AI tools burst onto the public consciousness last year with a new release of ChatGPT that seems pretty smart to most people. It’s not yet smarter than a human. But it’s surprisingly good. And it’s fast. And it’s cheap. I have no interest in writing my novels using AI. My novels should be mine, not…
I read a book review once which began, “This book answers a question nobody is asking.” The reviewer thought that was a bad thing. He thought he was trashing the book. But in reality, that was quite an endorsement. If you want to make a difference in the world, you need to begin by asking…
I got interested in the 80/20 rule more than 10 years ago, when Amazon added a feature to their Author Central site that showed each author how they ranked among all the other authors. I immediately realized that this revealed exceptional insights about the earnings of all published authors. (Amazon removed this feature after a…
You might have heard that a writing conference is the best place you can possibly go to make the connections you need to succeed as an author. I’ve said this many times, and it’s absolutely true. There is no better investment you can make in your writing career than to go to a writing conference. …
Here’s an exercise you can do to make your current novel better: Search your manuscript for the word “as”. Remove it from every sentence that uses “as” to make two events simultaneous. That’s it. very simple. Extremely effective. A few examples will make this all clear. In each example, I’ll show you the wrong way…
This happens to almost every novelist who ever lived, and it’s probably happened to you: You wrote your novel the best you know how. You did everything right. The story flows. The characters rock. The setting shines. The theme pulses with life. You set the manuscript aside for a few weeks to let it cool….
