Category Archives: Best of the Web

List: Five Similarities Between Writing and Falling Down 47 Flights of Stairs – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

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1. Writing, like falling down 47 flights of stairs, is something you do. You can’t just say you’re a writer when you haven’t written anything, and you can’t scream “HELP HELP I AM FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS!” if you are just standing there, and not actually falling down anything.

2. It is harder to finish a piece if you start writing it, stop, and then start again. You have to keep up your momentum. The same is true about falling down 47 flights of stairs.

3. Both writing and falling down 47 flights of stairs require preparation. Writing a novel, for example, necessitates understanding character, plot construction, and sentence structure. Falling down 47 flights of stairs requires 47 flights of stairs, and being at the top of those stairs, and gravity.

4. As with tweeting it in CAPS LOCK, screaming “BUY MY BOOK!” while falling down 47 flights of stairs will never yield as many purchases of your self-published ebook as you hoped it would.

5. Finishing a manuscript feels like reaching the bottom of a fall down 47 flights of stairs: you are dazed, you are a bloody mess, there are now pieces of you scattered about in places you never expected. But one thing is certain: if you survive, no one will ever be able to take away from you the experience of writing a novel, book of poems, or think piece, just like how no one can take away from you the experience of surviving a fall down 47 flights of stairs.

Source: List: Five Similarities Between Writing and Falling Down 47 Flights of Stairs – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Bertha Benz, the Fugitive Road-Tripper Who Helped Launch the Modern Automobile – Core77

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In our previous two posts, we looked at some of America’s pioneering women of midcentury automotive design. This week, we travel to Europe to explore the story behind an unlikely figure whose early exploits helped shape the automobile for centuries to come. Portrait of Bertha Benz as a young

Source: Bertha Benz, the Fugitive Road-Tripper Who Helped Launch the Modern Automobile – Core77