Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Yowzah! Watched Me and Orson Welles last night - brilliant movie if you haven't see it - and they used this Yowzah word in it (the film is set in 1937): I didn't realize the word had such old roots! Anyway, talking of literary trivia, I see there's a kerfuffle brewing over the "Oxford Comma". You may be wondering what all the fuss is about... It's that little comma that goes before the 'and' in a list, as in: The protagonist was cold, wet, and tired. Purists like the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White and even The Oxford University have argued that it's not strictly necessary - except where the sense demands it. Oxford Uni has apparently changed its mind and advises students to use its eponymous comma liberally (at least in their internal correspondence.) This - believe it or not - has caused a bit of a storm, at least in Twitterdom. My experience has taught me that Americans favor i...

People wonder why they don't achieve the success they crave. I have a theory about that. I think we all have an inbuilt level of expectation, something rooted deep inside of us. It's often subconscious - and not aligned to what we say to our conscious minds. For instance, we may do all the things that self help books advise: make plans, set goals and visualize the future. But still, our circumstances never seem to change, we don't get any closer to what we think we really want. No amount of conscious striving will get us any closer to our goals if our subconscious mind doesn't believe that change, growth and real progress and success are possible - and that we deserve it. We have baseline expectations about the world that were planted in our brains a long time ago - usually by our parents or by the world we witnessed when growing up. Seemingly inconsequential things like the way our parents and friends talk about life and how unfair it is - or how ord...

Hope you had a great week. We took some time off last weekend and didn't really get back to work until yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. Being a self employed writer is handy for that. If you're getting stressed you can call time out for a few days to recover - and you don't have a boss threatening to sack you if you don't come back into work immediately! I remember those days - actually more than a decade ago now - and I really resented those bosses, in fact I still loathe the whole system that makes us work 9 to 5. To be honest I really don't understand it - but sociologists tell us our society gets what it wants and that we actually want to work 40 hours or more a week for just enough (and sometimes less) money than we need to get by. It fulfills us they say. Oh yeah? I get emails every day from people out there that say the exact opposite... Maybe all these learned sociologists should leave their university campuses an...

TGIF! Do you ever feel you have so much to do and be responsible for that your head might just one day explode? Not sure how much relaxing I'll get done this long weekend. My beautiful partner's going away to a seminar for the next few days and I have a self imposed list of stuff to get done here... Plus play rehearsals of course - at least that's going well. Which reminds me - I have to go and pick up the posters. Tell you what, I'll go do that, get a couple of other things from the shop, have brunch with my beloved, take her to the airport, then come back and do the article below in the afternoon. How does that sound? Good. See ya then. Keep Writing! Rob@easywaytowrite.com THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE: It's Only the Internet Rob Parnell We're getting lazy. But that laziness comes from being misinformed - by the Internet. I guess you might think it strange that a guy apparently so adept at using the Net to comm...

Dear Fellow Writer, I hope your writing is going well. Don't worry if you haven't the time to write consistently. We all know that life's 'duties' often get in the way of the more important things. It's funny how many of the things we waste our time on: working 9 to 5, watching TV, meeting friends, looking after family, shopping, cleaning, sleeping, whatever, seem so important at the time... It's only later we may look back and think, "Where did all the time go? And what have I actually achieved?" As I say, don't worry - it happens to all of us. Even rich, famous and successful people feel dissatisfied sometimes. It's hard wired into our brains never to be truly content I think. It's up to us individually how we deal with that. I guess it's all part of being human. BTW: Here's the poster to my latest play/musical: Keep Writing. Rob@e...