Will Mason

Can Pareto Principle Help Authors Get Better Results?

Can focus on the one thing help authors be more productive?

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 – to help entrepreneurs achieve success. Which begs the question: can Pareto Principle help authors get better results? As always, this blog blunders about in a ham-fisted way to find out.

What is Pareto Principle?

For the uninitiated, Pareto Principle claims that roughly 80% of results come from 20% of your total actions. Various business owners and leaders have adopted the idea, and it’s been broadly found to work. Generally speaking:

20% of the sales reps generate 80% of the total number of sales,
20% of customers account for 80% of a company’s total profits,
20% of a site’s blog posts account for 80% of the traffic,
20% of people in a person’s life generate 80% of their total stress.

OK, that last one is a bit of fun on my part, but you get the gist. 20% of any activity generates 80% of the desired outcome, and the principle can be applied across the board. So, as far as fiction authors are concerned, what is our desired outcome?

Everyone is different in this respect, as are their circumstances. Still, most authors have three desired outcomes, all of which are usually met in sequential stages. Therefore, to identify that critical activity outlined by the Pareto Principle, we first need to know our desired outcome.

The three desired outcomes for authors

It might sound obvious, but the first stage is to write great stories. At least, you would hope so. All the authors I know want to write a story about which their readers will rave. After all, stories fulfil a great human need, and it’s one of life’s pleasures to tell a story in a way that people find worth sharing. However, reaching this stage (and being aware of the countless pitfalls) takes time and dedication. In some cases, it’s a lifelong pursuit.

The second stage for authors is finding a willing audience to read their work. This sounds self-explanatory, but many talented storytellers complete the first stage without having the foggiest idea of how to get their stories into print.

They try with the various magazines and publishers, but the complex and lengthy submission process can feel arcane and dispiriting. Many give up, while others try to publicise their work before mastering stage one. Their work isn’t of the required quality, so even if it does get into print, it’s like a shop selling half-baked biscuits. No one likes the taste, so they get no referrals or repeat business.

The third and final stage (whisper it quietly) is for an author to generate income from their work. Oh, and in an ideal world, win some kind of award. You’d like to think the two go hand in hand, but it’s not always the case. Anyway, judging from recent reports, earnings for authors are less than they’ve ever been. If the trend continues, novels (reading and writing) could become the curious pastimes Will Self once predicted.

Of course, I’d like to think otherwise. Where will the big production companies go other than novels for their next big franchise or idea, if not stories in books? And please don’t tell me they’ll just reboot the previous franchise. I know we live in a fallen and corrupted timeline, but surely we can do better than that?

But I digress. Now that we have identified our desired outcome, it’s time to do the same for the activity.

Pareto Principle in its simplest form

Recently, I’ve been reading a book by Gary Keller called ‘The One Thing’. It advises that your journey to being successful at anything comprises a series of steps (the steps for fiction authors are above). To complete each stage successfully, then, you must first ask yourself:

What is the one thing I could do right now that, by doing it, all the other steps would be made easier or irrelevant?
Gary Keller, The One Thing

Contrary to what people tell you, multi-tasking is neither productive nor effective. Let’s suppose you spread your time and attention across various projects. In that case, you’ll lack the momentum and focus to complete each task effectively and on time.

However, by assessing the next step on your journey to be successful, you give that one step or ‘thing’ your complete focus.

That’s not to say the various other tasks you could do are unimportant. They still matter. But by concentrating on what action will bring better results within a shorter timeframe, you increase your chances of overall success.

The time and attention problem authors face

Being an author of any description isn’t easy. Let’s face it, the role is lonely and time-consuming, and that’s before we face endless rounds of rejection, indifference, and crappy pay. Compounding matters further are the vagaries of the publishing industry and how – published or self-published – we all need to do our own marketing if we want our work to reach an audience.

This is enough of a challenge if you do it full-time. But what if you write while holding down a day job? If you’re anything like me, you can suffer from analysis paralysis as you identify where best to spend your time. For example, everyone keeps saying you should spend time posting content on social media. But on which platform? There are so many these days. And how do you find the time to post content, let alone engage and interact with everyone else?

