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Hello, and welcome to this week’s WEN-zine nuggets.

Two days and counting of “April” showers have locals shaking their heads. Normally they’d be plowing or blowing several feet of snow off streets and driveways after this much March precipitation. This year, we have a few days excellent for book exploration ...

1. Cal Newport’s latest, Slow Productivity, arrived yesterday amid much fanfare.

Cal knows how to create a real book buzz. He’s everywhere this week! As a follower of his Deep Questions podcast, I’d been waiting with keen anticipation ... and am well into the Audible edition (helps make the treadmill time move along faster).

With the subtitle “The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout,” Cal defines knowledge work as “the economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort” ... which covers artists, writers, and philosophers among others.

His proposal is to avoid burnout by “organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner” based on three principles:

1. Do fewer things.

2. Work at a natural pace.

3. Obsess over quality.

Most writers and book authors could go along with that ... although it does go against the typical productivity grain. So an interesting read.

Hardcover, Kindle, and Audible versions of Slow Productivity are available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3wIMBWc

2. A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.

... according to Nassim Taleb, bestselling author, essayist, and mathematical statistician – among other endeavors, who is said to spend 30 hours every week reading books. From a list of his 27 reading tips, here are a few more that offer special value:

• The reading of a single text twice is more profitable than reading two different things once.

• Books are not read by the majority because they read the internet, which is like junk food for the mind.

• The unread books on your shelf are like a universe of alternate possibilities waiting to be explored.

• To see if a book is real, ask 10 people of different backgrounds & professions to summarize it. If the summaries are similar, the book will not survive as it can be shortened to a journal article. The more the summaries diverge, the higher the dimensionality of the book.

• A novel you like resembles a friend. You read it and reread it, getting to know it better. Like a friend, you accept it the way it is; you do not judge it.

3. New workbook to help you create your own book (or other) buzz

Thrive Anywhere is offering today a new planner/workbook called “Calendar Buzz.” It comes with a commercial license allowing you to brand it as your own and sell it or share it with your readers, students and clients. Plus it shows how to make a marketing plan that you can use repeatedly with some changes. So a good marketing tool all around. The launch price is in effect only until Monday, so check it out today.

4. FYI items

▪ “How to Become a Prolific Writer” is a free expert panel tomorrow, March 7, 4:00 EST. Register here. It’s likely they will be promoting a program, but the tips offered should be worth the time investment. (Wonder if they’re into slow productivity?)

▪ Hack: Merge, split, compress, edit, and convert your PDFs with this free handy tool.

https://www.ilovepdf.com/ (Shared this morning by Morning Brew.)

▪ The Story Cycle Method: A Practical Playbook for Writers and Dreamers by Sascha Brown Rice, award-winning Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, coach, and teacher, is a free Kindle selection today: https://amzn.to/3uYGwEx

Enjoy!

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To Your Writing Success,

Dana K Cassell

Editor

(Dana Cassell is founder of Writers-Editors Network, and has been freelancing/creating full-time for 47 years. In addition to writing, editing, and fact-checking for numerous business clients, she has published more than 2,000 articles and has ghosted or authored more than a dozen books.)

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