Whenever you try to live a life where you are producing creative work, there is a trap you can fall into. At least I do, all the time. I look at my rate of productivity, do some math by determining the available hours I have, and make goals for myself. This is not, in itself, a bad thing. I am a planner, and nothing would get done otherwise. However, just […]
Personal Work/Life Balance Read More »
Everybody has the same advice if you want to accomplish any sort of major creative endeavor, whether it’s becoming a published author or creating award-winning macrame projects. The advice is Make it a part of your routine. I’m going to focus on establishing a writing routine here, but some of this advice is good for any kind of creative project. The first thing you need to do is take a
How to Establish a Regular Writing Routine Read More »
There’s a lot of advice out there about how to ‘Get Things Done.’ Some of it is very useful, some of it is very specific to people in certain situations, but everybody agrees if you want to accomplish a goal, you need to develop habits that help you reach that goal. Seems obvious, but I see a lot of people try to brute force their way into doing something,
How to do the Thing! Read More »
When the new year started, I had big plans. I would keep up with a 40,000 word a month writing schedule, go to the gym twice a week, and make a point of attending more local in-person events. I also decided that this was the year I got my finances under control. Well, here at the end of January, I’m finding that it has gone … ok? I’ve
In Which I Decide to Kick My Own Ass! Read More »
This has been a very challenging year. I’m not going into details again, but basically my entire life fell apart and had to be put back together. But in the middle of all of this, I managed to publish 2 books, write 200,000 new words, and obtain a certificate in Digital Art and Graphic Design. I am very proud of those accomplishments. But as the year ends, I want to
What I’m Looking Forward to in 2025 Read More »
I’ve been doing a deep dive into worldbuilding lately because that’s where I identified I most needed to level up. And I have so many ideas for worlds, characters, and stories that the hard part is realizing that I can’t do everything at once, and I know from experience that I can’t draft more than one book at a time. So, I used my favorite coping strategy, making a
The State of Things Read More »
Calm down, that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t even watch the news (usually) Over the course of the past couple of years, I seemed to have cracked the code of productivity for myself. I was, at one point, writing 3000 words a day, four days a week. In 2022, I wrote 377,000 words of new fiction (and blog posts). Last year, I wrote 277,000, which is still respectable.
Everything is Broken Read More »
I want to talk about a difficult subject, and to do so I’m going to have to use a word that a lot of people don’t like. It’s an F-word. Not that one. No, not that one either. The word that makes people so uncomfortable is Failure (which means my grandma can read this and not get mad at me). It turns out, I know a lot about this word,
Twitter used to be the place for artists, writers, journalists, and other professionals to hang out online. It had great discoverability, and people built huge followings seemingly from scratch. People sold books, connected with agents and editors, and became (sometimes unfortunately) celebrities based on the pithy comments they posted about matters both serious and inane. At its height, it had over 528.3 million monthly active users. If you wanted to
Social Media Showdown Read More »
‘Four Thousand Weeks,’ which at first appears to be a time management book, but in actuality is about humanity’s entire relationship with time itself, blew my mind. It definitely made me think about how I’m using my time. It also made me realize I was stressing myself out way too much over things I cannot control and that don’t ultimately matter much to my overall happiness and the structure of
A Rant about what the f* I think I’m doing. Read More »