Plus, there’s the small matter of all those novels you want to write. Then all the short stories, which you must keep sending to magazines and editors. With edits and redrafts, this alone could take up every minute of your day.

But the chicken and egg scenario is that when you have something ready, will anyone read it? Publishers will want to see you’ve got an audience you can engage through social media through tweets, videos and blogs. Or an email list where you can update your fans directly.

And so it goes. It’s quite a task for anyone to manage successfully. Especially when you only have an hour or so free each day. Or even less once you’ve finished work, done the commute, fixed dinner, and put your boisterous child to bed.

Progress is possible. Other authors have managed it, although, to be fair, they didn’t have to contend with social media in quite the same way. What I’m thinking of trying, however, is using Pareto Principle to identify the 20 per cent of tasks that will have the most significant impact on my career.

Feel like joining me? If so, you need to ask yourself the following question…

What stage are you at?

If you’re at stage one, you must write great stories. This means studying the craft, learning from peers and established writers, knuckling down on story dynamics, and writing, drafting, and redrafting until you finally have something you feel proud of. Ignore everything else. And yes, that includes computer games and Netflix. Don’t cut down on sleep (I’ve tried this, and it’s counter-productive). But do try and stay sober. And limit social media and avoid networking events. It might sound harsh, but you need something worth sharing first.

If you are at the second or third stage (building an audience and income, respectively), this is when you look at content marketing. I plan to explore this subject more in time. Still, this is when you start spending time on social media, posting blogs, circulating newsletters and meeting your fellow authors at events.

By all means, do this anyway. But suppose you haven’t yet mastered stage one. And you only have one free hour a day and no story to share. In that case, you won’t succeed at building an audience or generating any kind of income from your writing. So you’ll still only have one hour (or less) to write each day until you sort stage one out.

Can Pareto Principle help authors: a case study

So, how does this work in practice? As far as myself is concerned, I want to share my progress on social media. And yes, I am that author with around one hour spare a day. As a result, this subject will likely form the basis of a series of blogs as I tell you how focusing on stage one is working out.

Progress is slow, so it’s impossible (at least at this stage) to try my hand at everything I’d like to. This is why Pareto Principle is so attractive to me. I’ve spent over a decade spreading myself too thinly, and unsurprisingly, it hasn’t got me far. I want to choose one main thing – or activity – to make all the other steps easier. But which stage am I at to determine the activity?

To be honest, reaching stage three isn’t one I expect to achieve. Of course, I’d love it to happen; who wouldn’t? But making a sustainable income from writing is hard even for established authors. Writing great stories to share with people who want to read them will be enough of an achievement. Therefore, the priority at this stage is putting great stories out there. But there are none at the time of writing, so this is an essential first step to achieve.

However, there’s a twist in the tail. Reducing matters to ‘one thing’ means another more critical step (stage zero?) has presented itself. Namely, protecting and increasing the amount of time available to write. Because if you can stop all those distractions and demands on your time, you will write more quality work faster.

Naturally, creating more time isn’t easy. Still, I have a plan scribbled down on the back of a cigarette packet to try and sort it out. So, if I’m even quieter than usual, please trust that I’m trying to get this rate-determining step sorted out. Until next time…

Are you an author looking for writing and marketing advice? Or interested in reading more about my hapless attempts to get published? Either way, you can read more on both these subjects on my blog page here. And please feel free to leave a comment and let me know where I’m going wrong (or right). Cheers.

How Long to Transform Into an Expert Writer?

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 imagine, there are many variables, not least your genetic predisposition and the type of tuition you receive. Are you engaged in education? And what was your level of skill to start with? Bearing this 10k figure in mind, then, it got me thinking. How long to transform into an expert writer? What would that figure look like in real terms? And would that help us all better gauge our own process? It sounds achievable, but how long does it take to become an expert writer? And what would ten thousand hours look like if you started from scratch?

