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- What Moving House Reminded Me About Getting My Writing DoneI’ve been banging on about writing and infrastructure for a while on this journal, but I’ve recently found a fantastic metaphor for the importance of your set-up. As I’ve mentioned a few times, we recently moved house, trading our tiny one-bedroom flat for a two-bedroom, two-story townhouse. It’s been a considerable amount of work to
- You Don’t Need Social Media To Sell BooksThe marketing plan for many new writers — including me, way back when — seems to be a weird extension of the Field of Dreams philosophy: if we publish it, readers will come. Good books find their audience. Readers believe this too, although they rarely articulate it that way. And it’s not entirely wrong, because
- I Am Not A Fully Operational Death StarTo the shock of absolutely no-one, I was considerably less productive on the writing front than expected over the holidays. I last wrote on my last full day at work two weeks ago, and I’m picking this draft up on the 5th of January (coincidentally, my first day on a bus since moving house in
- Leverage Needs A Fulcrum: How Do You Build Certainty Into Your Writing Practice?“Give me a lever long enough and I will move the earth.” This quote from Archimedes bounces around the internet from time to time, highlighting the power of leverage. It’s been stuck in my head for over two decades now, ever since Commander Sheridan quoted it while escaping from an alien prison in a Season
- Solve One Problem At A TimeI’m writing today’s entry from a cramped bus seat on my way to work, grabbing fifteen minutes of writing time out of the otherwise dreary stretch between my house and the office. It’s taken me a few weeks to get to this point. For the first week, I tried my old trick of writing on
- Boost Your Fiction: The Power of Objects and ObjectivesWhat’s the difference between a messy story and a great one? Often, it comes down to having clear objects that represent a character’s goals…
- When The Algorithm Doesn’t Love You AnymoreHere’s a dirty secret I rarely say out loud as a writer: I don’t want you to friend me on Facebook. I don’t want you to follow me on Threads or Twitter or Instagram. I sure as fuck don’t give a shit if you’re following me on TikTok. I’m on all these places, and I’ll
- Preserving Great Writing Advice From Internet DecayThis post originated at the GenrePunk Ninja Patreon. You can join and read most of these posts for free, but paid backers get additional perks.To view this content, you must be a member of GenrePunk Ninja Patreon at $1 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
- The Most Valuable Page Of Notes I’ve Ever WrittenI’ve been re-reading old bullet journal this morning and found this page, from 2016, which led to the most important writing gig I’ve ever had: I produced this on my friend Meg’s back deck, trying to sort through the complicated steps required to apply for a PhD and break them into tangible, completable steps. I
- The Theory Of ConstraintsThe theory of constraints is a business management philosophy popularised in Eli Goldratt’s 1984 book, The Goal, although it builds upon work by earlier thinkers, including Germany’s Wolfgang Mewes. These days, The Goal is better known as a book Jimmy Donaldson—aka MrBeast—used to make all his employees read and assimilate. Now let’s be clear: I