It Is Very Hard to Write about Happiness On the New York Times website, two authors ask this question: Is it harder to write about happiness than its opposite? They discuss the difficulties in writing about happiness. Having ghost written a few biographies in the past, and working on fiction, there is no doubt in my mind that it is very hard to write about happiness. This is particularly the cas...

Why Review Poetry A month or so ago, I received an email from Glyn Pope. He attached a review copy of a new chapbook, Shh! and asked if we would review it. This book was a collection of poems by John Eliot. Since I was a child, I’ve had difficulty with poetry. Even in school, when we had to do the Bahasa Malaysia paper and had a choice between deciphering Pantun (which is Malay poetry) and Saste...

ISBN in Malaysia One of the most important details of any book is actually the ISBN. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number and is the means by which a books is identified. I was, therefore, pleased that in today's StarMag, Daphne Lee wrote a very informative piece on this subject: ISBNs comprise 13 digits as of January 2007. The change has come about as a result of numbering shorta...

Should Storytellers Work for Free? In several past articles, I have sung the virtues of volunteering and giving. But, as many storytellers have learned – some the hard way – working and performing for free has many drawbacks. We are often excited to have the opportunity to share our passion for storytelling. So, where do we draw the line? This article shares some of the ideas that were sent to th...

"Sevens" and Ways to Use the Magic of Numbers for Storytelling Previously, I wrote about the prevalence of the number "three" in stories and story structure. Because this article received a great deal of attention, I decided it was time to investigate another number that crops up in titles, how-tos and stories - the number seven. After several hours of research about the number seven, I not only ...

Writing A passion for some; a chore for others, the basics of writing are relatively straightforward, involving simply throwing words together and making sentences, using pen and paper or more typically, today, a computer. Let’s face it, writing is something we do without a great deal of thought. For some, writing is easy and often a pleasurable solitary pursuit; for others writing presents a dau...

Making Linear Storytelling Interactive Movies and video games coexisted symbiotically for years. A video game would come out well after the film it was based on. The game was often an afterthought, sometimes developed using a movie character, but little else. Now, games are released simultaneously with or even in advance of major motion pictures. George Lucas took this approach with the final "St...

Magazines for Women Every year we are seeing new women's magazines appear on the market, to join the masses already published. How can we determine which are the best value? It's easy to spend at least $20 per month, which totals upwards of $240 each year. Most magazines target a particular demographic, so it's wise to check out any ones you think might find interesting, before buying or subscri...

The Story of Becoming a Storyteller When I first discovered that there was such a job as storyteller, I was 30-something and enrolled in teacher school in St. Louis (home to a warm and wonderful group of tellers). As I finished my teaching degree, I focused more and more on classroom applications of storytelling and saw first-hand the results on student motivation and achievement. Before I even g...