Speculative stories about spirits and the soul.
I first wrote Rats in the Capital in 2014-2015. That was the first draft, anyway. More drafts followed, but the story was notable because it was a very British novel set in the present day. There wasn’t any problem with that (or, at least, not so I thought). But then, in 2016, Brexit happened. And …
Continue reading “The Dangers of Near-Future Science Fiction”
Last month I wrote a post about how authors can prioritise according to the Pareto Principle to increase their chances of success. You can find the post here, but TLDR, with so many demands on attention, authors must be brutal in terms of how they prioritise their time. If writing is the top priority, we …
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 …
