Well, that escalated fast.
Honestly, I’ve been thinking and mulling over and wondering what to write (and resisting the urge to make terrible jokes because too soon?).
So today I’m going to share what I’m doing while the world goes into lockdown.
13 Books That’ll Help You Become A Better Writer
Two questions get fired at me often:
How can I become a better writer?
What books do you recommend I read to get better at marketing my business?
My answer to the first question is: write. Write every day and don’t worry too much if what you write is sometimes crap. You’ll get better.
Write. Edit. Improve. Repeat.
And read everything you can get your hands on, good and bad.
Don’t be a rotting badger
Grow.
Grow grow grow.
It’s all we ever hear from online gurus, business experts, and people who think they know stuff.
🎃 Haunted by horrific howlers
Writing a book isn’t just about the writing; it’s about the details, too. The fine points that mark you out as a professional. Stuff your readers may not notice on a conscious level, but if you get it wrong, they’ll feel it. They’ll know.
How To Outline Your Business Book Lightning Fast
Let me ask you again: why aren’t you achieving your goals? Do you know what’s missing? Which tiny beetle steps you need to take?
Recruit friends to help you
Habits are easier to keep when people are cheering you on.
How I stopped drinking alcohol
Since Christmas 2018, I’ve probably had fewer than 20 alcoholic drinking occasions – and when I have had a drink, it’s generally been one small one.
And it hasn’t been a struggle.
Roast potatoes for brains
Post-festive-sludging and I feel like my head is stuffed with roast potatoes.
I am struggling to form a coherent thought, let alone write about one.
This is extraordinarily vexing to someone who writes for a living.
Write Your Book’s Introduction In 3 Simple Steps
Think of your introduction as a sales letter for the rest of your book. Your reader is thinking, subconsciously, “What’s in it for me? Why should I give up my valuable time to read this book?” You need to convey that in your introduction. Here’s how…
Will Writing A Business Book Make You Rich?
Occasionally, business owners tell me they’re secretly dreaming of rolling around naked in piles of cash like Scrooge McDuck. Perhaps you think a book could make you filthy rich…
Having a religious experience
You can create a sacred space even in a shared office, a busy home, or a public café; it just takes a little ingenuity and a certain amount of hard-headed resolve.
How To Write In Pictures
Flamingo your writing by making me feel, see, smell, taste, and touch…Silence.Sudden silence.The kind of velvet silence that soaks up every whisper.The only sound in your head is the bass-beat of your panicked heart… and all eyes are on you.What’s the worst thing that can happen during your competition pole dance performance? Wardrobe malfunction? Nope.
How to Write About Yourself (Without Sounding Like a Canoe)
“Aargh! I hate writing my about page!”
Yep, we all do, toots. We all find it tough.
How do you strike that careful balance between “hilarious, kind, and helpful” and “obnoxious douchecanoe”?
Tricky.
Luckily, I have a quick tip for you
Strippers shafted by sharecropping
Use all the tools at your disposal: build a rabid Instagram following, especially if your business is visual like aerial arts, painting, cartooning, and exotic dancing – but please don’t make it the only thing you do.
“I’m the kind of person who…”
The reason we fail to make the changes we want and achieve the results we desire isn’t willpower or laziness or lack of ability; it’s because what we’re trying to do is at odds with who we believe we really are.
The morning monster cure
If you want to write your book, you need to build a good writing habit or you’ll never manage it.
What are you struggling with? What feels horrible?
What if, instead of saying you’ll write 500 words a morning, all you have to do is make a cup of tea, open your document, and scribble down what you’re going to do next?
Make it easy and make it attractive.
How Talking To Your Clients Helps You Beat The Blank Page
Ever had insomnia? Not just a little trouble sleeping, but the twitchy, panicky, staring into the void teetering-on-the-edge of madness insomnia?
Every now and then, it feels like you’re poised on the knife-edge of sleep—so you grab at it, wildly, desperately, only to feel sleep slip away, leaving you grinding your teeth.