The time it takes in theory

So, let’s break it down. Let’s say you have supernatural powers and never need to sleep like Dracula or Bradley Cooper’s character from the film ‘Limitless’. On that basis, you would write for four hundred and sixteen days before your fiction was of a professional standard. Ultimately, that’s just over a year, which sounds pretty good. But, of course, everyone needs to sleep. And some more than others (cough, cough), so let’s switch the scenario up.

Let’s take into account the fact that you need to sleep, eat, and stay healthy. Actually, let’s assume you treat writing like a full-time job. So that’s typing for eight hours a day, five days a week, breaking for half an hour at lunch. In total, a forty-hour week. Naturally, this is all highly unlikely as most of us need to work for a living at our day jobs. But still, at this estimate, you’d need to write for two hundred and fifty weeks, or the best part of five years, to reach the level of an expert from a standing start.

That time in reality

OK, so we’ve had some fun. But sadly, most of us aren’t paid a stipend or remittance by a wealthy benefactor. Our days are spent working. The exact number of hours will look different for everyone, but let’s assume you work full-time. Given that you must commute, eat, sleep, wash, and socialise too, how many hours does that leave for writing?

Ten hours a week for writing means two hours each weekday. You can fit this in before work or after. Or do both, using a bit of your lunch break. Either way, ten hours a week, consistently, is a realistic target. Weekends in this scenario are kept free because you need to rest, for goodness’ sake. Some people work all Saturday or Sunday, which is fine, but I’ll include that in the following example.

At a consistent ten hours a week, you’ll turn from a novice to an expert in one thousand weeks. Which is about nineteen years. Yep, you read that right. Nineteen years, give or take. OK, that sounds way too long. So let’s speed that up to twenty hours a week of writing. In that case, we reach expert level in nine and a half years.

But hold up a minute. Twenty hours a week – when you work full time – is quite a challenge. It means two hours each weekday without fail, then ten hours split over the weekend. Week in, week out. Good luck if you have children or a lengthy commute (or both).

How long to transform into an expert writer: caveats

Right now, I manage between twelve to fifteen hours a week. But it hasn’t always been like this. There have been times in my life – when I had a neurological illness, for example – when I was writing for about thirty hours a week. Not very well, granted, but I had huge blocks of time. Conversely, there have been other busier times, such as when I worked in London and was lucky to write for more than five hours every seven days.

On average, I reckon I’ve spent twelve hours a week writing because that factors in time spent on holiday or periods when I’ve been unfocused. And so that puts me at around sixteen years to reach an expert level from a standing start.

Was it a standing start, though, given my writing level as a film graduate? In retrospect, yes, it was. Most of us can write as a given, but sitting down and constructing fiction is another thing entirely. If it was simple, anyone could do it. Ninety-nine per cent of submitted stories wouldn’t be rejected. And if it was easy, it wouldn’t need so many fricking drafts. The bottom line is that story-telling through prose is a craft, like anything else. Unfortunately, we don’t learn it at school, meaning it’s roughly ten thousand hours from the first words we write.

As alluded to earlier, however, it’s not always ten thousand hours. If you’re humble and open-minded, you’ll recognise that you need to learn from a tutor or mentor. You’ll read noted texts on the discipline, and you won’t feel satisfied with just one. You’ll read widely and not let constructive feedback or rejection throw you off. Guess who didn’t do any of that to start with?

Do all these things; perhaps you’ll only need eight or nine thousand hours. Ignore this advice; you may risk lengthening the number to eleven or twelve. Given your average weekly number of hours, this could extend the time it takes massively.

In summary

I wish I’d taken the time to work this all out before I started. At least then, I could have better set my expectations and avoided foolhardy heartache and disappointment. But given my average is roughly twelve hours a week, where am I now? Haha, well, by my own rough estimates, I’m closing in on the ten-thousand-hour mark as you read this.

Of course, I may need twelve thousand hours. Given my stubborn pig-headedness at the start of this whole process, it may well be twenty thousand. Either way, this exercise should serve as a helpful guide. And ultimately, what is mastery anyway? We always keep learning. It could be writing, golf, or basket weaving. No matter your passion, I hope you feel better if it takes you longer than expected to reach your desired level. You’ll get there if you’re consistent and make it your sole focus.

