Hand In Hand: Advice For Writers→

For Shared Worlds 2013, we have asked some of speculative fiction's finest artists, editors, and writers to write advice on their own hands and send us a picture.

Here are some of my favorite images and advice from the Shared Worlds 2013 Hand in Hand project: ​

Neil Gaiman

Gregory Norman Bossert

Lev Grossman

Patrick Rothfuss

Second Sleep

"Numerous other studies have shown that splitting sleep into two roughly equal halves is something that our bodies will do if we give them a chance. In places of the world where there isn't artificial light -- and all the things that go with it, like computers, movies, and bad reality TV shows -- people still sleep this way. In the mid-1960s, anthropologists studying the Tiv culture in central Nigeria found that group members not only practiced segmented sleep, but also used roughly the same terms of first sleep and second sleep. ... [Yet] almost two decades after Wehr's study was published in a medical journal, many sleep researchers -- not to mention your average physician -- have never heard of it. When patients complain about waking up at roughly the same time in the middle of the night, many physicians will reach for a pen and write a prescription for a sleeping pill, not realizing that they are medicating a condition that was considered normal for thousands of years. Patients, meanwhile, see waking up as a sign that something is wrong."  

I've been obsessed with sleep since a young age, mostly because I can't remember when was the last time I got what felt like a restful, solid night of good sleep. ​

Recently I read Dreamland by David K. Randall and ran into this passage. This is an experience I can relate to. I often joke that I don't go to sleep but that instead I take two or three naps a night with reading intermissions. ​

Introducing WordsMove.Me

Starting today you can visit WordsMove.Me to view all the Smarter Creativity writing related content. 

The Real Work Of Writing: Elizabeth Gilbert Takes On Philip Roth→

In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and share a little secret about the writing life that nobody likes to admit: Compared to almost every other occupation on earth, it's f*cking great. I say this as somebody who spent years earning exactly zero dollars for my writing (while waiting tables, like Mr. Tepper) and who now makes many dollars at it. But zero dollars or many dollars, I can honestly say it's the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege. What's more, you have no boss to speak of. You're not exposed to any sexual abuse or toxic chemicals on the job site (unless you're sexually abusing yourself, or eating Doritos while you type). You don't have to wear a nametag, and--unless you are exceptionally clumsy--you rarely run the risk of cutting off your hand in the machinery. Writing, I tell you, has everything to recommend it over real work.

As I have mentioned before I didn't discover Elizabeth Gilbert through her books, but rather through TED. I find her to be charming and witty in a way that motivates. In an essay for the wonderful Bookish site, quoted above, she takes Philip Roth to task for telling a newly published author who was waiting on him (Mr. Tepper above) the following: 

"I would quit while you're ahead. Really. It's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you."

Maira Kalman On The Power Of Lists, Maps And Organizing

Author and illustrator Maira Kalman on The Paul Holdengraber Show.