Want your book to be as good as it can possibly be? These articles are all about writing skills, editing like a pro, and how to write with a little more outrageous flair.
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.
Yesterday morning, I rigged my shiny new trapeze – the birthday gift my wonderful husband gave me back at the end of March, 4,380 years ago – and hung upside down from my feet.
Remember this next time you’re stuck. Remember it when something threatens to derail your plans to write. Be more like Beetrice, focused on writing your book.
It’s soooooooooo crucial for us to write about our experiences and tell our stories.
Criticism and feedback can feel like eating kiwi fruit with the skin on: uncomfortable, even painful, leading to shortness of breath.
But only for a few minutes. Maximum 7 minutes. Then I have to pull myself together and crack on.
What are you willing to endure to get what you want?
Be grateful for what you can do.
Your body and mind (which are inextricably linked) are incredible. What you can do with them is wondrous.
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.
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?
Writing is a source of great anxiety to a lot of people – including me, sometimes. Just because I’m a writer doesn’t mean I have all my shit together.
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
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…
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.
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…
We all have the same amount of time in the days, weeks, months, years.
So why do some people get tons of writing done, and others struggle to make any progress at all?
In today’s video, I ramble on about why writing like you speak is dumb and leads to badly written books.
Don’t let anyone shame you into ridiculous productivity.
Don’t be pushed into doing more than you want to.
It’s okay not to be okay.
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.
Habits are easier to keep when people are cheering you on.
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.
Are we asking the right questions?
I don’t always ask good questions. I ask obvious ones.
Like, “Why do I always procrastinate?”
Are we asking the right questions?
I don’t always ask good questions. I ask obvious ones.
Like, “Why do I always procrastinate?”
Perfectionism keeps us all stuck, and it may well drive us into an early grave.
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.
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?
What do you want your new world to be like?
Your life? Your business? Your relationships?
If we’re not telling the truth, there’s no point in writing… don’t let pride get in the way of your truth.
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.
Much as it’s tempting to just set fire to the world and start again, that’s probably not practical
Don’t let anyone shame you into ridiculous productivity.
Don’t be pushed into doing more than you want to.
It’s okay not to be okay.
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.
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.
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.
Seth Godin calls it making a ruckus. Which I like.
But I call it being a shenanigator.
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.
Your book is just the beginning…
It’s not enough to have a book out there (although that is AWESOME obviously) – it needs to work for you.
“Tell me about yourself”
Four little words guaranteed to strike terror into most people’s hearts, especially if we’re standing in front of a roomful of people.
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).
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.
I have a quick tip for you: remember that writing a book is like falling in love.
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.
The short, sweet, and comprehensive guide to choosing a book coach who understands how to get your Big Book Idea out of your magical brain and onto paper
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.
Michael Stipe was right, eh?
Oof. What a few days, eh?
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
I’ve put off weeding that veg bed for a bunch of reasons, none of them good. And so I’ve wasted more time worrying about the onions than it took me to just do the bloody weeding.
My purpose is to write. To share my stories and other people’s stories – especially those people whose voices are muffled and marginalised. People who stand up for humanity and thoughtfulness and against oppression and cruelty and blind adherence to a doctrine that makes no sense.
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.
None of us has any control over a global pandemic or other people’s behaviour or thoughts or actions. I don’t think we’ve ever lived through a time of such uncertainty. And yet I was trying to control it anyway. Perhaps you were, too. That’s what humans do; we try to control stuff.
Which is, quite simply, exhausting.
You’ve written a great book, you’re getting wonderful feedback on it, people are contacting to tell you how they’re getting on and how much they love the book, and yet on Amazon… it’s crickets.
Beware the spooks, ghouls, and monsters lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy your book…
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.
What do you want your new world to be like?
Your life? Your business? Your relationships?
There are some people who do not have a fear response. In the face of danger, they laugh and run towards it (literally).
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.
“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
Have you ever been stuck? Staring at the Blank Page of Doom in despair?
Yep, me too.
Have you ever blamed it on “writer’s block”?
Yep, me too.
Here’s the thing, though: there’s no such thing as writer’s block.
It’s a made-up myth, a lie we tell ourselves to get out of doing the work.
There are some people who do not have a fear response. In the face of danger, they laugh and run towards it (literally).
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.)
Stop. Breathe. Listen.
Then pick a thing and do it.
Whatever you want to achieve, it’s what you do every single day that counts, not the one-off grand gestures.
I'm on a mission to create 1,000 business owner-authors and help them transform their lives and businesses. Join us: get started with the 29-Day Writing Challenge. Fill out the form below and get writing...