Think I’m wrong? Or are you one of those outliers that master things pretty quickly? Either way, let me know in the comments section. Or you check out all the other places on this website where I talk about writing, tech, and science fiction. Although (disclaimer), I may well be wrong there too.

AI Fiction and the New Dawn for Writers

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 Bard (and many more). As a writer, you only have to use such apps for a short time to fear they could soon spell the end of employment for anyone trying to create ‘artistically’. Now, writing for a living has always been challenging, so it’s easy to see why writers aren’t too pleased with this unwanted innovation. But I’m going to explain why there’s no need to worry about AI fiction. At least not yet.

How AI writing works

For the past couple of years, copywriters have posted anxious threads. Be it on Twitter and LinkedIn or Reddit. The gist has centred on fears that AI could soon put them out of work. I know because I was one of them. First, there was GPT-2 and then GPT-3. Now, I gather GPT-4 is on the way. These Large Language Models (or LLMs for short) process vast volumes of text data and assign meaning models to what they find. What this means for you as a user is that if you get skilled at writing command prompts, the AI delivers content that’s 100% original. And, for the most part, grammatically on-point.

How could this be used? Let’s say you’re a salesman rummaging through your CRM database. Writing has never been your strong point. Instead of writing a mail yourself, you could ask Chat-GPT to pen a cold email to a potential client. Or perhaps you’re a busy entrepreneur. Chat-GPT could produce various sales headlines for your new product, so long as content exists about your product on the web. You’re then free to develop the headlines you like.

But for AI fiction, you can also instruct the AI to write a story on any subject you want. About a ouija board, for example. Then ask it to write in a particular writer’s style like Charles Dickens or Sylvia Plath. From my experience, it struggles with such tasks, especially characters and speech. That said, it does an impressive job of blocking out a narrative.

Able to produce such content at the drop of a hat, it’s easy to see why the application is causing such excitement. And especially with marketing managers and newsdesks under pressure to pump out content in record time.

AI fiction and the future

Does this mean that websites will soon fill with AI-generated content? We’re already seeing CNET Money explore this approach. Over 75 of their CNET Money articles are AI-assisted, with a human editor checking everything before they hit publish. CNET claim the approach is helping them get all angles of a story covered. Then a human writer can delve deeper on any particular angle. We’ll see.

But what about AI fiction and books? How long before there’s an AI-generated novel? AI-generated short stories already exist. How will the surge in this content change the landscape for writers?

Like most writers, my reaction to all this talk has been fear and trepidation. After all, no one wants to lose their livelihood to a machine. But is all this foreboding justified? With the benefit of hindsight, humans panic whenever we see machines stepping on our turf. It may be in our nature. But let’s flip it around a minute.

Machines are used and trusted in many other industries. And yet humans still widely operate in such areas all the time.

Machines at work around us

After all, the digger’s arrival didn’t put construction workers out of work. Instead, they moved on to more complex roles like pointing, tiling, or scaffolding. Also, it meant their employers could tackle much larger jobs. Often in a much shorter timeframe.

The analogy holds in other industries. Take web development, for example. Now, I’m no great coder, far from it. But I remember coding a website for a traditional artist in the mid-noughties made entirely from CSS and HTML. It took me months to write all the various lines. Then liaise with an FTP server and re-point the DNS. If the artist wanted anything changing, more often than not, it was a real headache.

Then came editors such as Squarespace and WordPress. While not AI, they still came with sophisticated and pre-built themes. And these enabled developers to construct a website within an hour or two. I remember people panicking and fearing this innovation would put web designers and developers out of business.

But this hasn’t happened at all. Instead, it’s enabled the good ones to serve more customers and build more complex websites and applications. Platforms like Squarespace and WordPress have accelerated web development and made it more accessible for people and businesses.

Trust me. No web developer worth his salt wants to go back to the old days when websites had to be hand-stitched together a site by hand. It may be a right of passage for their development, but developers are free to drop into the code when needed. High-level concept creation takes up most of their time. And they can do much more in a shorter space of time. As a result, their role is more varied and less laborious.

