{"id":90005,"date":"2016-07-11T22:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T02:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/?p=90005"},"modified":"2026-10-10T15:23:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T19:23:40","slug":"chapter-5-on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/chapter-5-on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 5 \u2014 On Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The title for today’s chapter is a blatant rip-off from Stephen King\u2019s book (review below). I couldn’t help myself. You’ll, and Stephen (if he were a squadron), would modestly agree, this is by far, an attempted textbook appropriation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or in other words, borrowing a book title, worth millions of dollars in copies sold, to elevate and prime my reader\u2019s inbox experience. Is it working? Are you tickled?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers, copywriters and writing tools are the subjects of our talk. These essays, articles, books, works and apps have been passed down by friends, colleagues and, drum roll please, internet trolls (ahem, David).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a kid, I loved reading Goosebumps (hottest book covers, ever) and comics\u2013mostly Superman, Spiderman, Chacha Chaudhary<\/a> and, my favourite, Batman. Back then, I mostly read stuff because I liked the book jacket cover art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoever said \u201cdon\u2019t judge a book by its cover,\u201d had no idea what they were talking about. Ask the 12-year-old me, he\u2019ll tell you the glossy emboss on the cover of Jurrasic Park by Michael Crichton<\/a> fermented my shallow, judgemental and pretentious general attitude towards books and life in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit of a stretch there. Coming back now. I was kidding. Ok, seriously now. Twenty-two years later, I find out the cover was designed by Chip Kidd. Watch his Ted Talk.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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The title for today’s chapter is a blatant rip-off from Stephen King\u2019s book (review below). I couldn’t help myself. You’ll, and Stephen (if he were a squadron), would modestly agree, this is by far, an attempted textbook appropriation. Or in other words, borrowing a book title, worth millions of dollars in copies sold, to elevate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"paid_subscribers","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":true,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digest-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7CVvN-npH","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90244,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90005\/revisions\/90244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulsyng.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}