A few years ago there were a rash of books about people who tried to do something to the extreme for one year. I found the concept fascinating, and I read a few of them, most notably The Year of Living Biblically (a guy follows all of the rules of the Bible–as zany as many of the more obscure ones are–for one year to see how it affected him personally and spiritually).

My book idea is in the same vein. The concept is that for one year, I would act on all advice that scientists give us about living longer.

You’ve probably heard some of this advice:

• Drink a glass of red wine a day and you’ll live longer.
• Take an aspirin a day and you’ll live longer.
• Eat a few pieces of dark chocolate a day and you’ll live longer.

My ears always perk up when I hear this type of advice, especially if it’s easy to follow. And some of it goes well beyond eating a piece of chocolate. For example, there’s a small town in Italy where fatty foods comprise 41% of their diet, but bonds and support that are an integral part of this close-knit community gives its residents one of the highest life expectancy levels in the world?

The book would explore why, exactly, we want to live longer–if not forever (think vampires, religion, the fountain of youth, etc). What’s so appealing about immortality? And what about the aging of your body versus that of your mind–what do you value more? We spend so much money trying to look younger, but what is it about aging that we so despise?

So this is something I’m thinking about doing. Some of the advice I already take by coincidence (i.e., you live longer if you have a pet), but there’s quite a bit that I’d need to add into my life. And it’s not just longevity advice–there’s also mortality advice. What good is eating legumes every day if you get eaten by a grizzly bear on Day 18?

One gimmick I’d like to include in this book is that I want to take more than just the advice of scientist. I also want to take (if only temporarily) any advice that you’ve ever heard about living longer. If your crazy uncle once told you that you’ll live longer if you eat a spoonful of peanut butter upside down every day, I want to do it.

So if you have a minute, let me know any longevity advice that you’ve ever heard. That’s a very good chance I’m actually going to take this advice, and I’ll give you credit in the book. Keep in mind the distinction between being healthier and living longer. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, but I want to specifically focus on advice you’ve heard about longevity. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but does it add a year to your life?

Thanks for your help, and have a Merry Christmas!

But what if something different happened during that hour? What if that hour was a freebie, a blip in time, an hour that happens but isn’t “real”? What would you do with that hour?

I’m over in Ireland working on a story that I’ve been playing around with for a week (I took the photo on the right while writing tonight in my castle hotel). I have a myriad of concepts and characters I’m piecing together for a series of connected stories ala A Visit from the Goon Squad, but I’m curious about what you’d do with that leap hour. Who knows, your brilliant idea might end up in the book (I’ll give you a concealed credit).

So here are the rules behind the leap hour:

• It’s a real hour that happens to everyone at the same time every year. However, it takes place in an alternate timeline, kind of in a bubble of reality that is completely separate from the reality you experience and perceive every day.
• You do not remember anything that happens during the leap hour. In your primary timeline, you see the clock turn from 12:59 to 1:00 without knowing that there’s an extra hour in there (you only know that hour exists because scientists have proven it to you).
• Nothing that happens during the hour has any consequence on real time. For example, in the alternate timeline, you could go streaking through the streets of St. Louis, be seen by tons of people (perhaps they’re doing the same thing), and be caught by traffic cameras everywhere…but when the hour is up, you’re sitting on your couch like you were before, with no memories or evidence that you went streaking. It simply doesn’t exist as an event that happened in your life.

I’ve also discovered (this was a while ago), that like The Notebook, True Blood is an excellent show to watch on a date. Let’s just say that it gets the ladies in the mood…

The writing in True Blood is actually quite good, with one huge exception: dream sequences. You know what I’m talking about. You’re watching the show, and there’s a scene where the girl finally admits to herself that she wants the guy she’s not with, and they ravage each other in bed. Finally.

And then…she wakes up.

Dream sequences are flat-out bad writing. If you want to show your audience that Sookie secretly wants Eric, let the actress do her job. We don’t need to be spoonfed those hidden desires. Sure, the visual is handy, but once we realize it’s not “real,” we feel cheated. Manipulated.

