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Walk into the kitchen of a 76-year-old who has been retired for ten years and the phone is often nearby. They are not, in any heavy sense, "on social media." But the device is reachable. They check it during breakfast. They scroll through it after lunch. They look ...Read More
Most flat characters in fiction share the same defect, and it has nothing to do with backstory, dialogue, or motivation in the conventional sense. The defect is emotional. The writer has put the wrong feeling on the page. The wrong feeling is almost always anger. Specifically, anger uncoupled from ...Read More
There are two ways a professional life can lose its altitude. The first is dramatic. The pitch gets rejected. The promotion goes to someone else. The contract is not renewed. The board declines. The phone call comes, the conversation is short, and the news is unmistakable. The person ...Read More
We tend to think of communication as something that requires words. A sentence. An explanation. A carefully worded text or a long conversation at the kitchen table. But some of the most powerful messages a person will ever deliver arrive in total silence. Walking out of a room without explanation. ...Read More
The morning the realization arrives is usually unspectacular. The woman in question, somewhere in her early sixties, is making coffee. The house is quiet because the gathering ended last night and she has finished the cleaning up. Her phone shows a long list of messages from people who ...Read More