In which I discuss the key to avoiding writer’s block: knowing when to stop writing.
Content / Sidebar
Something to Love: Sawbones – A podcast by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy
Something worthy of your attention, and five reasons I love it.
 1. Sawbones is a podcast by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her definitely-not-a-doctor husband Justin McElroy. You may know Justin from the great modern advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me.
Sawbones is funny, informative, and it will give you lots of cool facts to share at your next dinner party. If you get invited to those sorts of things. Unrelated note: I am free most Friday and Saturday nights.
2. On Sawbones, the hosts discuss some of the most misguided medical practices in humanity’s long history of trying to understand the human body and how to fix it. Recent topics include bloodletting, hysteria,  and lobotomy.
3. It makes you wonder which of our current medical practices future generations will laugh at and/or be revolted by.
4. They keep it tight. As a podcaster myself, I know far too well the temptation to let your podcast creep upward in duration with each subsequent episode. The first episode of my guitar podcast Six-String Bliss lasted about 30 minutes. Some of the later episodes pushed the 90 minute mark. The McElroys keep things to a wieldy 30-40 minutes. Perfect for listening to during a short morning workout.
5. The hosts seem like cool people. In the very personal medium of podcasting, the importance of likeable hosts cannot be overstated. It is a pleasure to hang out with Justin and Sydnee for a half hour each week.
Did I mention that I am free most Friday and Saturday nights?
Where to begin? Start with Episode One: Trepanation. Otherwise you won’t understand Justin’s signature sign out: “Don’t drill a hole in your head.”
Check out all the episodes of  Sawbones here.
Writing the Lights Out – Episode 2: Regulation 19
In which I set a writing schedule, creep out my neighbors, mispronounce a Swedish name, and talk about my work in progress.
Something to Love: The Twilight Zone Season One (1959)
Something worthy of your attention, and five reasons I love it
1. Season one of The Twilight Zone is available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. If you don’t have access to any of those services, most of the episodes are also on YouTube. You could be watching it right now.
2. Like most of us, I had seen the odd episode of The Twilight Zone when I was a kid. I enjoyed most of what I saw, but I never didn’t see an entire season beginning to end. Even though this is an anthology show, watching the first season reveals some overarching themes. It also gives us an interesting insight into what scared us in 1959.
The answer? Space travel. A shocking amount of episodes feature space travel as the catalyst for something terrible happening. Our travel into space awakens malevolent forces that put Earth in danger. Or the human mind cracks under the strain of space travel. Or we travel to a distance asteroid (it’s always an asteroid for some reason, never a planet) and meet a race of creatures that seems friendly at first, but then we learn their true intentions. Both my favorite episode of the season (And When the Sky Was Opened) and my least favorite episode (I Shot an Arrow Into the Air) are about space travel.
3. Episode 31 The Chaser is even more creepy and effective if you imagine the potion maker is an elderly Harry Potter. Which is not difficult.
4. The last decade has seen a clear uptick in the quality of episodic television. One commonly sited reason is shorter seasons. When a season has only twelve or thirteen episodes, sometimes even less (looking at you Breaking Bad), the creative team can spend more time getting each episode right. I think there is something to that theory. It’s amazing then to consider that season one of the Twilight Zone is thirty-six episodes long.
5. The Twilight Zone is an interesting look at where television could have gone. Sure, it’s not perfect. Corners were cut at times. Some of the dialogue is mighty clunky. But it’s TV that sought to challenge its audience rather than comfort them (see People Are Alike All Over). It wasn’t afraid to combine strong story and social commentary (see The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street). It took cliches like ‘Love conquers all’ and showed us why they are not true (see Long Live Walter Jameson). That is television’s potential. The Twilight Zone may not always accomplish its lofty goals, but it does point the way toward an unmapped territory of artistic possibilities.
Where to start: The first episode is a bit of a dud. If you are new to the Twilight Zone, I recommend starting with one of these fine episodes: One for the Angels, Walking Distance, Time Enough at Last, And When the Sky Was Opened, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, or People Are Alike All Over.
Writing the Lights Out – Episode 1: The Ultimatum
In which I give myself an ultimatum: finish the first draft of my novel Regulation 19 by October 31st or delete the manuscript from existence.