Nor can I imagine any product designer wanting to live without computer-assisted design. CAD allows them to produce complex product designs in less than half the time. And those doctors taking advantage of AI diagnostic tools know it helps them do their vital job much faster, to a greater degree of accuracy.

So, bearing all this in mind, it’s possible to look at AI writing tools, and AI fiction, more positively. Which is helpful, at least for me, because, let’s face it. AI isn’t going away anytime soon.

The unique human value

I could write the most well-researched piece of prose that is grammatically correct. But, unless this writing resonates with the human reading it, it won’t connect. Pure and simple. Writing has to tap into the human experience in a unique and novel way.

So, AI fiction may be able to create a piece of text that tells a story, but will it confound expectations? Creative writing is only effective and enriching when it resonates with the reader. Such magic only occurs when the writing reflects a human experience in a unique and novel way.

And let’s think about characters for a minute. Most experts agree that it’s the creation of believable and organic characters that help great stories stand out. Who better to write about these human characters than a human themselves? Only a human can write in a way that amuses or unnerves, haunting the reader for days after they finish.

I’m sure AI fiction will get to this stage eventually. However, such tools by this point will be so sophisticated they will doubtless pass for the real thing: a human mind. Regulations will likely control AI to specific functions. Or, at least, they will do if anyone has any sense.

In the meantime, ask yourself. Who would want to buy and read writing created by artificial intelligence? Until we suspect AI of being able to interpret the world in the way we can? So that includes emotions and depth and cognitive dissonance, and everything else. If that kind of AI is available, there would be no point. Fiction tells the truth from a human perspective. Then codifies that truth into an entertaining story that we use to help us escape.

I can’t imagine ever wanting to know what an AI imagines about the world around me because it’s artificial and not like me. I might once, as a curiosity, but I wouldn’t read too many more. Humans buy from humans. Humans connect with art that reflects the human condition. Or, art made by other humans.

Of course, this simple fact doesn’t mean people won’t try and exploit AI wherever they can. Where cookie-cutter content won’t harm SEO and brand perception, AI content will replace human input. So, regarding product descriptions on a website, you can already see how AI could help save time and effort. All that’s left is for a copywriter to amend here and there. As a copywriter myself, a part of me thinks ‘Good.’ I don’t want to have to write repetitive, mind-numbing sales descriptions of plumbing valves. Or light switches or anything else you can imagine. Any more than a web developer wants to hand-stitch the lines of code needed for a website redesign.

So, chill out…

Human authenticity will be a key selling point in books, fiction, content, art, and corporate brand messaging. In fact, it already is. For example, Google uses human experience and insight as one of the principle values to rank its search pages. So human-generated content already has a high value. Could it be that now, people are finally willing to pay for it?

Let’s not get carried away. However, until the boffins create Megamind or Skylab, human writers have an exciting future. We’ve just got to embrace the technology like doctors, CAD designers, and web developers before us. Let’s make Chat GPT and Bard our writing assistants to help us handle the rough drafts and story outlines. Or come up with various alternatives to the plot line we’re building. Then develop the best, and use our human insights and skills to deliver better stories faster.

Did you enjoy this article? You can read more posts like it on my main blog page. Or do you have something to add? Please let me know in the comments section. It would be great to get your take.

Writing Update: When Is the Novel Finished?

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 else?

Development hell

Erm, yes and no. The general consensus is that a book is only complete when the fully-proofed version hits the printers. So, that’s long after it’s been seen by an agent. Or worked on by an editor.

In other words, a novel is only finished when it can’t be tinkered with any more.

As you can imagine, such a process can feel glacially slow and a bit frustrating. Especially if you take the entire submission process into account. Overall, I’d say this novel is around eighty per cent complete. To be fair, the story only existed inside my head a year ago, so – all things considered – I’m feeling pleased with where it’s at.

