Wherever you are on your book writing adventure, you’ll find what you need here…
What to do if you’re just starting out on your Author Adventure: planning, preparation, and dealing with your Inner Dickhead
There are approximately 8,193 notes in my Notes app. Even more in my Notion.
I’d say more-or-less 48% of them are lists. Plans. Plots, if you like.
I live my life via lists, plans, and plots, or nothing would ever happen. They’re comforting and they make me feel like I’m making progress.
Every time I sit down to write it’s like whack-a-mole: which obstacle is my brain gonna chuck in the way today? Who knows? It’s a surprise!
One consistent blockage, though, is my arrogant and pathological need to write a brilliant first sentence.
To be clear: the first sentence and the last sentence need to be brilliant; the start and end are the bits people will remember.
But they don’t have to come out as the first damn thing we write.
Sometimes, people tell me they hate their book. Their work in progress.
On occasion, I say it myself, about a book I’m working on.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s okay.”
And then I ask: “What do you mean by hate?”
Because hate is such a strong word. We sling it around without really thinking about what it means.
You may have heard the instruction “eat the frog first”. It’s a favourite of the productivity bros and there’s a bestselling book by the name Eat that Frog.
The idea is that you do the most difficult, horrible task first and get it out of the way, then the rest of your day will be plain sailing.
Wondering how you can use AI tools to help you write, without selling out?
You’re in the right place, my friend.
Because, although I do rail (rightly) against overuse of AI and the very real issues it’s creating, it can also be a terribly useful tool.
I’m gonna need you to stop reading books now. WAIT — hear me out. Reading is one of the best things in the entire multiverse. You should read. Widely and deeply and like a writer. Read books about how to write, by all means. I’ve written several of them myself. I love Steven Pressfield’s War of Art, it’s great; as is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Stephen King’s On Writing and any other of the great and famous books written by writers on how to write.
13 ways you know you’re a writer: You’ve been staring out of the window for an hour now and all you’ve done is doodle a flower with a horrifying face. You’re supposed to be writing but instead you’re grouting the bathroom tiles. You’ve written the same word 43 times then scratched it out and written FUCK instead.
When CDs came out, everyone predicted the death of vinyl. And digital music was going to be the final nail in the coffin. But vinyl didn’t die; in fact, it’s more popular now than it has been in a very long time. The vinyl sound is unique: chewy, velvet, almost touchable… a quality that digital music can’t replicate, even with special digital effects.
It’s been an exciting week here at Casa Moxie. I’ve had a LOT of conversations (way more than usual) so I’ll be spending much of this weekend hiding in a darkened room with my headphones on. But the conversations have been so good. I’ve met some wonderful people.
If you’re considering not writing your book this year, think again. The world needs your story. If you are any kind of a misfit — if you don’t fit into the straight, white, male, cis-het, neurotypical, wealthy world, or if you have a message and a mission that challenges the status quo — there will be others like you looking for someone like them. Maybe your book will rock their world.
I got a few scaries: Wriggling through potholes that are only as wide as I am. Sharing a village with people who voted for fascists. Being showered with earwigs. But those are still less scary than standing on a stage with the sole purpose of making people laugh (and think).
If you want to write a book and you’re not doing it, your problem isn’t that you don’t have time. It’s not that you need more info. And you definitely don’t need another £49 “how to write a bestseller in a week” template. Your problem is that you are not permitted to be bored.
Standing under the shower, with sunlight dappling through the trees above me, and my feet rooted to the smooth slate stepping stone, I felt peaceful for the first time in… I don’t know. Forever. Through that stone, I could feel the Earth breathing.
Once upon a time about a year ago, Sarah Silva, the Chemical Translator, wrote a MicroBook called Your Ticket to Explore: Essential preparation for your translation marketing adventures.
When I used to have a job, I often wondered why it sucked so much.
Of course, part of the problem was me and my attitude. Part of the problem was my undiagnosed AuDHD.
Everybody worries about being a good storyteller but story ain’t the big banana. Story is just the vehicle for your IDEA .If you don’t have a strong idea and solid point of view, your story will have about as much impact as a fart in a hurricane. Stop worrying about your writing for 5 minutes and focus on your idea.
For 25 years, I’ve tried to get my shit together. Maybe it’s time I accept that my ducks are going to stay scattered and actually they’re more like geese.
The Heretics by Will Storr made me mad as hell. I got a handful of pages into it before swearing and banging it down on the bookcase, abandoning it.
Me: why do I have a headache again? Also me: stares at sleep app showing a sleep debt of 4,184 hours.(I exaggerate but honestly only slightly.) Ah. That might be why my head hurts. And why I can see tweety birds in my peripheral vision. How can my sleep debt be this high?
"ChatGPT has been down today which means I’ve had to think for myself when writing my ABOUT ME section here on LinkedIn. I think I may have become too reliant on the speed at which it can help me structure my ADHD thoughts".
I rage Google stuff all the time. The results that came at me were mostly listicles about how not to be chronically late, why people who are late are basically the devil, or pop-psychology.
“Why don’t you enter the Pole Theatre competition?” I’m not…
I love the phrase “aggressively unhelpful”—it’s very diplomatic. Coined by Katy Weber, who interviewed me for her Women & ADHD podcast.
If your drive to write a book is big enough, time doesn’t have to be the reason you don’t get it done.
