If you’ve read the previous article on using Manuscript Format, your next question might well be “But where do I send my completed, properly formatted, proofread story?” Lucky for you, I’m here to show you a couple tricks for finding markets. The Submission Grinder The Submission Grinder is…
A week or so before I started writing my first short story, in the summer of 2019, I came across an article bemoaning new writer mistakes. After breaking my arm patting my own back for avoiding the most egregious of the lot, the author of the piece brought me up…
What’s worse: a new writer droning about their method, or a new writer authoritatively stating their method is best? I get it, though. Being a writer is hard work, but not in the sense that roofing, nursing, etc. is hard work. Add maintaining a social media presence, a blog,…
I’ve posted before on rereading (and being pickier with book choices). This is just a handful of quick bullet points to add some details. * I don’t count anthologies or collections in this. I love novels, but the cold calculations show the return on investment for my enjoyment and…
Unlike the antilibrary there’s no value in notes taken and never referred to again. We’re all familiar with the concept of the antilibrary, right? From Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan: The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial…
The best advice comes from the strangest of places. By random chance I came across an interview with Benjamin Dennehy, the self-titled UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer. Now, I’m not in sales, nor have I every been in sales. My retail days were spent in inventory management (I’…
Swiss author Rolf Dobelli throws down some controversial advice in his book The Art Of The Good Life. It starts as a thought experiment: What if you could only read fifty books for the rest of your life? Once you pick up a book, you have ten minutes of reading…
Let's start with a quote: …in any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed. - Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain This is a true statement. It’s also a statement many fake gurus use as part of their “read more faster” tips. “Just read the…