To me, that’s what the Blank Page Of Doom feels like sometimes. When I have the seed of an idea I can’t quite hold onto—or too many ideas, boiling across my brain too swift to catch.
Always picked last
When you see competitors doing well, it feels kinda like getting picked last.
Why aren’t they choosing me? Why them? What do they have that I don’t? I know my products and services are better, so why am I picked last?
How To Think Up Your Big Book Idea
The flash of inspiration you’re waiting for? It ain’t gonna happen. It is a myth; a myth that has stopped good writers from writing since humans first scratched their shopping list on the cave wall…
You are not your business
You are not your business. You are not your art.
Take the criticism. Allow the reaction. Then examine it carefully.
Is there a lesson you can learn and use to improve? Take it.
How To Beat “Writer’s Block”: 3 Fun Exercises To Get You Writing
Think of your introduction as a sales letter for the rest of your book. Your reader is thinking, subconsciously, “What’s in it for me? Why should I give up my valuable time to read this book?” You need to convey that in your introduction. Here’s how…
Getting mad at your future self
We’re basically a bundle of habits, good and bad.
Which means every single action we take is a vote for the person we want to be.
What you’re feeling is normal
I wanted to share a few things that might help you navigate what you’re feeling right now, including some of the ways I’m feeling
Growing Like a Rotting Badger
If we’re not drinking the Koolaid, if we’re not hustling 24/7 and obsessing over growth, we’re somehow less than those other entrepreneurs and business owners we see crushing it every day. I call bullshit. Not all growth is healthy.
It’s a one-person kitchen dammit
I’m often asked where I get all my ideas for writing from, and how I can keep telling stories. People wonder when they’ll get hit by the inspiration fairy.
Truth is, you won’t be.
The Splendour Of Hard Things
We think that unless we can make giant leaps forward and see enormous and sudden improvements in what we’re doing, we’re not doing anything.
It’s hard to keep going when keeping going is hard (and boring).
You have an egg hanging out your bum
Most of us are starters, not finishers. We’re entrepreneurs, so we’re easily excited and enthused by new ideas and big plans and the next shiny thing — but when it comes to finishing what we started…? Writing that book? Launching that course?
15 Reasons to Write a Book
Ever thought about writing a book but never quite got started? You’re not alone.
Here are 15 reasons why I think you should write a book in 2020…
Lessons From My Book Launch
If anyone ever tells you launching a book (or any product, for that matter) is easy, smile sweetly and back away. They’re either lying, or utterly clueless.
Don’t write like you speak!
In today’s video, I ramble on about why writing like you speak is dumb and leads to badly written books.
How Gluttony Could Derail Your Book
Too much of anything is a bad thing – and that goes for writing, too. Gluttony can squash your book. Don’t let it…
This blew my tiny mind
Have you ever read something that, when you think about it later, is obvious – but at the time, it blows your mind?
Atomic Habits: My Book of the Year in 2019
Want to know how I’ve gone from a chaotic cranefly who couldn’t get out of bed to a 6 am person who writes every day and sometimes eats like a healthy adult?
A ridiculously small pin-head
Our Inner Dickheads hate change. They love the status quo (not the band).
There’s no point trying to silence that voice, either; it won’t go away. It’s a part of you.
Don’t rely on your friends
It’s up to us to persuade the right people that our books are worth investing in.
Nobody else is going to do it for us – and that’s a really cool position to be in because it means we’re in charge of our own destiny. We get to make our own successes (and failures) without relying on (or blaming) others.
Waterboarded at the dentist
What are you willing to endure to get what you want?
Asking The Right Questions
Knowing what questions to ask when you start to write your book is the hardest part… We spend so much time looking for answers, we rarely stop to think if we’re asking the right questions. And sometimes we don’t know which questions to ask at all…
Resistance Is Futile, Or, The War Of Art
One of the best books I’ve read on how to beat resistance and procrastination is The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield. Here’s my review…
Don’t drink and prime
Don’t just read; do.
Of course, some books make it easier to do that than others… Like my new book How The Hell Do You Write A Book. It not only makes it super simple for you to take action on what you’re learning, it also helps you write a book of your own that people will read and use and get value from.
