Schools don't teach this anymore.

One great thing about working in a school is that I get to talk to teachers about problems in the school system. Today I learned that schools in this province no longer teach printing or handwriting.

This means that there are many grade 5 kids who literally cannot write basic sentences or paragraphs. Because they never learned how to form letters, their brains are busy thinking about letters rather than thinking about what to write.

These are called "output problems". The cure for these problems is to teach children how to properly hold a pencil and form letters. Schools don't do it anymore.

Good to know. We'll add this to the list of things we need to teach Jake.

How to write a successful book without a brain.

I was browsing The Napkin The Melon & The Monkey: How to be happy and successful at work and in life by simply changing your mind by Barbara Burke and was struck on how easy it would be to write a book like this.

It's very short. 100 pages or so and the book is like half-sized. It has one central idea: That everyone in the world faces 10 problems that we can't do anything about. The eleventh problem is that you think you shouldn't have to face the ten other problems.

In other words, the book is about how to accept that you're going to have some tough times in life. A pretty commonsense idea. Now how do you make a book out of this:

1) Choose a very simple, easy-to-understand, common sense idea.

2) Give the idea a catchy marketing name. Maybe call it a law. Involve numbers.

3) Write a parable about this idea and how you discovered the idea in your own life.

4) Include a wise-character in your story (a "magical negro character") who guides you and teaches you the way.

5) Keep the writing conversational and short.

5) Describe how your life has improved.

BONUS: Give your book a very original, catchy title to attract attention.

I don't think it would be hard to dash off books like this. You could almost do one a month. Certainly one every 2 months. The hardest part would be coming up with the clever marketing names and numbers.

How to be an amazing writer.

I'm reading Write like the masters : emulating the best of Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, and others by William Cane.

He says that starting in the 1930s or so teaching rhetoric was phased out of the education system. Teachers decided to suddenly promote "originality" when it comes to writing. "Find your own voice." "Be unique." "Never, never plagiarize."

The problem is that the great literary masters studied rhetoric, emulated their contemporaries and copied the style of legendary writers before them.

The current advice to find your own voice has made us worse writers. Cane argues that before you can be a "unique" writer, you need to copy the voice and style of the greats.

My own take is that writers today are just as good, if not better, than they were back in 1800s or earlier. But I see his point. A central tenant of neuro-linguistic programming is to find someone who's good at something, break down what they do exactly, and copy ("model") it.

If writers did this, perhaps they'd be even better. On the other hand it would require some tough, tough reading. The literary greats weren't known for writing short, exciting, concise, minimalist books.

This is the song I want to write.

I want to write an awesome, epic song at least 6 minutes long. It's got to have a whole bunch of different parts - some slow, some fast, and the tempo has to change at least once.

It needs to have a great guitar riff - preferable acoustic, mixed with electric. The acoustic needs to be throughout the song as a driving rhythm, and the strings need to be slapped at every other beat like a snare drum.

The electric has to blend with the acoustic, at a higher octave so that it's sort of screamy. The riff will have a couple variations - a long variation and a short variation. The short one is a choppier, truncated version of the long one. It starts a certain way, moves in another direction, then ends in the same way it started.

Similarly, the song will be like this as well - a palindrome of itself.

The main melody will be different from the riff, yet they'll complement each other. Likewise, there will be a few different melodies but they will all sound similar. One melody will pop up expectantly, then give way to a different melody in a unpredictable pattern.

The chord progression will be a little strange - perhaps even a bit atonal at first. It will create a whole bunch of unresolved tension.

I'd like the song to be minimalist in terms of instrumentation. Only 3 instruments or fewer at a time, along with the vocals. The song needs to be dreamy like a lullaby, then swingy and jazzy and dancey, with elements of boogie blues within the riff.

The lyrics need to be nonsensical yet beautiful. Beautiful nonsense. I'd also like the song to have a couple false endings.

tl:dr stands for "too long; didn't read"

There's a new short form on the internets: tl;dr.

It means "too long;didn't read". I love it! I want to use it at work - after someone writes a really long email message. I just want to reply "tl;dr".

Then when they respond to that with a, "I'm sorry I didn't understand," my next response will be "too long; didn't read".

I think it's great that you're not allowed to be long-winded on the internet. Too long; didn't read. Perfect. We simply don't have the time or desire to read much - UNLESS we're considering spending a lot of money on something. Then we want to read a lot about it before we make our purchase.

A lot of people on message sites like "reddit" post a long answer or discussion and then, at the end, type "tl;dr:" and write a short, one-sentence summary of what they just said. For all the people who don't read long posts.

In the business world this is called "Executive Summary".

When I re-read my blog I notice a lot the entries are pretty bad.

Often my blog entries that I think will be awesome, suck. Especially when I read them over again later. I think, “Oh that’s just weak.”

I’m frequently disappointed at my blog, and when I read an especially disappointing entry, I think back to the time when I first had the idea for the entry – it was such at time of hope!

I may have smiled or chuckled to myself, as I imagined typing out the entry. I may have told someone, “Hey listen to my awesome idea for my next blog entry.” And then I remember sitting and typing it out, half smile on my face, foot tapping against the carpet in excitement. “This entry is going to get so many comments!”

Then I read it over again a week later and it just sucks.