After I finished writing BookCraft, I got a little obsessed with the particularities of writing a satisfying conclusion or resolution. It’s something I started noticing in TV shows and movies, especially: how the hero’s personal quest was deliberately illustrated with a hard comparison, a “before and after” that...
What does it mean when you get feedback on your writing or advice to “show don’t tell”? I get this question a lot but didn’t have a clear answer until now. It’s hard to teach without showing exactly how to do it with writing examples… but I actually came up with three great tricks recently The 3 secrets to...
This is usually where I’d post a roundup of the best (FREE to enter) 2021 writing contests. But I’ve decided not to, because even though they’re great for traffic, there are several sites that have already put lists like that together – I’ll link to those at the end of this post. So, why write The 3 secrets to...
Real quick: Medium is a side-project by Twitter CEO that’s mostly unmonetized but gets a crazy amount of traffic; making it one of the biggest content sites on the internet. You *can* get paid by views under certain conditions and *some* writers are making real money ($1000~$10,000 a month) but it’s not easy to do The 3 secrets...
There are some rumblings this week as Kindle announced a new program for authors called Kindle Vella; basically a short, serialized place for content that’s separate from the main Kindle store and runs more like a smartphone app. Several companies have tried to pull this off, (“Radish” is the most successful one) but Amazon...
There’s a revolution happening in literature: writers are going short. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve already heard of flash fiction, those tiny, compressed stories flourishing in the literary underground. Writers and readers are falling in love with the form and discovering something delightful and poignant in these small spaces...
When I wrote my huge guide to book writing (Book Craft) I cut out all the nonfiction tips and strategies last minute; I’d already explored a bunch of material in my writing courses but wasn’t quite ready to share the nonfiction resources. Mainly, because, while I’m proud of the detailed 24 chapter novel outlining templates...
For years authors have been hoping for something that makes book formatting easier. Vellum is a great solution for Mac users but there’s never been anything comparable to it for PC users, who have to rely on buggy formatting with MS Word, a steeper learning curve with InDesign, or some functional but limited online book The 3 secrets...
This evening I realized I’m (now over) 100K in lifetime book sales, so I set up an “ask me anything” thread on Reddit’s largest writing group. I was nervous, because Redditors can be hostile, but having frequented the site more recently, I knew a LOT of writers were struggling with some pretty basic, common writing...
There’s a financial war going on. Some peeps on Reddit took smart bets against Wall Street positions, which were severely over leveraged – assuming big companies would fail or shut down during the Pandemic. They realized if they pushed the stock up, the hedge funds would be forced to compete or buy at high prices The 3 secrets to book...
I just got an email from someone saying they were too depressed to publish, so I’m sharing my response: “Release it first, promote it later; the market decides whether they like it, and the work is what it is, so don’t let your feelings or doubts stop you from getting it out there.” Edit: Now The 3 secrets to book...
For the second year in a row, my humble mess of a blog got listed by the WriteLife as one of the top 100 sites for writers – right next to Jane Friedman and Dave Chesson, so I thought I’d mark the moment with some stories. I *met* Dave years ago when I was in Taiwan, and The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted...