Now, the occasional dream sequence where it is abundantly clear from the beginning of the scene that it’s a dream isn’t so bad. But when you’re given no sign that it’s a dream, you end up starting to wonder if every scene is a dream. You start to doubt the reality of what you’re watching–and when you’re watching True Blood, everything is so far from reality that those doubts come quickly.

So writers of the world, please stop using dream sequences. You can do better than that.

A month ago, my little publishing startup, Blank Slate Press, launched a Kickstarter campaign to support our 2012 author selection. Since then, we’ve decided to add one specific author to our docket (we sent him the contract today), and perhaps one other author later in the year (she’s doing a significant rewrite on her novel before we decide). We’ve reached our goal thanks to some tremendously generous contributors, but with a day left (35 hours, to be exact), I hope you’ll consider contributing to the campaign for the following reasons:

1. You’re looking for a good summer read. Any contribution to the campaign gets you digital copies of our two debut novels. One is a page-turner with huge twist, and the other is a literary character study.
2. You enjoy reading this blog. Does my blog make you smile from time to time? Maybe even think about things on occasion. I’m endlessly flattered that people choose to read my blog every day. It costs me about $100/yr to keep this blog up and running, and I’d never ask you to help alleviate those costs. But I’d be honored if you’d support this passion project of mine.
3. You’d pay $2 to watch me make a fool of myself. Okay, technically you can watch the Kickstarter video of me for free, but the lowest giving level is $2. Every penny counts.
4. You’re a Kickstarter virgin. Kickstarter is one of the coolest web startups that I’ve seen in the last 5-10 years. Even if you don’t support the campaign, Kickstarter is worth exploring. What type of project could you see yourself launching there someday?

Thanks for your consideration. The clock is ticking! The campaign will end on Friday, July 1 at 9:55 am Central time. And thank you so much to those of you who have already chosen to support this passion project of mine.

So if you’re interested in blogging or you already blog, check out my eBook, “Brilliant Blogging.” It’s a comprehensive guide to starting, sustaining, and growing your blog.

It’s short and free, no signup required whatsoever. You don’t even have to download it. It’s right here for you to view.

I’m getting a little tired of love triangles in fiction.

I don’t mean to offend anyone. I probably have dozens of love triangles in my own stories and I don’t even realize it. My concern is that they seem to be everywhere now, not because they’re realistic or even make for good fiction, but simply because everyone else is doing it.

What triggered this? I just read a description for a new YA novel that seemed pretty cool…until I reached the paragraph about how the main female character would be faced with a choice between a bad boy with a kind heart and a good boy with unknown motives. Immediately I had no interest in reading the book.

There are many books–especially in YA (young adult) genre fiction–that include this same love triangle. Twilight. The Hunger Games. A dozen other novels I’ve read about but haven’t made it big yet.

Maybe part of it is that there always seems to be a bad boy and a good boy. First, is that realistic? Do all women have this choice when making a decision about love? I’d think the choice would be more between a boy (good or bad) and lots of boys. Or no boy at all. Not two boys with polar-opposite personalities.

Two, does this make for good fiction? Is the ideal dynamic for a novel to have one female character and two very different male characters? Is that really the most compelling choice a female character can make?

While we’re at it, why don’t we see more male-female-female love triangles? Are they somehow less compelling?

I’m trying to think of a point in my life when I struggled between two females. I can literally only think of one time, a random party where two girls were taking turns hitting on me (it was surreal but flattering). Every other time I’ve struggled with love, it’s been a choice between the woman I’m with and some hypothetical, unknown woman that I wonder if I should be with. Or between the woman I’m with and no one at all. Or many women.

Why do we keep seeing this device in fiction?

Daily Quickie: I reached 4,000 comments on my blog today (if you’re curious, the 4,000th comment is an amusing aside on my Puerto Rico post by someone named Al Lopez). I love for this blog to be a place for conversation, so I’m immensely happy that it’s garnered so many comments. Thanks for being a part of the conversation.

1. I rarely attend talks or lectures of any kind, much less on my own.
2. I think Ariely is brilliant, as exemplified by the increase in the number of blog entries here about behavioral economics.
3. Ariely published my short story, a fable, on his blog, which is read by tens of thousands of people.

