Month: April 2010

The Power of Pride: Stylemakers and Rule Breakers of the Harlem Renaissance by Carole Marks and Diana Edkins

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This is a book I purchased a while back in the hopes of writing some SF set during the Harlem Renaissance, but which came in handy for my course Understanding English and American Popular Culture. (The first half of which has been pretty much devoted to African-Americans’ role in building the foundation of American popular culture.) The strength of the book is that it builds up a picture — and one that is honestly critical without stooping to being demeaning — of the world in which the Harlem Renaissance occurred, and a number of the major figures of the Renaissance. …

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Writing Double, Or Why You Should Try to Kill Two or More Birds With One Scene

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So one of the things I’ve stressed a few times to my Creative Writing class — and I’m impressed, it only took a few times, now they’re calling on one another to try do it more — is killing several birds with one stone. If you’re writing a scene, you should always have more than one thing going on… something explicit, and something implicit. There’s the surface and then there’s the subtext. That’s the minimum. There’s a scene in the 2007 Denzel Washington film The Great Debaters1 where this is played out beautifully. One of the main characters, having just …

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How to Kill Your Successful Business In Five Easy Steps: Step 4

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This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series How to Kill Your Business in Five Easy Steps

For those just joining us, this is a series. There’s a series of links at the bottom of this post, so you can start at the beginning if you like. Step 4: When the Money Gets Tight, Screw Your Workers (Or Try Your Darnedest) or, Kick Morale in the Teeth Even Harder I’ve already traced through the process of bringing a company to the doorstep of ruin financially, and damaging morale irreparably. Now, the next step is much easier to pull off if your staff is easily divided in some arbitrary way — by race, for example, or sex. Another …

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How to Kill Your Successful Business In Five Easy Steps: Step 5

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This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series How to Kill Your Business in Five Easy Steps

For those just joining us, this is a series. There’s a series of links at the bottom of this post, so you can start at the beginning if you like. Step 5: Maintain Your Deathgrip Till The Bitter End There’s something to be said for the person who says, “Honey, I don’t think this is going to work out.” For the member of the garage band who says, “I’m tired of playing these songs, and you aren’t, so I think it’s time I quit.” For the hairdresser who admits that she has fantasies of setting clients hair on fire, she’s so …

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