One of the most powerful techniques for increasing your word count is, simply, don’t click away. Avoid as much as you can alt+tabbing or clicking away from your manuscript. Interruptions chew up time, throw you out of flow and have the potential to divert you completely away from your story. BUT Particularly when you first start […]
Index Card & Notepad Hacks To Keep You Focused Read More »
Here’s a simple experiment you can try today and it only takes 30 minutes. Open up the book you’re currently writing. Grab a timer — IOS, Windows and Android all have built in timers/clock functions that can act as stopwatches and timers. If you don’t have one installed, there are a ton of free apps
Write 15% Faster Today Read More »
Do you have a fully developed Production Schedule, with release dates for the next year? Do you still find you’re skipping writing dates, and cramming an entire novel’s worth of writing into ten days before the deadline? Want to know a way around that? This was me up until a couple of weeks ago. The
How to Really Commit, and MAKE Yourself Write. Read More »
How paperless are your work processes? How close to completely paperless should you try to get? I’ve been as close to 100% digital as one get get, these days, and have been for many years. The only thing stopping me from 100% is the occasional paper letter that lands among the junk mail in
Handwriting and Efficiency Read More »
It’s likely this post will be late, because… well, let me explain that one. Yesterday was a day from tech hell. In this era of app integration, I’m still somewhat amazed that disparate apps can talk to each other and automate some amazingly complex processes. Yesterday, though, two of them decided to not play nicely
Don’t Let Overwhelm Overhwelm You Read More »
As today is World Backup Day, (yes, it’s really a thing) let’s talk about that. You only have to lose an entire book manuscript once, to learn to backup your data with multiple redundancies. Yes, I speak from experience. I can tell you that there is nothing as sick-making as the jolt you get when
It’s World Backup Day Read More »
I recently received an email from an author who picked up on a passing reference of mine, and asked me to explain how I copy and paste my Word files into Publisher to produce print editions. I’ve created a video that walks you through the basic process: Resources mentioned: Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Office Suite
How I Use Microsoft Publisher To Create Print Editions Read More »
When you write and release lots of books, the costs associated with publishing those books increases at the same scale…or does it? How do you handle the costs of writing and publishing lots of books? Economies of Scale. When you’re producing many books, there are economies of scale available to you that two-books-a-year authors can’t
Handling The Costs of Writing Lots of Books Read More »
Last week I suggested writing short stories as a way of reaffirming your love of writing, having fun, and maybe creating saleable content as a happy bonus…plus also teaching yourself to write fast, and write lots. Over at Anne R. Allen’s blog, Anne has suggested in her post “The Attention Economy: Shorter“, that indie
The first half of January, I find, is often a fallow season. Everyone is recovering from the frantic pace of holiday season celebrations and reflecting upon the upcoming year. Even if you don’t believe in new year’s resolutions — and growing research demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of people who set new year resolutions
The Power of Short Stories Read More »