I didn’t quite know what to expect. I knew Ariely is a bestselling author, but really, how many people were going to show up on at a library on a Monday night for a talk on an eclectic and somewhat controversial form of economics?

200+, it turns out.

There went my hopes for a small, round table discussion with Ariely, during which I could impress him with my intelligence and insight, perhaps garner instant admission into the program at Duke that he runs, which I would promptly and politely decline on the basis that Duke sucks (go UVa!)

But all was well, because Ariely is a great speaker, and he asks a lot of “show of hands” questions, so the more data, the better. He didn’t just stand up there and read from his new book, The Upside of Irrationality. In fact, he didn’t read from it at all. Instead, he shared a number of stories–both scientific and personal–relating to the benefits of irrationality. He particularly impressed me when he fielded questions and had amazing answers to every one. (My favorite involved a woman who said that women were different than men because women don’t seek revenge in the way that men do. Ariely replied, “Respectfully, I disagree–and not me personally. I just happen to have the data.”)

One interesting concept he talked about was that humans will almost always yield to the pleasures (or avoidance of pain) in the present despite the long-term implications in the future. He gave the example of eating fast food because it tastes good right now, even though we know about the negative long-term complications. I responded to this claim by picking up Hardees on the way home (how do you like them apples, Ariely?!)

Last, I noticed something interesting about the crowd at the lecture. There were a few young people there, even a few attractive women, but most everyone had their senior citizen discount in full swing. I’m talking 175 out of the 200 people there were 65+. That would say to the publisher in me that marketing to older people is the key to a bestseller.

However, when the lecture was over and the line for signing books formed, I noticed something interesting. Almost everyone in line was young or young-ish. I looked around at the throngs of people streaming for the exits, and I noticed that none of them had Ariely’s books in hand. The young people in line? Everyone had a copy.

What does this mean? That old people attend free lectures but don’t buy books? That young people understand that authors are only going to come to St. Louis if they sell something while they’re here? Or was it just a coincidence, an anomaly, a glitch in the Matrix?

What do you think?

It may seem like a waste of time, but my advice to any wannabe writer out there would be to write your first novel knowing that it’s going to be bad. Not just bad; self-centered, possibly pompous, overwritten in parts and underwritten in others. Get it over with. Put 80,000 words on paper, put it in a drawer, and then pull it out in a year and see how bad it was.

I’m not exactly sure what the life lesson is here, but it has something to do with getting all the crap out of your system so you can create something worth consuming. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to be great the first time around, but you have to put your ego aside and realize that there is a very, very small chance that it’s as good as you think it is.

Case in point: After college, I wrote about half a novel. At the time, of course, I thought it was brilliant. It was all about me (I’m a fascinating subject to myself), it included a life lesson essay after every chapter, and I basically copied the format of every John Irving novel because that’s who I was reading at the time.

It’s SO important that I wrote this novel. Because I got it over with. And ever since, I’ve found it so much easier to find my own voice, to create characters that aren’t just like me, and to not think that every sentence and idea I wrote would get me on Oprah.

I want to repeat this real quick because I have a feeling some people really won’t understand this. You’re thinking that someday when you have time, you’ll sit down and write a brilliant novel the first time around. You think you’ll be the exception to this rule. I’m telling you that you’re wrong. Write that novel in your free time now. Then, later when you have time, write something brilliant.

Do you have a bad first novel sitting in your files? How have you grown since then?

Your first job won’t be your last job, your first love probably won’t be your only love, and you’ll make way more mistakes than perfect decisions.

I had it all planned out in my head–I’d say it, notice some seniors nodding, letting it sink in. I’d get some pats on the back later, maybe an e-mail thanking me for my insight, and in 10-15 years, I’d get a letter from one of the students saying that my words had such a profound impact on them that they never forgot my wisdom, and they wanted to express their gratitude by buying me a tank full of dolphins and sea kittens.

Unfortunately, we didn’t say our advice outloud.

I think I might also add some practical advice that I’ve written blogs about, like:

1. Always have a friend with a pickup truck.
2. Hold your beer in your non-handshaking hand.
3. When going out for a business lunch, make your selection in advance.

There’s plenty more on the guy talk and leadership pages.

What advice would you give a graduating senior?