Now the third draft is in the bag, I’ll leave it alone for 4-6 weeks. Such a break helps you return to the text fresh. Or, as James Scott Bell explains, ‘it allows you to read the novel as if for the first time.’

Trust the process

When I return, it should be easier to spot any errors or snags in terms of pacing. Then, so long as my son doesn’t keep me awake all night, I can attempt the final draft with some fire in my belly.

That gives me a polished version to test on beta readers. Once they respond with feedback, I’ll make the necessary tweaks and send the manuscript to agents. Should that whole process be successful, the text will doubtlessly change further as editors have their say.

That process changes if I want to self-publish, however. In that case, a line editor checks the manuscript. Then a professional formatter looks over it before I press the button that says ‘Print’.

So many processes; it’s easy to see how any one of these things could end up taking too much time.

On the bright side, one of my biggest problems has always been draft control. Getting more disciplined on that front recently should see me get more done in future.

The inside track

As for details on the book, I’ll just say this. It’s a near-future SF tale about a fallen football club in the north Midlands. A tech conglomerate takes it over, with designs on restoring the club to its former glory. But what lengths will they go to to ensure success?

The book is part one of a trilogy, and the answer to that last question is what the sequence looks to explore. I never intended it to be such an epic, but the tale has written itself in many ways. I’ll post a conceptual jacket blurb when I’ve done the fourth draft. In the meantime, there’s still the question of what publishing strategy to take. More news as I get it.

Create a Blog: Five Reasons Why for Authors

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 newsletter via email is the best way of speaking directly with your audience, which makes sense. But how do you get readers to sign up for that newsletter in the first place? The answer, my brothers and sisters, is that authors should create a blog alongside their social media efforts.

Yeah, believe me. I’ve long been sceptical myself. But over the years, my mind has slowly warmed to the idea. And so, here are five of the best reasons why authors and creators should get back on the ol’ blogging horse. At least in my opinion.

Improve content lifespan and visibility

‘But I already talk to my readers,’ some authors say. ‘It’s called micro-blogging through Twitter, Granddad. Oh, and the nineties are on the phone, by the way. And they want their dial-up modem back!’

Look, don’t get me wrong. Twitter is an excellent networking tool trusted by millions of journalists, entrepreneurs, and professionals. Musk wouldn’t have spent $44 billion on it if it wasn’t. Also, in terms of sharing knowledge, Twitter is second to none.

There are drawbacks, however. I won’t mention them all here because they’re well-documented. But for the purposes of the point I’m making, the main issue is everything you say is soon lost amidst the noise and chatter. And this has never been as true since ‘The Takeover’.

For most people, the visibility of their tweets has reduced to between five and ten per cent of their total follower count. Some people have wondered if this lack of reach and visibility is a ploy to get us to sign up for Twitter Blue? Perhaps. Between you and me, I’m not convinced that will work, but we’ll see.

In either case, Twitter requires you to maintain a constant presence. Much more so than with other platforms like LinkedIn or a blog. And that’s tiring. After all, we’re all busy people, and sometimes we want to disengage from Twitter to preserve our sanity. Also, tweeting intelligibly takes time. As does scrolling to read and engage with all the various comments.

Of course, you don’t always want to feed into a long-form post, either. But when you create a blog, anything you post is much more evergreen and visible than anything you leave on Twitter. Readers can react to your post days or weeks after you make it, but your tweet will rarely stay visible on Twitter for an hour or more.

So, keep up a social media presence by all means. As I say, it’s a great way to learn and interact with friends. But don’t limit it to all you are. Why not have your own little piece of the internet, where people can always reach you, regardless of any chaos elsewhere? At the very least, your blog is a fail-safe fall-back should your platform of choice collapse. Or, as people speculate might happen with Twitter 2.0, change beyond recognition or repair.

Extend your reach and grow your audience

So, Twitter is already helping you build an audience. Cool. But what about people who aren’t on Twitter? Those free and enlightened souls who play on other platforms? Plus, there are those folks who left during the great migration. Combined, that’s a potentially huge audience you can’t reach if you use Twitter on its own.

