In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * AI: Um, Why? * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “A curious person … isn’t impressed by people who assume the very things that need to be proven.” Tom Woods (from http://tomwoods.com/newsletterthankyou/) “You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.” Quentin Crisp “Gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.” James Dean “Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?” James Thurber “Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Social Media * Writing Across the Genres * Some Genre Tidbits * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “In math, you could get 100 percent. It was very fair. That’s what I liked about math. You could figure it out, and the teacher couldn’t have a stupid opinion about it.” Norm MacDonald “You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t.” Ray Bradbury, from an email from Tom Woods Social Media I publish … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * About Characters * Writing Again, A Little * Of Interest Quote of the Day “Nobody has pronouns. You can’t ‘have’ a pronoun anymore than you can have a preposition or an adverb. The concept doesn’t make any sense. Pronouns are not things you can own. They aren’t pets or accessories. They are parts of speech. That’s it. You don’t get to customize them.” Matt Walsh Thanks to Robert J. Sadler for the tip. Note: Because I’m always looking for more sources of information, I looked up Matt Walsh’s blog. I do … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Personas vs. Pseudonyms * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “When you bad mouth your own work, all I hear is ‘I am stupid, I am stupid….’” Dean Wesley Smith “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Albert Einstein Somehow this feels pertinent to writing fiction Personas vs. Pseudonyms I haven’t talked about this for awhile. I was reminded when I saw that a fairly new addition to the Journal family writes under a pseudonym. I used to write under three main … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Welcome * Great Comment * Guest Appearance * Of Interest Quotes of the Day On being original: “The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won’t start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.” Peter Thiel “Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” T.S. Eliot Welcome to ibib1850 and any other new subscribers to the Journal. Welcome aboard. Glad to have you. If I … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Some Fiction Writing Truths * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “Forget artificial intelligence — in the brave new world of big data, it’s artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.” Tom Chatfield “The next time I see comments suggesting that an author focus on platform instead of the work at issue, I’ll know where to ship another pallet of Kool-Aid.” C.E. Petit in a comment on the last post in “Of Interest” “If you’re thinking of your fiction book in terms of message, it’s probably a bad book, as … Read more

In today’s Journal * Thanks to Heather H * The Future in Five Points * Finally Figured It Out * Oh, But There’s This * Of Interest Thanks to Heather H for pointing out that the subscription button on my Patronage & Donations page was flinging error messages in every directiion. I went back to PayPal and copied the code again, then pasted it in place. It should work fine now. The Future in Five Points from a recent StreetLib newsletter. The January 31 newsletter from StreetLib was so informative that I dedided to share some of it here. I … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Last Day of the Month * For Erin D (and Whomever Else) * Forums and Boards and Opinions, Oh My * Of Interest Quote of the Day “The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now…cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Another Q&A & Rewards * Free Journal Archives * Off For Awhile * Of Interest Quotes of the Day “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Um, writers, likewise. “Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein Another Q&A & Rewards Had another good comment from Heather H yesterday. You can read her comment and my response at https://hestanbrough.com/the-journal-dvds-mentoring-and-more/#comments. Partly because of … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * The Journal, DVDs, Mentoring and More * Of Interest Quote of the Day “It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.” P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl in Blue The Journal, DVDs, Mentoring and More Heather H. sent a fairly lengthy comment. I thought it was of sufficient public interest that I decided to enter my response here as an edition of the … Read more