Speculative stories about spirits and the soul.
When you write in the small gaps around your day job, you must use yout time wisely. But that’s easier said than done when there are so many stories to write (and edit) and countless more ways to market yourself online. Business coaches often cite the 80/20 rule – also known as Pareto Principle – …
Continue reading “Can Pareto Principle Help Authors Get Better Results?”
You’ve no doubt heard the phrase. To effectively master any skill or craft, you must devote at least ten thousand hours to learning its finer points. It’s an adage taken from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and while widely quoted (and much debated), I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally. As you can …
Continue reading “How Long to Transform Into an Expert Writer?”
It’s been hard to escape the feeling recently that robots are coming. Not as an army of efficient terminators controlled by a super-sentient hive mind, perhaps. But certainly as an army of bots, capable of producing works of art in less than a minute. With creative writing, there’s ChaptGPT from Open AI, alongside Google’s soon-to-be-released …
Work on the third draft of my novel finished late last night. Cue wild scenes of debauchery, which I’m afraid means nothing more than a spicy mug of hot chocolate these days. Does that mean the thing is ready to read, though? Or at least done enough so I can go and work on something …
Continue reading “Writing Update: When Is the Novel Finished?”
Countless posts and books will detail Musk’s Twitter takeover. Or takedown, whatever the case may be. But for now, the biggest takeaway for me is this. Authors (and anyone who creates) need to own at least one method of communicating with the world about what they do. Most marketers will tell you that sending a …
Continue reading “Create a Blog: Five Reasons Why for Authors”
As my recent post laboured to explain, flash science fiction is a great way to read online. In a whirlwind of apps and content, we’re clearly information-rich. Yet it’s clear that time and attention are increasingly hard to spare. Perhaps naturally then, flash science fiction feels like an excellent alternative for genre fans who want …
Continue reading “Flash Science Fiction: The Best Sites to Read and Write For”
It’s that time of year again. You’re stressing about the cost of presents and double-checking there’s enough booze in the fridge. Meanwhile, wild horses are trying to drag you to the sofa to watch another Christmas special featuring James Corden. So you take the only reasonable option: open your laptop and claim you have something …
Depending on who you speak to, the average person’s attention span online lasts between three and eight seconds. Known by marketers as ‘The Blink Test‘, this is the short time you get to engage your target audience before they decide if your web page is whack and jog on. Bearing this in mind, is flash …
It’s been a mad few years. But then, when I think about it, my life has looked strange for over a decade. In truth, it’s been hard for friends and family to keep up. And for most of that time, I’ve struggled to find the mental bandwidth to process it all.