When you create a blog, however, anyone with a web browser can reach you. So, anyone who has your address or runs your name through a search engine. And let’s just consider the numbers for a minute. Only eight per cent of the world’s social media base use Twitter. Or, depending on who you read, between 350 and 450 million people. Billions of people have access to the internet, however, and everyone with a connection googles stuff all day long.

OK, not all those billions will google you. Or search subjects that are related to what you might rank for. But let’s remember the power of search words and SEO. With the appropriate time and effort, you can harness a large amount of engaged and loyal traffic via content marketing and effective search engine optimisation. As an author, you can develop a much more avid and loyal audience with a blog than just posting on social media.

Create a blog through WordPress — WordPress is still considered the best all-purpose platform for bloggers

Brush up on your digital marketing skills

Of course, running a blog can be tricky with all the back-end stuff you have to tinker with. Then there’s all the keyword research. Plus, it can be hard strategising and creating all the content, especially if you need practice. But trust me, all this gets much easier once you learn the correct approaches and techniques.

Additionally, those skills you employ from regularly using SEO, Google Analytics, and plug-ins are valuable. Especially in a world where – after Covid – every company wants to get online and perform (in their words) ‘a complete digital transformation’.

It’s something I’ve had to find out the hard way. It’s no good just being good at what you do. That is a given. But you also have to understand how to market and sell your work. If not, you won’t get much exposure, which means you won’t get paid. Which means more hours at the dayjob to pay the bills. And less time to create.

Artists and authors often prefer to avoid thinking about money or marketing for fear of ‘selling out’. This is laudable, and as an ardent fan of Bill Hicks in my youth, I’ve often felt the same. But the simple truth is that it’s getting increasingly hard to fund artistic endeavour. It makes you wonder what kind of world we’ll have if we don’t wise up.

Authors famously get paid close to sod all, but here’s the thing. Whatever way you choose to publish, you will only sell if you can market yourself. This applies to self-publishing, of course, but also to traditional publishing, too. Those big houses all want you to do most of the legwork. When I realised no one was coming to save me in this regard, I knew it was time to bite the bullet. But what will you do? Stay in denial and quietly hope for a miracle?

I’ve tried that myself, but banking on a miracle won’t do most of us any good. Best learn a new skill, pick up new habits, and enjoy creating something valuable that people can freely access. Which leads me nicely to the next point.

Pay it forward and offer value

This is the most critical marketing advice for any author, brand, or business. To grow a captive audience, you have to offer something helpful. Content that either educates or inspires in some way. Or, alternatively, one that entertains.

So, what does this mean for authors or artists? You will likely gain more traction if you build goodwill first and share your skills and knowledge. Try to become a source of advice. Or share how your work is going, together with what you’ve learned and the steps you might take differently next time. Oh, and do all of this consistently. Not just once or twice. Trust comes when people and search engines know you have skin in the game.

Work out who your audience is and what they want to know. Or, in brutal marketing terms, learn what their problem is. Do they want to escape? Know more about a subject? They may want to be entertained. Or perhaps they are looking to feel inspired.

Start giving this content to your audience freely. Look after your readers. Or to put it in other words, love your audience. And make sure that you’re providing a space that educates, informs, or entertains. Either through long pillar posts, updates, or interviews and podcasts, the list is endless.

When you create a blog, content satisfies your readers in a way that those snippets on social media can’t. Additionally, when you’ve provided enough of it for free and developed a real relationship with your audience, you’ll have a loyal and engaged audience who want to see or read your work.

An author's laptop — Make blogging part of your creative routine

Create a blog to build something unique

This last one gets all fuzzy and inspirational, but it’s no less important. Ultimately, if you’re an author, you love creativity and the process of building, right? So, when you build a blog, that’s precisely what you’re doing.

You’re building a space you created, designed, and edited. A digital portal into your thought process and ideas. The possibilities, therefore, are endless, and the more attention and care you pour into it, the more people will appreciate what you do.

So, don’t create a blog because you want to sell stuff. That’s a desirable byproduct, sure. But do it instead because you want to create a digital presence that reflects who you are and compliments your work. Make a site because you want to create something of value for your readers and build a place on the internet they bookmark and enjoy returning to.

