Failure Is Success: What a Lifetime of Failing Taught Me
I have failed constantly, and learned that failure is success. The failure is never the problem; what you do with it is. Here is what a lifetime of failing taught me.
Tag: Overcoming Writing Resistance
Most unwritten books die of resistance, not lack of talent — procrastination, self-doubt, the fear that it won’t be good enough, and the excuse of “someday.” These posts confront every version of the wall between you and the book you keep meaning to write.
Book ROI & Business CaseWhat If My Thinking Changes After the Book Is Printed?
The permanence fear: your ideas will evolve, and the book will sit there, frozen, quoting the old you forever. Why that fear gets publishing, and expertise itself, exactly backward.
Book CoachingI’ve Started My Book Three Times and Never Finished. Why Would This Time Be Different?
Three false starts feels like a verdict: maybe you're not a person who finishes books. It isn't. Why manuscripts actually stall, what your attempts proved, and the two professional paths to done.
GhostwritingIs My Story Actually Worth a Book?
Underneath the price and time objections sits the quiet one: is my story even worth a book? The honest evaluation criteria, the false modesty trap, and the rare cases where the answer is no.
FearI Spent Thirty-Three Years in a Box and Called It a Career
Never went looking for better, never went back to school, never reached past the edge of what I had. Comfortable is the wall people mistake for a career.
AI WritingUsing AI to get your book out of your head
The hardest part of a book is not the writing; it is getting the raw material out of your head and onto the page in a form a writer can use. AI is surprisingly good at this when used right,…
Book CoachingWhy don’t I just write it myself?
Why don't I just write it myself is a legitimate question, and I want you to ask it seriously, because DIY genuinely works for some authors. It fails for most not from lack of skill but from the gap between…
AI AdoptionI’m behind on AI and it feels too late
I'm behind on AI and it feels too late assumes the window closed. It did not. AI moves fast, but the skill that matters is not memorizing this month's tool, it is the judgment to use any tool well, and…
Hiring a GhostwriterIs my life interesting enough for a memoir? Probably yes, and here’s the test
Is my life interesting enough for a memoir is the most common question I hear, and the framing is almost always wrong. Memoirs do not win on dramatic biography; they win on a specific voice telling a specific story honestly.…
Authority Through AuthorshipWhat should my book be about? The question that decides whether the project works
What should my book be about is the most important question in the project, and most authors answer it on the wrong criteria, the trendy topic, the one that should be written, the one that covers everything they know. Those…
Authority Through AuthorshipIf You’re a Veteran and You’ve Been Meaning to Write Your Memoir
If you are a veteran, especially Vietnam- or Korea-era, the window for your memoir is closing faster than you think. Once you are gone, your children get fragments and your grandchildren get less than that. The memoir is what survives,…
Character DevelopmentThe Ghostwriter Superhero: Defeating the Villains That Stop Your Book
Somewhere a client stares at a blinking cursor, the book they have described for years still unwritten. The villains keeping it that way have names: fear, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, procrastination, the blank page. Here is how a ghostwriter, recast as…