On Writing
The best "how-to" book you'll ever read isn't a "how-to" book
On Writing isn't a how-to; it's a story. A love story. A life story.
Like everyone's life story, it's a genre-bending mix of horror, thriller, romance, comedy, and inspiration. We learn lessons as he did, not through checklists and exercises, but through reflection. Examination. Application.
I recommend the audio book.
About the Creator
Adam Patrick
Born and raised in Southeastern Kentucky, I traveled the world in the Air Force until I retired. I now reside in Arkansas with my wife Lyndi, where I flail around on my keyboard and try to craft something interesting to read.
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More stories from Adam Patrick and writers in Critique and other communities.
Port-faux-lium
I am a lifelong learner. I love education, communication, the exchange of ideas and opinions. Discourse. I particularly love online education. A lot of people discount it, and many students do phone it in; but it gives me a chance to digest people’s posts and responses, consider them, and craft an informed, well-formulated response.
By Adam Patrick3 years ago in Education
Standing While Falling
Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche "He who wrestles long with monsters should beware lest he himself become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Man is not destroyed by suffering, but by the meaning he makes of it."
By LUCCIAN LAYTH6 days ago in Critique
Angry People Click More: The Economics of Manufactured Dissent
(Ideas from the book The Economic Policy of Online Media: Manufacture of Dissent, Routledge, 2024) Abstract This article examines the formula ‘angry people click more’ as a core logic of contemporary online media and as a structural transformation of propaganda in the digital age. It argues that the defining feature of the current attention economy is not only the circulation of misinformation, but the systematic deployment of openly implausible claims designed to provoke moral outrage and sustain profitable engagement cycles. The analysis links Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year ‘rage bait’ to earlier lexical markers of epistemic crisis such as ‘truthiness’ and ‘post-truth’, and situates this trajectory against the older ‘manufacture of consent’ model of Herman and Chomsky. While classical propaganda in totalitarian and mass-media systems sought ideological unity through censorship and the Big Lie, the emerging Propaganda 2.0 model, articulated by Peter Ayolov, monetises anger by manufacturing dissent and deliberately populating the public sphere with absurd, polarising narratives. The article interprets this dynamic through the allegories of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Václav Havel’s greengrocer, showing how the move from fearful silence to permanent online rage changes both the psychology and political economy of propaganda. Drawing on Evgeny Morozov’s critique of fake-news moral panics, Frances Haugen’s disclosures about Facebook, and the documentary The Social Dilemma, it concludes that anger has become a tradable asset and that blatant lying has shifted from an authoritarian instrument of control to a market mechanism in a global ‘free trade in slogans’.
By Peter Ayolov4 days ago in Critique
Comments (3)
The Stephen King version? I read it twice (should look for the audio version).
I agree, writing is a matter of perspective, reflection and life experiences. Yet no two views are alike. One has to find one's own way.
that is not good color of a bulb light it hurts eyes