We broke off last time at getting your ducks in a row…before you even start writing. I know, I know, you probably won’t take my advice right away. “Surely,” you’ll say, “It’s not necessary to do all THAT before I write a story. I need to be creative! Right! Now!” But that’s exactly why you […]
So I’ve talked you into it. You’re committed to writing those 10 million new words (or however many you have left, give or take a million). You’re committed to sending your submissions out. But, if you’re like I was, you’re not really sure how to go about it. How do you get a ton of
I’ve talked about why failing so hard, why we aren’t failing enough, talent vs. hard work, and success. Not that I get a huge number of comments on a post or anything, but I got a lot fewer comments on the success post than I did on anything else. People like to talk smack about
How to Fail, Part 5: Rejections, Rejections, Rejections Read More »
I’ve talked about why failing is so hard and that we need to give ourselves more opportunities to fail, if we’re going to succeed. I’ve talked about the idea that we need to be talented writers instead of hard workers and how useless it is. Now it’s time to talk about success. What is success?
Smart. Talented. Special. Gifted. Bright. Stupid. Unskilled. Ordinary. Average. Dull. If you’re not one, you must be the other, right? No: there’s a third set of descriptions that’s better than both of the ones above, and it goes like this: Hard worker. Dedicated. Pays attention. Asks questions. Practices. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am going to
When do we fail as writers? Logically, we fail when we don’t fail, that is, when we don’t try. It’s like the lottery: you can’t win if you don’t play. The odds of winning the Powerball Grand Prize are 1 in 195,249,054. The odds of winning the $3 ticket are 1 in 61.74. There are
I don’t know…I have visions of people breaking down in tears…”How could you say something so harsh?!?” — What’s a normal response to failure? Upset, despair, grief, horror, shame…? What’s an abnormal response to failure? Celebration! Amazement! Breaking out the champagne! And so we try to avoid failure and gravitate toward success, because failure feels
All, I got invited to talk at the Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference in April! I completely bounced off the walls when I found out; I think it’s one of those things that I subconsciously marked at “a sign of success” but didn’t know it. When I’m making more $$$ as a freelancer, I’d like to
