One of the biggest lessons I have learned since I first started to take writing seriously about five years ago is that to do good work—to do any work at all—you need the ability to get out of your own way. Every single day of a writer’s life brings fresh doubt and uncertainty. Some days…
Before we begin, let me point out that this article is not intended to be some sort of blueprint for “How To Write A Bestselling Urban Fantasy Series”. The article merely outlines the research I did before I started writing the male urban fantasy series that I’m still hard at work on. As well as…
When most people think about success and the process of achieving things, most often they think in terms of goals. To achieve things, you have to set goals that will help you do that–targets to aim for, destinations to get to in specific time frames. The culture of self-help and business development that has been…
If you are like most people nowadays, you probably avoid boredom like the plague. From a young age, we tend to be taught that boredom is a negative state. Consequently, we learn to become dreadfully uncomfortable with boredom as we do our utmost to fight it every step of the way. These days in the…
Write what you know has become one of those well-worn rules of writing that has been bandied about so much now, it has become almost meaningless. So has the less used, but still worn, quote about writing what you don’t know. Besides being contradictory, these two pieces of advice don’t really help a writer much…
Most of the work in being a writer does not come from the writing itself. It comes from actually getting started in the first place. The act of writing itself is usually pretty painless once you get going. Sure, there are days when it feels like writing is the hardest thing in the world and…
To grow as a writer you have to take risks. Calculated risks preferably, but risks none the less. And to take those risks, you can’t fear failure. Arguably, one of the most valuable lessons I have learned over the years is that failure is not something to be feared, but to be embraced. Fear of…
It occurred to me that I might just be addicted to writing, and probably have been since my early teens. Writing has always been something that I feel like I have to do, however bad I was at for years. Like most writers, I sucked when I started. If I re-read now some of the…
If you have been self publishing for any length of time, or you know anything about online marketing, then you will no doubt have heard the oft worn phrase, “The money is in the list.” The list being referred to is, of course, an email list, and in marketing terms it is one of the…