The Diagram Gallery

Memoirs

• How the interview approach to memoir worksMany people find it easier to talk about their lives than to write about them, and some of the best memoirs start as recorded conversations.In Writing a Memoir as a Senior: A Practical Guide
• The three reasons retirees give for not writing their storyThree reasons come back almost word for word.In You Retired Here With a Life Behind You
• What to do when legacy hardware can no longer be maintainedOne system had hardware that could no longer be maintained.In Legacy Systems Don't Die Because You Want Them To
• Where most memoir attempts dieThe first few weeks of memoir writing are exciting: memories surface, early pages feel alive, the project has momentum.In How to Write Your Memoir: Where to Start
• Why a holiday table concentrates everything a memoir needsA Thanksgiving table concentrates everything a memoir needs into one setting.In Why Thanksgiving Scenes Are the Best Material for Memoir and Fiction
• Why a writing goal needs a number, a timeline and a daily actionFinish my novel is not a goal, it is a hope.In Setting Writing Goals That Actually Produce Finished Books

People

• The catastrophizing spiral, from silence to ruinA client is three days late responding to a chapter.In Catastrophizing and Writers: A Personal Account

Publishing

• How a pile-on works, step by stepA pile-on has a shape and it is always the same.In Dogpile
• Why neutral nonfiction fails to hold a readerNeutrality reads as absence, and absence gives the reader nothing to hold.In Nonfiction Works Best When It Is Written With Emotion

SEO

• How long Google takesA dot marks the typical time and a bar runs to the slowest; arrows into the void mean the slow case includes never.In How Long Does Google Take? Crawling, Indexing and Recovery Times
• The Google pipeline, as plumbingA pipe runs through five joints: Discovered, about 20 hours; Crawled; Rendered, hours in the queue; Indexed, about 1.5 hours; and Shown in results, where titles update in 1 to 2 days.In How Long Does Google Take? Crawling, Indexing and Recovery Times
• When to check (and when to stop refreshing)A dark board reads Now serving: your title change.In How Long Does Google Take? Crawling, Indexing and Recovery Times

Technology

• Why technical writing matters more in 2026, not lessAI made clear human explanation scarce and valuable.In The Four Pillars of a Technical Writer

Thought Leadership

• How the material you are afraid of becomes the thing that worksNineteen years in what the author calls Crazytown: a dysfunctional family where the rules changed without warning, where the people meant to protect him were often the ones he needed protection from, and where...In The Story You Are Afraid to Write Is the One Someone Needs
• Why pre-digested writing fails to stickRetention follows effort, and pre-digested writing supplies none.In Stop Doing the Thinking for Your Reader

Writing

• Anatomy of a writer, annotatedA hand-drawn outline of a person with yellow callout lines labeling a writer's parts: an ink-blot brain that writes outward from five to ten plot points, an imagination whose characters overrule the outline, eyes...In Anatomy of a Writer: The Parts That Do the Real Work
• Books written vs feeling like a real writerThe number of books written climbs steadily, while the feeling of being a real writer stays flat near the bottom, labelled fraud, with one brief spike on publication day.In Imposter Syndrome and Writers: The Voice That Says You're a Fraud
• How a writing critique group actually worksEach member brings a piece of work, a few pages or a chapter or a short story, and the group reads it and provides feedback.In Writing Critique Groups: Techniques to Enhance Your Writing Skills
• How interactive fiction is structuredInteractive fiction runs on branching narrative.In 9 Great Interactive Fiction Games for Readers
• Manuscript survival rateA joke line chart of readers still reading a manuscript.In Common Writing Mistakes That Kill Books Before They Start
• The certainty meterA joke sequence showing a confident sentence weakened step by step: it works, it very likely works, it arguably works in some cases, and finally it could perhaps be said that it may potentially work, at which point the reader has left.In The Hidden Cost of Weasel Words
• The grammar stickler's flowchartA joke decision tree of talking to a grammar stickler.In The Grammar Nazi: What the Pedants Get Wrong
• The habit loop and where to break itA habit runs on a three-part loop.In 32 Strategies to Break Bad Habits (and Make the New Ones Stick)
• The three dimensions vocabulary controlsVocabulary affects every dimension of writing.In How to Expand Your Vocabulary as a Writer: 12 Ways
• What a near-right word costs across a manuscriptWriters live and die by word choice.In Why Dictionaries Still Matter for Writers

Writing

• What the wall is, and the voice that arrives with itNobody knows why the wall shows up.In What Every Writer Needs to Know
• What three weeks without passive screen time actually looks likeCutting passive screen consumption does not mean replacing it with more work.In Eliminating Distractions | What Happened When I Unplugged My TV for a Decade
• Why a machine intelligence in Hell needs a WatsonIt is Warhammer, a machine that achieved consciousness without noticing until shortly before it was destroyed, and then found itself in Hell the way any dead thing does.In Behind the Book: The Eternal War
• Why annual writing goals fail and what to use insteadAnnual goals fail because a year is too long.In Writing Goals: Why Annual Goals Fail, Daily Goals Work, and How I Actually Get Books Finished
• Why compression is the central discipline in poetryA poem says the most with the least, and that density is its power.In Writing Poetry: The Craft Beneath the Inspiration
• Why dictation multiplies first-draft outputDictation software improved writing speed by more than three times, because speaking is far faster than typing for most people.In How to Write 10,000 Words a Day
• Why motivation runs out in JanuaryThe calendar flips, everything feels possible, and there is energy, optimism and a clean slate.In Why Most Writing Resolutions Fail by February
• Why Through the Looking Glass ends without a rescueThe last chapter is called Forever a Cam Model.In Behind the Book: Through the Looking Glass
• Why writing rules contradict each otherFollow all of them and writing feels like defusing a bomb.In Why Writing Rules Exist, and When to Break Every Single One
• Writer's block, a decision treeWhether the writer is stuck on chapter one, doesn't know the ending, or feels uninspired, every branch ends in the same place: clean the kitchen.In 6 Causes Of Writer's Block And How To Destroy It
• Your creative battery, one weekMonday is at 100 percent: hyperfocus, 10,000 words, effortless.In Writing Burnout: What It Actually Looks Like
• Your receipt for something freeA joke receipt for a free download.In The Truth About "Free Stuff" on the Internet: Exploring the Hidden Costs

Writing Courses

• The revisions folderThe status bar reads: 9 items, 0 of them final.In Revisions Handbook