Michael Stipe was right
Michael Stipe was right, eh?
Oof. What a few days, eh?
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
New year new…?
Within the haze of end-of-year parties and admist the overindulgence of the festive feasting period glows an ember.
The glimmer of an idea.
The hope that perhaps this year will be different.
Maybe this will be the year we’ll write our books or run that marathon or start that business or go after that big contract.
Why aren’t you achieving your goals?
Let me ask you again: why aren’t you achieving your goals? Do you know what’s missing? Which tiny beetle steps you need to take?
Why your projects are always late…
Whether your project is a giant railway infrastructure, a cottage renovation, or writing your book, it will inevitably take way too long and cost much more than you budget. It’s because you suffer from the planning fallacy — with a healthy dose of optimism bias and overconfidence thrown in.
Sometimes your words will be crap
For the past three days, I have sat at my laptop first thing in the morning and cried tears of frustration.
Every word I’ve written has been dragged out of my brain with forceps and no pain relief – and arranging those words on the page has been torture.
Almost everything I’ve written has been total crap by my usual standards.
Criticism Hurts: How To Take The Sting Off
Some people will love your book. Some will hate it. So what? Once your book’s out there, what people think of it — and you — is beyond your control…
Information water-cannon overload
Does going online feel a bit like you’re being water-cannoned with well-intentioned but overwhelming information?
🐞 we need tiny beetle steps not giant leaps
The thing about tiny beetle steps is, eventually they add up to great big leaps.
We get hung up on the great big leaps. We strive for massive improvements, to become an overnight success, and wish for miracles to happen fast.
10 Ways To Choose Your Book Title
Your title is one of the most critical parts of your book. If you write a crap title, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your book is, most people won’t read it…
Are We Sleepwalking Through Life?
Just because I got elbowed in the face once in Primark doesn’t mean everyone who shops in Primark is an arse. Just because I got elbowed in the face once in Primark doesn’t mean everyone who shops in Primark is an arse. Repeat until I believe it.
Do you know how I rationalised that ugly little belief? By telling myself I don’t shop in Primark because it’s unethical and because I want my clothes to last for more than two washes. (Both those things are also true, it’s just not the true reason I don’t like Primark.)
Are you a shenanigator?
Seth Godin calls it making a ruckus. Which I like.
But I call it being a shenanigator.
🦠 The lowdown on lockdown 🗝️
6 top tips for working from home.
The Two Voices in Your Head
Want to know why we say things to ourselves we’d never say to others – and how we can be a little kinder to ourselves?
4 Simple Steps To Help You Write The Blurb On The Back Of Your Book
The blurb on the back is the third most important part of the cover after the front cover design and the title. I would have loved a step-by-step instruction manual for writing my back blurbs, but there wasn’t one. So I made my own guide. Here it is.
On Finding Mudita
Of all the negative emotions, after shame, I think envy takes the biscuit: it seeps into everything we look at and it keeps us stuck.
the 1%-ers
We think that unless we can make giant leaps forward and see enormous and sudden improvements in what we’re doing, we’re not doing anything.
It’s hard to keep going when keeping going is hard (and boring).
Commit no nuisance
Our whole society is geared to keeping us quiet, keeping us in line, and not making a fuss.
4 Lurking Horrors That’ll Kill Your Book
Beware the spooks, ghouls, and monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy your book…
Back in the 80s Without the Shoulder Pads
If you make a mistake, people will forgive you, especially if you put it right. If you make a mistake and then disappear, you’ll be considered a douchecanoe.
How Do You Come Up With All Your Ideas?
Ever look at those snazzy business owners in your inbox and on the internet and wonder how on earth they come up with all their stories, emails, articles, and podcasts? Wonder no more—you can do that too.
🚆 long train journeys are the best
The thing about tiny beetle steps is, eventually they add up to great big leaps.
We get hung up on the great big leaps. We strive for massive improvements, to become an overnight success, and wish for miracles to happen fast.