Creativity

With the new year comes a new set of writing workshops to participate in! If you’ve joined a workshop before and wish to join again, or if you’ve never tried joining a workshop and want to see what it can do for you, then this list might come in handy when helping you pick! There are all kinds of workshops …

  I started this post in summer 2018 with the line: “I don’t feel ready to write this post, but I’m going to anyway.” But I didn’t publish it. Now at the end of 2018 I’m trying again, to see if I’ve figured this stuff out enough to share it with you. There’s something I want to say, or maybe …

For the last few years I’ve been editing a 19th century treatise called “The Genius of Solitude.” I already posted the introduction and some of my favorite quotes HERE, but I took some of the longer quotes and turned them into infographics. I love these, not only for the aesthetic beauty of the writing (I tried to find images to …

Almost always, if an author isn’t selling, it’s because their page isn’t converting. You need 3 things to succeed, a great blurb, cover, and enough reviews to offset skepticism. I can help you fix those things; I can also help craft your pitch or hook – which is critical for your amazon page. I can also do keyword and category …

Recently I’ve been going through an identity crisis. I know what I want to do, and what I’m good at, and what I enjoy. But increasingly I’m becoming less relevant to my audience (“Great Derek, you want to write books and travel full-time. But how can you help ME?”) On the one hand, I’m finally able to focus on my …

I heard someone say recently, “there are too many marketers and not enough artists.” As someone deep inside the publishing industry, however, I find the opposite to be true. Recently I went to a writing conference – there were over 500 writers. All of them wanted to be artists: they made the work and now were trying to sell it. …

I started this blog in 2011 and did nothing for a year except read all the books on creativity. It was research for a manifesto, but the more I read, the more fascinated I became with the subject. After another 5 years of freelancing, building digital products and working as a creative professional (my income comes from things I make …

Six years ago I wrote a personal post about the challenges of being a full-time digital nomad, “Starting over with nothing at 32.” Over the years it’s gotten more traction than I expected so I thought it was time for a reprieve. I recently turned 38 (during the winter solstice) and I still have just about nothing to show for …

I have a suspicion that most of those “how to wake up early” posts are written by morning people – those annoying chipper people who smile too much. They mean well, but can’t understand the complexities of sleep deprivation facing sufferers of sleep disorders. Personally, I don’t believe in waking up early. I don’t think waking up early makes you …

  Last year I reported on how Kindle’s new page-flip feature might be screwing up earnings for authors in KU. Since then, things have improved somewhat for some authors, while others are still seeing fishy things happen with their page reads. So how do you disable page reads for your book altogether so you can stop worrying about it? Many authors have …