How a writer actually works decides how much actually gets written. These posts go behind the curtain on tools, setup, daily word counts, goal-setting that finishes books, and the burnout that derails them — the real machinery behind 100-plus published titles.
Fiction WritingStephen King wrote Carrie at a desk between a washer and a dryer, and his wife pulled the first pages out of the trash. Fifty years and 400 million books later, his method is still a daily quota, a three-month…
CensorshipRoald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916, crashed a fighter plane in the desert, sold his first story for $1,000, and wrote the children's books in a garden hut with six sharpened pencils. In 2023 his publisher's edits to…
AprilMaya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis. An editor told her autobiography as literature was close to impossible, and she answered with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She wrote it, and six more volumes,…
Cold WarIan Fleming failed as a soldier, a banker and a stockbroker, found his footing in naval intelligence, and wrote Casino Royale at forty-three in about five weeks. Every Bond novel after it came from the same quota: 2,000 words a…
Critique GroupsA writing buddy can be the difference between a finished draft and another abandoned one. Why it never worked for me as an introvert, how to find a good one, and the rules that make it work.
AmericaLondon was an oyster pirate, a seal hunter, a tramp, a jailed vagrant and a Klondike prospector before he was twenty-two, and he turned all of it into fiction that made him the highest-paid writer in America. He also produced…
Fiction WritingWhat stops you finishing is psychology, not talent. A brilliant idea stays worthless while it sits trapped in your head, held there by self-protection patterns
AIInternational Chess Day is July 20. In 1997 a machine beat the world champion and everyone said chess was finished. Chess is now bigger than it has ever been, and writers are being told the same thing about AI right…
HabitsNew Year's Day is January 1. A writer's take on the fresh start, why resolutions usually fail, and how to actually use the blank page a new year offers.
NovemberI Love to Write Day is November 15. Where a love of writing comes from, and the truth that love gets you to the page but habit gets you to book one hundred.
Book WritingNaNoWriMo shut down, but the November writing challenge lives on. Why writing a book in a month works, and how to actually finish one this year.
AI AdoptionThe loud AI conversation is about the future. The real revolution already happened, quietly, over the last twenty years, and you took part without noticing, your spell check, search results, spam filter, photo editor, route map, medical scans, and code…
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