Bad Poetry Day: Why Writing Terrible Verse Makes You a Better Writer
August 18 is Bad Poetry Day. Why writing badly on purpose is one of the best exercises a writer can do. Vogons welcome.
Tag: Writing Craft (Page 57)
Book CoachingWhat Movies Teach Writers That Writing Books Don’t
I keep thousands of films the way other writers keep reference books, and I have written deep analysis guides on more than 200 of them. Watched closely, movies teach pacing, structure, and dialogue that most writing advice skips entirely. Here…
Fiction WritingMistakes Are Not Okay. How You Handle Them Is
When a point-of-sale system fails across a retail chain, stores stop taking money and the calls start before you have even found the problem. I ran those systems at Trader Joe's for 20 years. In that world, mistakes are okay…
CommunicationWhy Business Leaders Cannot Communicate and What to Do About It
The smartest leaders I work with are often the worst communicators, and it is no accident: they built expertise so deep they forgot how to explain it to anyone who lacks it. They know everything and cannot make you care.…
Book SalesFrom Idea to Finished Book: How the Process Actually Works
Every client begins with a vague feeling that there is a book in them somewhere, and no idea what it looks like, and that uncertainty is completely normal. Not one of my 54+ books arrived as a finished concept; each…
ADHDWriting Motivation with ADHD: How I Write 10,000 Words a Day Across 10 Projects
I am writing ten books at once: five novels in progress, plus client work, coaching, and handbooks, producing up to 12,000 words on a typical day. I also have autism and ADHD together, the combination most people assume would make…
Book CoachingSetting Writing Goals That Actually Produce Finished Books
Set a writing resolution in January and you have likely broken it by March, because resolutions are gym memberships in disguise, all enthusiasm and no structure. The fix is not more willpower; it is goals instead of resolutions. Here is…
Book ProposalWriting a Memoir as a Senior: A Practical Guide
At seventeen I wrote my first memoir, my grandfather's, a Navy cook captured at Corregidor who survived the POW camps and a march through Manila. The family's version was secondhand and partly wrong, so I interviewed him for dozens of…
AI vs Human GhostwritingWhy Every Writer Should Embrace AI as a Digital Assistant
I use AI daily, wrote two free guides on it, and built 45 handbooks around it, so this is not an anti-AI rant; it is an anti-stupidity one. AI is a research assistant with infinite knowledge and zero memory, a…
Authority Through AuthorshipMoving Forward with Your Book: Three Clients Who Did
The hardest part of writing a book is not the writing; it is the deciding. People weigh it for months or years while the book stays a someday idea. Here are three clients who finally committed, a manager past a…
FearThe Fear That Stops Writers
For years I would not submit my fiction anywhere, not because the work was not ready but because the thought of someone judging it triggered a physical reaction I could not reason past. My chest would tighten and I would…
Business BooksWriting Young Adult Fiction: What Two Cyberbullying Novels Taught Me
I have written two YA novels about cyberbullying, one for a client and one my own. Writing for young readers about something so real forced a different set of skills than adult fiction ever did, and it made me a…