Today at Thoughtwrestling I’m pleased to feature an interview with Jacques Poitras, Provincial Affairs reporter with CBC Radio (New Brunswick) and the author of three non-fiction books. Jacques’s most recent book is called Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border. His book describes the history of the Canada/US border between the province of New Brunswick…
Author Archives: Mark Dykeman
Are introverts more creative than extraverts?
I was very recently reminded that I have a blog about introversion (although it’s been almost 4 years since I posted there..) There’s been discussion over the years about whether or not introverted people are more creative than extraverts. Susan Cain, in her new book Quiet, suggests that solitude may be important to the creative…
Author Interview – Riel Nason – The Town That Drowned
I’m very pleased to feature this Q & A interview with Riel Nason, whose debut novel The Town That Drowned was published in 2011. Riel is a fellow New Brunswicker and someone I had met during my university days. After getting part of the way through her novel, which I’m really enjoying, I decided to…
Wendig on creativity
Chuck Wendig’s posts are often NSFW (the language, to be sure) and, to be honest, loopy, but they are often full of usable insights. His latest 25 things post, 25 Things You Should Know About Creativity is now up at his terribleminds blog. Number 9, the Frankenstein Monster Effect, is a great little gem: The…
Toppling Dictators, Food Controversy, Political Campaigns and a Review of The Information Diet
There’s a lot of content out there about what’s happening around the world and it can make your mind fat. This content – a term that I’m using to describe words, symbols, images, audio and video clips, layout and so on – is a combination of fact and fiction that varies in accuracy depending on…
Book Review – Uncertainty – Jonathan Fields
Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance is the second book by writer, entrepreneur and consultant Jonathan Fields, who blogs at JonathanFields.com. This book is intended for entrepreneurs, creatives and anyone who is contemplating a “leap of faith” to try something new, big, scary and, above all, uncertain. The book is filled with…
The search for inspiration leads to unexpected treasures
In a world of high-intensity information barrage, the late author David Foster Wallace once said something simple yet valuable. I want to share this with you today. I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. My job is to make some sense of it. Like Wallace, we are all…
Fraley on persistence in creativity
The ever-wise Gregg Fraley gives us an important reminder about the value of persistence in creativity: The difference between success and failure is often sheer persistence. Talent, skill, luck, and resources have often been beaten by the person (or organization) that simply won’t quit. Click here to read Gregg’s full post about persistence and…
The purpose of pain OR sometimes things have to be hard to get better
Common wisdom: if it hurts, don’t do it. More wisdom: no pain, no gain. These statements are both true, in my experience. The only way that they can both be true is that there is a continuum of pain in life. Pain is not a binary on/off switch. Pain lies along a gradient of intensity….
The R.O.I. of doing… something
What do you get for your time, effort, money and emotion spent on doing something different? Return on investment (R.O.I.) started out as a financial ratio used by accountants and business managers. It’s a way of describing what you get in return for the money that you’ve invested in something. Now R.O.I. is used to…