Eight great things worth sharing this week:
- This Saturday (tomorrow, April 29th) is the 10th annual?Indie Bookstore Day?and if you've never visited an indie bookstore on Indie Bookstore Day, you're missing out. Last year I came home with?a whole bag full of loot, but mostly I go for the wonderful sense of community, to remember that there are actually a lot of people who, like me, still love IRL bookstores.
- And this seems like a good time to remind?all the audiobook lovers out there?that if you're still using Audible, you should seriously consider switching to?Libro.fm. It's exactly like Audible (with a blue color scheme) but (and here's the great part) the proceeds of all your purchases go to the indie bookstore of your choosing. Amazon gets enough of your money.
- This week on the blog, I interviewed?author Amy Meyerson?about her new book,?The Love Scribe. I particularly liked what she had to say about being a writer while parenting: "I have so many story ideas that I never would have come up with without children." Take that,?Richard Ford.
- I've been a John Scalzi fan since?Red Shirts, but?this little video interview?from last week's LA Times Festival of Books has officially made him one of my favorite authors.
- This article, published on Monday in The Guardian, put a little science behind something I've felt to be true for a long time, namely that regular journal writing is good for us. Turns out that externalizing our thoughts can provide psychological distance that helps keep our problems in perspective. Yup.
- Nerd Word of the Week: Charrette ~ a meeting in which all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map solutions (used to distinguish those meetings from the ones where stakeholders create problems and ignore solutions).
- I was helping a client with his agent query letter this week and the question of how to choose good comp titles came up. I referred him to?this article on the Jane Friedman blog, written by a fellow USC alum named John Fox. It's the most ingenious use of ChatGPT I've seen yet (except, of course, for?these hip-hop lyrics about ostriches).
- Did you know? Paid subscribers to this newsletter get guided meditations delivered directly to their inboxes twice a week? Check out?a free sample here?and then?click here to upgrade to a paid subscription!
Happy writing, my friends,
P.S. The next time you're driving down a freeway in Los Angeles,?listen to this song. The fact that it's almost 30 years old matters NOT AT ALL.
