What is The Slow Man? I like to think of it as my way of working out how to slow down a little, lessen the haste and hectic pace that can wear us down, dull our senses, and make us lose our way.

I’ll be writing about many different things, including personal productivity, ways to manage your career and life, having a good drink, figuring out the little things in life that often escape us because we’re moving too damn fast.

If you’re interested, please come and check The Slow Man out and feel free to sign up for email updates below.

Thanks,
Gordon

I don’t plan to let it die, but I like to take a break from it from time to time. I’ve been spending more time on the social networks lately. One big reason for that is my job entails knowing the Facebooks, Twitters, and Google+ mechanisms. So it leaves little time for personal blogging.

As a means of a meager update, for anyone who may still be poking around here occasionally, please feel free to follow me on twitter or Google+. I’d be happy to follow you back and keep in touch. Relevant buttons below. Hope to hear from you.

-gordon

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Not for this site — well, maybe (send me an email or something) — but rather for Writer’s Digest’s blog MFA Confidential. They’re holding a contest and it seemed interesting enough to bring me out of hibernation to link to it. Read more about the contest at Writer’s Digest.

If you make it, let me know. And actually if you’d like to blog for After the MFA, let’s talk…

What I learned was that to write a book you have to first become the person you need to be to write that book. I had to, like, literally change. I had to become a new person. I had to grow the f— up.

– Junot Diaz

The article was apparently a an advance volley from a book that just came out of his new book called “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.”

I particularly like Boldtype’s review of the book, to wit:

Murakami’s tough-love take on writing seems bracing in the context of an unending stream of “craft”-oriented tomes. Whereas a classic writer’s book like Anne Lamott‘s Bird by Bird deals in trade-based tips — “The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth” — Murakami jettisons such undeniable (but not particularly helpful) truisms in favor of stressing the importance of elbow grease. Or, writing as sport.

Not particularly helpful, indeed. I think Murakami’s wisdom may do more for me in the long run. Who knows, maybe he’ll be able to tip my scale and get me out there on the road to running, and writing, a hell of a lot more.

Found this while browsing through the popular writing-related links on social bookmarking site Delicious. I can’t help but get a little annoyed at the $2-blog-writing schemes, SEO “content” farms, and a general deterioration of originality, voice, and real content that passes for so-called writing online.

Now I have an image to conjure whenever this black mood strikes me. To the person that wrotte [sic] it, thanks.

Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

I’ve been working on the web since 1997, and I’m still surprised at how little organized the array of people in the industry actually are. Sure, there are conferences galore, but I mean really organize. I used to joke with a few colleagues at Yahoo! back in the day about starting a union for web editors. It was tongue-in-cheek back then, but it today it could be a great way to get rid of these freelance jobs that pay $10 for a blog post that I see on craigslist all too frequently.

If you work on the web, think about taking A List Apart’s survey.

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The proper manner of calligraphy is nothing other than not being careless, but in this way one’s writing will simply be sluggish and stiff. One should go beyond this and depart from the norm. This principle applies to all things.” — “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai,” pg. 42

View all my reviews.

Aimed at amateur videomakers, but very pertinent to all storytelling.

“At some point, somebody’s gotta say ‘here’s why the hell you’re listening to this story.’”

[Inspired by a post at 43 folders]

Even if you haven’t read her book about the plight of her uncle, Edwidge Danticat’s interview on “60 Minutes” should be watched. “Brother, I’m Dying” is the next thing I’m going to read.