Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

There comes a moment in every writer’s life when the words stop. Not forever. Just long enough to make you doubt yourself. You sit down at the desk. You open the document. You stare at the blinking cursor like it owes you money. And suddenly the person who once had a thousand ideas can’t find a single sentence worth keeping. If that’s you right now, let me say this clearly - you’re not broken. You’re not untalented. You’re not finished. You’re just stuck. And stuck is temporary. Here are seven ways to get yourself moving again. 1. Lower the Bar Until It’s Embarrassing One of the biggest reasons writers stall is expectation. You want the next paragraph to be brilliant. You want the chapter to sing. You want to feel that rush you had when you first conceived the idea. So here’s your permission slip - write badly. Deliberately. Shamelessly. Awkwardly. Tell yourself you’re only allowed to write 200 terrible words. Not good words. Not publishable words. Just words. The magi...

  There was a time when outrage was a renewable resource. You could drop a scandal into the morning news cycle, sprinkle it with ominous music, and by lunchtime the public would be foaming nicely. By dinner, we’d be divided, distracted, and arguing with strangers online about things we hadn’t looked up. It was efficient. Elegant, even. A marvel of modern control. That era is ending. Not because people have become apathetic – that’s the lazy diagnosis – but because we’ve become better informed, more pattern-savvy, and frankly harder to manipulate than those in authority seem willing to admit. The future, we are endlessly told, belongs to “the narrative.” Control the narrative and you control the world. This explains why governments, corporations, and various shadowy committees with impressive PowerPoint slideshows are pouring time, mega-millions, and all their  nervous energy into social media dominance. The theory is simple: if you own the message, you own the people. But...

There is a particular kind of political blindness that deserves to be studied. Not the everyday variety – the mild evasions, the half-truths, the press-conference fog – but the kind that looks straight at a crowd and seems genuinely shocked when that crowd reacts like a crowd. Because at some point, you have to ask: what did they think was going to happen? When a government invites the leader of a state widely accused by international bodies, human rights groups, and millions of ordinary people of systematic oppression into the country, this is not a neutral act. It is not administrative. It is symbolic. It sends a message – and symbols are never received politely by those already living with the consequences. This isn’t about abstract geopolitics. It’s about lived moral awareness. Large numbers of people across the world have already denounced mass civilian suffering, displacement, collective punishment, and the erosion of basic human dignity wherever it occurs. They have marched,...

  From “Just Say No” to “Could We Maybe Not Upset Him?” Once upon a time, the solution to a complex social problem was refreshingly simple. Drugs? Just say no. That was the Ronald Reagan era in a nutshell: a firm jaw, a wagging finger, and the confidence that saying no loudly enough would cause reality to fall into line out of sheer respect. Fast-forward a few decades and we appear to have lost the ability to say no to anyone who actually needs to hear it. Children are now encouraged to express their feelings, negotiate boundaries, and explore why they might feel like doing something destructive. Meanwhile, tyrants invade neighbors, flatten cities, threaten nuclear annihilation, and the global response sounds like a polite dinner guest asking whether now might be a good time to discuss boundaries. Why can’t they just say no? Why do politicians fold like deck chairs when confronted by bullies with tanks? Why do world leaders suddenly develop an allergy to clarity? And why ...

  Power, Delusion, and Moral Deafness History keeps asking the same question, and powerful people keep failing it. Why do victors who rule through cruelty, destruction, or collective punishment so often expect gratitude, obedience, even admiration from those they have crushed? Somewhere deep inside the psychology of conquest is a catastrophic miscalculation – the belief that power can substitute for legitimacy, and that fear can be mistaken for love. This is not a new phenomenon. It is as old as empire itself. Consider Alexander the Great , marching across the ancient world with military brilliance and staggering violence. Alexander believed not only that he had the right to rule conquered peoples, but that they would eventually recognize that right. He adopted local customs, demanded divine honors, and expected reverence. Yet again and again, resistance followed him. Revolts flared the moment his army moved on. What Alexander mistook for admiration was submission under duress. ...

  There’s a question that keeps resurfacing in modern culture, louder each time it’s asked, and never quite answered:   Does bad behavior negate great art? I’ve started calling this tension the Picasso Paradox – the uneasy space where human failure and artistic brilliance collide, and where society has to decide what survives the impact. The paradox exists because we want two incompatible things at once. We want art to matter – to shape us, challenge us, stay with us. But we also want artists to be morally legible, preferably admirable, and ideally aligned with the values of the present moment. When those two desires come into conflict, the result is discomfort, outrage, denial, or erasure. Take Pablo Picasso . By any reasonable measure, he was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His work reshaped visual language. Yet his treatment of women was manipulative, cruel, and by modern standards indefensible. This isn’t speculation – it’s well documented...

  There is a particular kind of sibling relationship that never quite settles. It doesn’t resolve into affection, nor does it collapse into outright hostility. Instead, it oscillates. Love with teeth. Admiration sharpened into resentment. Loyalty laced with competition. If you’re the older sibling in this arrangement, especially the older brother, you tend to notice it first. The younger sister often pretends not to. I think my sister hated me almost as much as she loved me. Which is to say, passionately. She grew up in my shadow. That’s the family myth, anyway. I never cast it deliberately. I wasn’t standing on a hilltop blocking the sun. I was just there first. Older. Smarter. Apparently competent. The sort of child adults smiled at and said, “He’ll go far,” which is the most dangerous sentence ever spoken within earshot of a younger sibling. To her, I was the benchmark. The reference point. The irritating standard against which she was constantly measured, whether she asked f...