There is so much mediocrity in the world, and mediocre things can, and are, popular. Why try harder?
Every author secretly thinks their books are uniquely special, but the vast majority of books don’t sell. I haven’t been blogging regularly for eight months, and I still get urgent emails from authors, wondering why their sales are slumping. They ask if it’s their covers, or if the market is crashing, or if they aren’t doing the right kind of marketing.
But none of them ever ask if they self-pubbed too soon, before the book was Grade A. Writers are a pretty insecure bunch, but I’ve never met one who blames their sales on their bad writing.
I gotta say, it’s seductive to think I could self-pub these three books instantly, make some money, not worry about the anticipated three star average (I encourage writers to not look at their reviews, and I usually don’t), and immediately move on to something I know will sell better.
But I won’t do that. I’ll put in the time and make these books better. Money is nice. Having more time is nice. However, the nicest thing of all is having pride in my work.
Written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, The Lost Words is a collection of words related to the natural world that are fading from our children’s minds as the “wild childhood” disappears from western society. Source: The Lost Words What a cool sounding book!
Bored to distraction? No wonder I’m so distracted. No wonder we all are. The problem isn’t technology per se, but the expectations it has engendered: a steady stream of entertainment and stimulation. Or, as Bertrand Russell — who lived through the invention of electric lights, radio, and television — put it: “We are less bored than our ancestors were,…
Serious people sometimes make silly predictions. Source: The Future of Education Will Never Arrive History is littered with failed experiments, but these failures are what have brought us the world we have today. Cynicism aside, computers will get better at understanding people, and when that happens, who knows what will happen. To get an…
In early 2020 I was tapped to design an onboarding program for three new Instructional Designers that would be added to our team in the coming months. I decided to take a multi-modal approach to designing the onboarding experience, balancing consistent, online, low-touch eLearning experiences with high-touch, rich, interactive, learner-centered constructivist activities. Now that it’s…
And that’s the true danger of anti-intellectualism. While it’s foolish to choose to be stupid, it’s cultural suicide to decide that insights, theories and truth don’t actually matter. If we don’t care to learn more, we won’t spend time or resources on knowledge. We can survive if we eat candy for an entire day, but…
We are raising the anxious generation, and the conversation about the causes, and the potential cures, has just begun. In The Self-Driven Child, authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson focus on the ways that children today are being denied a sense of controlling their own lives—doing what they find meaningful, and succeeding or failing on…