Lara Zielin’s book, “Author Your Life: How One Writer Changed Her Life Through the Power of Storytelling, and How Your Can, Too,” comes out Tuesday.
Tag: writing
Lately I have been pondering what else I can do with our living room concerts — showing art on the walls while musicians perform, hosting writers for a reading in between music sets? Or maybe I try something different entirely — a home-based supper club idea with food or cocktails as the focus instead of music?
Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012. We’re more than a quarter of a way through the year and we’ve just completed a full rotation of…
Today’s installment in the “Things I Have Learned” series comes from a colleague at my first job after college, where I worked as a reporter at the Alpena News. If you’ve never heard of Alpena, think cold. It’s five hours north of Detroit, and in addition to learning a tremendous amount about real-life newspapers, I learned such things as how…
This post continues an occasional series on writers — how and why they write, what inspires them and how they overcome challenges like writer’s block and rejection. Previously we’ve heard from Jim Tobin, Jim Ottaviani, Lara Zielin, Bruce DeSilva and Jennifer Worick. Today’s Q&A features a baker’s dozen questions with Margaret Yang, an Ann Arbor-based science fiction writer whose first…
Don Miguel Ruiz‘s slim little book, “The Four Agreements,” offers four simple pieces of life advice: Be impeccable with your word — say only what you mean and be careful the power of your words Don’t take anything personally — the way others behave is more about them than about you Don’t make assumptions — it’s easy to misunderstand when…
I’ll be in Austin for the next several days at the geek spring break known as South by Southwest Interactive — all manner of people interested in the Web, mobile, social media and video games, among other things, descend on a city with the unofficial motto “Keep Austin Weird.” It’s an excellent experience because you almost can’t help but have…
Food writer Mark Bittman recently ended his long-running Minimalist column in the New York Times to shift into a new role as an opinion writer for the Times. This change of perspective, that food is about so much more than filling our bellies, is apparent in his book “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating.” Bittman wrote in the announcement…
Earlier this week, I wrote about the most popular blog posts in the two-year run of Newvine Growing and about the most common search terms that bring people here. Studying those data points is part of some work I’m doing to refine my focus for 2011. I launched Newvine Growing in January 2009 with broad goal: to have a forum…
Some people arrive here because of links I post on Facebook or Twitter. Others subscribe to e-mail or RSS updates, and some generous readers pass along links to friends who might be interested. Search engines are also responsible for a good chunk of traffic. And while some people arrive after searching for, say, Ben Jaffe, happiest people in the world…
I launched this blog nearly two years ago as a means of exploring my own mini midlife crisis. I wanted a venue to explore questions like what makes life meaningful, what makes us happy, who should my role models be in living life well. Of course being a data nerd, I’m interested in which of these issues get the most…
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and rather than falling into my usual trap of reading fluffy magazines, I’ve used that travel time to dive into some good books. I pounded through Mark Bittman‘s “Food Matters” in just a few days. Much like Michael Pollan‘s books about what’s wrong with American food production, Bittman writes that how we eat is…
Several people submitted thoughtful entries in the “What are you grateful for?” contest — including those in the comments of that blog post, and a few in the comments on “Who are you grateful for?” that I think technically might be more of a what than a who. But rather than get all grammatical on who’s a who and what’s…
A guest post from the ever-fabulous Lara Zielin: I probably spend too much time online and, if my increasingly strobe-light-like brain is any indication, it might not be doing me as much good as I think. But I will say one thing about the experience: being online, and utilizing social media tools in particular, has connected me to some…
This post continues an occasional series on writers — how and why they write, what inspires them and how they overcome challenges like writer’s block and rejection. Previously we’ve heard from Jim Ottaviani, Lara Zielin, Bruce DeSilva and Jennifer Worick. Today’s Q&A features a baker’s dozen questions with Jim Tobin, a newspaper reporter turned author and college professor. From the…
And just in case you haven’t gotten enough on Bruce DeSilva, click “read more” below for his first-person account of getting his novel, Rogue Island, published. Of course I have to point out the Michigan connections: Otto and Larry are Michigan alumni, and Susanna represents my friend, Lara Zielin, who edits an alumni magazine at Michigan. I love that even…