Inspiration

Censorship: it's like a publicist's dream! Nothing makes me want to read a book more than when someone says I can't read it. Check out this infographic featuring some now classic books that were banned because of... well, you'll see the reasons.

What are your favorite books that take place during the holidays?

Here's an infographic from NinjaEssays showing the "best" Christmas books of all time (according to Goodreads and Stylist).

According to a story from the New York Times, "research suggests that writing by hand allows [students] to process a lecture’s contents and reframe it — a process of reflection and manipulation that can lead to better understanding and memory encoding." The article, entitled "What's Lost as Handwriting Fades," goes on to say: "The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex."

The following infographic from Encremento provides some fascinating stats on eBook piracy, DRM, and other publishing industry efforts to combat file sharing. But here's the thing: you shouldn't worry about Piracy. It's been years since Amazon's first Kindle came out. Now that so much time has passed, I think it's safe to look at the marketplace and say that the publishing industry will not encounter anything close to the level of piracy suffered by the music industry. Either eBooks and digital music are completely different beasts (they are) or the publishing industry learned from the missteps of their music business counterparts — or a bit of both. But no matter what the reason, the data illustrates that, as always, OBSCURITY is the enemy of independent authors, NOT piracy.

And what writing tools do you use?

Curious how J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and many others get the writing done? Picture your favorite author writing a new book. Where is she sitting? What is she using to write? A computer, a typewriter, pen and pad, taking notes on an iPhone? The famous authors in the infographic below (from NinjaEssays.com) are all pretty lo-tech when it comes to the composition process — which, of course, isn't a stunner when you're talking about Agatha Christie or Mark Twain. But a few of the other examples did surprise me.

According to the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut, the shapes of stories can be graphed. Have you thought about the shape of your short story?

While children's picture books may seem simple, creating a brilliant one is no easy task. How do you make yours smart, engaging, and fun — rather than clichéd, saccharine, and didactic?