Author name: Tracy

Slowing…but not stopping.

If you only read this blog of mine, and not any of my author blogs or social media, then it might have seemed like everything was ticking along nicely here. In actual fact, for several weeks now I have been working through a personal health crisis, utterly unable to spare any attention to The Productive […]

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Indie Authors Take Note:  NOW is the time to prioritize your health!

Indie Authors Take Note:  NOW is the time to prioritize your health! Don’t leave it until tomorrow, the way I did. I’ve been having a few health challenges lately.  I’ve murmured in public once or twice over the last year about pinched nerves and back issues, in particular, my neck, which was giving me a

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Indie Authors make money from their backlist, not the latest release.

Indie Authors make money from their backlist, not the latest release. How are you managing YOUR backlist? The first thing readers do, once they’ve read some of your work and liked it, is immediately look for anything else you’ve written. Especially if you write in series, readers will binge on that series, then inhale your entire

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How to Brainstorm Your Fiction

How to Brainstorm Your Fiction 6 Steps, No Rules.  Just unique, original stories. I attended the When Words Collide conference on the weekend, and was a speaker on a number of panels, including one on brainstorming. I was taken aback by the turnout for that panel, and the trend of the questions from the audience

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What You Can Learn From Stephen King About Writing More Fiction

“I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it’s something at least half-clever. Also, I didn’t want to

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Okay, Already, I’ll Try Obsidian!

Okay, Already, I’ll Try Obsidian! Because I CAN Listen. A while ago, I wrote about my disappointing live trial of Notion, and how I happily returned to OneNote. Buried in the text as a throwaway line was the fact that I did try to use Obsidian, but found it counter-intuitive and too difficult to quickly

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Ramp Up Your Creativity and Write Lots More With One Simple Hack

Actually, I lied.  This hack is simple in concept.  But it’s not simple to execute. But, man, is it worth the effort!  This hack will energize your writing and let you float through the day, no slogging, no groaning, no fighting to keep yourself at the desk. My story Three years ago, my DH was

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How to Prep Your Microsoft Word files for flawless ebook conversions

Following these suggestions will give you a “clean” MS Word file that compiles to ePub and Mobi without mysterious blank pages and extra lines in it, and with chapter headings properly formatted.  If you use compilers such as Jutoh, Atticus or Vellum, the clean file will also reduce bad results when you import to those

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