Discipline & Motivation

Why You Should Always Fight to Get Back to Your Routine When You’re Knocked Off It

/ Disaster Planning, Discipline & Motivation, Technology, Tools & AI / 8 minutes of reading

“When jarred unavoidably by circumstance, revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.” – Marcus Aurelius Have you ever been on a roll–everything is clicking along smoothly? You’re writing regularly and when you should, […]

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Do You Need Transition Time in Your Schedule?

/ Creativity, Discipline & Motivation, Scheduling & Tracking / 6 minutes of reading / 1 Comment

  Last week I spoke at length about stashing your time–well, stashing anything you can, actually, as a hedge against the vagaries of the publishing industry. Stashing time is a matter of deliberately working ahead of your production schedule.  (And if you don’t have a production schedule–a timetable of releases–then you’re missing the backbone of

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The Last Remaining Temptation Of Indie Authors

/ Discipline & Motivation, Stoicism & Perspective / 6 minutes of reading

The indie publishing industry has provided for indie authors a great many of the benefits that were once the province of traditional publishing only. There is very little these days a traditional publisher can give an indie author that his indie career is not already providing in spades. In many respects, indie publishing imparts even

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A Dash Of Inspiration for November

/ Creativity, Discipline & Motivation, Scheduling & Tracking, Technology, Tools & AI / 2 minutes of reading

Following up on last week’s post, “How I Got Published, and What I Learned Along The Way“. I mentioned in that post that the book would be part of Kevin J. Anderson’s NaNoWriMo bundle for authors. The bundle is now available, and includes inspirational how-to books from a great many authors you’ll recognize:  Joanna Penn,

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When Your Creativity Goes Stale.

/ Creativity, Discipline & Motivation / 6 minutes of reading / 1 Comment

There are very few drawbacks to indie publishing.  Challenges, certainly, but the independent author tends to thrive on challenges and prefer it that way.  Hard work aplenty, too. Downsides, not so much. Most of the “downsides” you see reported elsewhere, we consider positives:  Having no one else to rely upon but ourselves is a good

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Index Card & Notepad Hacks To Keep You Focused

/ Discipline & Motivation, Technology, Tools & AI / 5 minutes of reading

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

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What Plate Will You Spin Next?

/ Discipline & Motivation / 4 minutes of reading / 1 Comment

  Ever seen a circus performer spinning plates? When you slip into the world of productivity and self-improvement, you quickly discover that improvement is cyclical, or iterative. Applied to writing indie fiction, this becomes a strategy to avoid overwhelm, too:  It is simply impossible to improve absolutely every aspect of your writing business and productivity

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How Shiny Objects Derail You Despite Your Best Intentions

/ Discipline & Motivation / 7 minutes of reading

One of the most basic, most quoted tenets of productivity, one engraved into our brains, is “avoid distractions”. Only, that isn’t taking it nearly far enough — something I (re)learned this week…finally. I don’t know about you, but when I read or hear a version of “avoid distractions”, I tend to slide over the statement

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