FictionThe hero is cornered, the tension is real, and then a solution drops from nowhere and the problem simply vanishes. That is deus ex machina, and it quietly betrays every reader who was invested. Here is what it is, why…
Artificial IntelligenceAfter editing hundreds of AI-generated articles, I can name machine prose in about three sentences, not from talent but because the tools repeat the same tells endlessly. Once you see them, you cannot unsee them, and that is the good…
About RichardTwo months after my wife died, I stood in the most spectacular wildflower bloom in Joshua Tree's recorded history, 45, newly widowed, and lost. I could have reached for medication or given up in a chair. Instead the desert my…
BusinessGetting paid to write is harder than it should be, but hard is not impossible. The writers who earn well are rarely the most talented, they are the ones who treat writing as a business. Here is what that actually…
FictionLong before VR or open worlds, Zork held players spellbound with nothing but text and imagination. I spent the early 1980s navigating both college and its mazes. Here are nine highlights from the text adventure that proved gameplay could thrive…
Artificial IntelligenceEvery few months a fresh article urges executives to write their all-hands and crisis memos with ChatGPT. It sounds efficient, and it is dangerous, because AI cannot repair muddled thinking, it just dresses it up. After 54+ books written for…
GhostwritingYour grandfather died with his mouth shut. Your father is doing the same. And you are about to, because you have convinced yourself a ghostwriter is cheating, while your kids brace to repeat every mistake the unwritten wisdom could have…
GhostwritingI proposed at Wendy's on our third date, and then we married four times in a single week. It is not a story about a couple who kept getting it wrong; it is about finding your person and watching the…
GhostwritingYou said you would write it this year, and you didn't, same as 2024, same as 2023, because you are busy and the business always comes first. So another year passes, your expertise stays trapped in your head, and competitors…
Technology7:03 AM, driving to a Renaissance Faire shoot with camera gear rattling in the back, the BlackBerry buzzes: what do you want me to do about the computer crash? A cascade of failures had taken the servers, the backups, and…
GhostwritingDexter ran a secret lab out of his bedroom while his sister wrecked it every time she wandered in. Improbably, the cartoon is a decent primer on ghostwriting: invisible work, chaotic collaborators, rival writers, and the art of speaking in…
GhostwritingThe people who can verify your stories are getting older, and some are already gone, the brother who was there, the roommate, the mother who knows the family history you never asked about. A memoir is not just your memory;…
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