Every successful novelist I know tells me that they first come up with a notable character, someone with whom they would love to spend their writing time. The plot arises from the character. The writer pushes the character out of his “before world”—Will Smith finding that Earth is a refugee center for aliens from outer space—and then has that chara

Aristotle defined rhetoric as the art of applying the “available means” of persuasion.

Deliberative rhetoric. This language deals with the future, arguing choices that lead to the best outcomes. The past tense has to do with former sins, crime, and punishment. The present tense covers values—right and wrong, who’s good and who’s bad. In a chaotic situation, don’t prosecute. Make a decision.

Another cure can come from creating things to look forward to.

Rhetoric offers two immediate cures. The first comes from Aristotle: Remember the bad times as well as the good.

This yearning for home gave rise to the term nostalgia. A combination of the Greek words for “homecoming” and “pain,” the word was coined by a Swiss medical student in the early 1700s to describe the condition of mercenary soldiers who suffered from sadness and loss of sleep and appetite.

Schumpeter famously described this phenomenon as “creative destruction”;

But as the political economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, the greatest fortunes get made by people who reap the whirlwind that swirls from the chaos of technological change.