ASK YOURSELF ONE TWO-WORD QUESTION When I began writing novels, I reached out to a writing coach named Gary Provost. Gary, who has since passed away, had a remarkable talent for simplifying the process of creating storylines. It was partly because of his excellent guidance that I began my Frank Clevenger series of mysteries. Gary […]
PLAY YOUR GAME! (Or How to Keep Your Self-Esteem High, when the Rewards Only Come Later) One of my favorite scenes in a movie is the scene in Miracle, when Kurt Russell, playing U.S. Olympic hockey team coach Herb Brooks, yells at his players, “Play your game!” The last minutes of the now famous U.S. […]
HERE’S HOW So many of my counseling clients (The Ablow Center) and creative consulting clients (Keith Ablow Creative) can envision the next chapter of their life stories, but need some help actualizing the next chapter. Why? Sometimes it’s about resources, but very often it is about the resolve to let go of something they have, […]
I recently was fortunate to have my book To Wrestle with Demons: A Psychiatrist Struggles to Understand His Patients and Himself published in a leather-bound collector’s edition by Gryphon Editions’ Classics of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Library Holding the book in my hands made me think a little bit about the moment at which we […]
Boston, MA For Immediate Release According to a recent Veteran’s Department study, more than 20 veterans and active duty personnel commit suicide each day. A prior VA study put that number closer to 22. The toll of military service could not be starker than the way it manifests in those men and women who come […]
The great novelist J.D. Salinger got a lot of things right. Among them, he wrote that one of the only questions that will be asked of us when we die is this: Were most of your stars out? Now, obviously, no one can know God’s plans for us. And I am sure I have readers […]
None of us has time or words to spare, when you really think about it. Our lives on the planet are brief, and our opportunities to impact others are not infinite. Given this, I want to share three ways I believe you can truly move people when you interact with them, whether in your personal […]
There are plenty of resources that provide advice on delivering a speech and which focus on organizing the material, providing visuals, selecting a topic and being a commanding presence. My advice is more ambitious: What keys make a speech something that changes people, in meaningful ways, within the scope of 20 or 30 or 60 […]
There’s plenty of good advice there for fiction writers. Some of it, by the way, is contained in the work of the late Gary Provost (www.garyprovost.com), who created the Video Novel Workshop. The workshop is now available as a free download, but I bought that series of DVDs from Gary for about $60 when he […]
I still remember about 12 years ago, sitting with my television agent Greg Lipstone at a sandwich shop in Los Angeles. Greg was one of the heads of television for the mega-entertainment agency William Morris. We had a few meetings scheduled with television show runners to talk about a drama series I had thought up, […]