50) years ago and it has been repeated it since.

Note: This post was originally posted to the group writing blog I co-created in 2011. It remains one of my most popular posts of all time, and now that the blog no longer runs, I’m sharing it here for all to use! One thing writers hate doing but will inevitably have to do (one day or another, at least) is the Dreaded Synopsis. An agent may request it in his/her submission materials, or an editor might want it once your agent has you out on subs.

Over the last ten years (and 10 books!) or so, I’ve been asked over and over how to go about the process of writing a book. It seems insurmountable when you’re at the “idea” phase — even for a seasoned author. Writing and running Simplified at the same time (while doing the rest of life) isn’t easy, but I’ve found a system that works for me. It changes a little with each book topic and each season of life I’m in, but the bones are pretty much the same.

If you’ve read a book recently (which, I’m assuming you have if you’re interested in this post), then you’ve inevitably noticed that in the back of most books, the author will ask you to write an honest review on the website where you purchased their book. It seems like a simple request, asking for a star-rating and a few sentences on how you felt about the work, but in reality, writing a review is challenging.

Is your goal to hit 6 or 7-figures from your writing in 2024? This Black Friday, we are launching Full Stack Writer: a limited-time course that trains you on the 7 skills you need to build to become a highly profitable, highly defensible, infinitely scalable writer in the digital world. It will only be available for 3 days! Click here to join the waitlist. Today, we are bringing in special guest and Full Stack Writer Matt Giaro to help you write your weekly newsletter with ChatGPT—lightning fast.

It seems like several times a week now, Twitter likes to show me that “Yamato” is trending, and I’ve finally learned not to click on the link, because all I’ll see are the same arguments rehashed, over and over, never to be resolved. Every so often a particular character or event in a series will become a lightning rod of controversy among fans, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a situation as unusually contentious as that surrounding Yamato, a fairly new character in the pirate-themed action/adventure manga One Piece.

The heat around TikTok has reached a near-boiling point in the U.S. and seems to only be escalating every day. There are now reports that the White House is demanding that TikTok either sell off its entire US operations or potentially face a complete ban (an authority the White House would like to have and which Congress might give them). And it all seems to be leading up to the CEO of TikTok testifying in front of Congress next week.

Play Wicket Cricket Manager My sports media course We use two new balls in ODI cricket now, and that makes people angry. But we actually used two balls in 50 over cricket always. Because leather won’t dye white correctly as it does with red, the balls are lighter in colour for their natural state. But to make them bright white they have their colour sprayed on.  White balls start harder and swing more than red ones, and after five or so overs are softer and stop swinging.

When cultural anthropologists (or just, you know, ordinary people) look back 10, 20 or 50 years from now, what will the movies tell them about the way we lived today? Specifically, what will they learn about the hard stuff—about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, about the escalating climate crisis, about police violence against unarmed Black people, about Charlottesville, 1/6, and the worst manifestations of Trumpism? It’s a question I think about often, particularly when it comes to contemporary Hollywood, which has mostly been whistling past all of it, save for the occasional Black studio drama or an allusive moment in an otherwise unrelated genre film.