We’ve had the internet for a long time now. But the best sense of excitement I get online is when I visit an author or creator who really cares about their audience experience and regularly updates their site. It could be with cryptic posts, valuable how-tos, updates or links to upcoming work. It’s like a creative scrapbook that offers a window into their world. The world needs more of it, in my opinion.

By all means, keep using social media. All the various platforms help build and maintain audience engagement in different ways. Keep networking, keep posting. But create a blog, too, and build your platform as you develop a relationship with your readers. Trust me. I might not have one myself yet, but I’ve done it many times with clients. Your newsletters and subsequent relationship with your audience will only grow as a result.

As always, let me know your thoughts below. Blogging is a big time commitment, but hopefully, you can see the advantages. See it as a way of investing in yourself and diversifying while the chaos continues to play out on Twitter.

Flash Science Fiction: The Best Sites to Read and Write For

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 to consume and create but who are genuinely hard-pressed to find the time.

That said, finding a decent vendor of stories isn’t always easy and, in some cases, can take longer than reading a story in the first place. This issue of accessibility is why I thought I’d compile a small but descriptive list detailing the best flash science fiction sites online in 2023. Of course, this list isn’t definitive (and there’s a horror one to come), so please let me know if I’ve missed any hidden gems. And feel free to copy and share.

Flash science fiction sites in 2023

Flash Fiction Online

Publishing a mix of SFF, horror, and literary fiction, Flash Fiction Online is a free online magazine that pays its authors professional rates. Each issue features three new stories from established and emerging authors, all clocking in between 500 and 1,000 words. In addition, each downloadable PDF includes a column and editorial, and you can support the e-zine through Patreon. Still, the editors have taken the generous step of making all the stories on their website available for free.

Daily Science Fiction

The original flash science fiction specialists, Daily Science Fiction has been publishing for as long as I can remember. Commendably, they also publish every day and have featured heavyweights such as Lavie Tidhar in the past. One day, the main story will be classified as high fantasy; the next, the tale will fit within SF’s many sub-genres. Given the frequency of their publications, Daily are always open to submissions, and they accept stories of between 100 and 1,500 words in length.

Tor

Tor publish high-quality SFF material in the form of novels and short stories. However, they also devote a section of their website to stories tagged as flash fiction. Together with their regular shorts, you can read them all on their site for free. At the time of writing, they don’t appear open to any submissions from readers, but that may well change in time.

365 Tomorrows

As the name suggests, 365 are hardcore and, like Daily, publish flash science fiction every day of the year. Interestingly, their required word count is tighter, running to a strict 600 words. Also, you can see the stories published in the days and weeks before. Plus, the most popular stories are available as audio with actors reading them aloud.

Flashpoint SF

This flash publication publishes new stories every fortnight, between 100 and 1,000 words. Of course, science fiction has many sub-genres, so the Flashpoint SF has classified all of its tales accordingly. They cater for all tastes, from bizarro fiction to stories about time travel. The editors also list popular stories under a sub-heading on the right, so it’s easy to keep looking around.

Lightspeed

Known for publishing award-winning short stories, Lightspeed concentrates on fantasy and science fiction. Like Tor, however, their site also has a flash section for stories under 1,500 words. And in good news for writers, Lightspeed is open to submissions, meaning they can share their stories with the magazine’s wide readership.

So there we have it. Any sites I’ve missed? If so, please shout and let me know.

The Year in Review: 2022 Wrapped

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 important to do.

This inadvertently allows you a bit of headspace, which you spurn reading one of those fluffy writer ‘year in review’ pieces to kill time. And I can’t lie; it’s only because we’re trying to avoid Christmas shopping that people like me write the bloody things. So, without further ado.

From a personal perspective

This year has tested my family and me beyond measure. Quite a few have over recent years, to be honest. Still, this year was epic, and I can’t properly go into the reasons why. These challenges will undoubtedly persist for some time, too. But, on a brighter note, owning our first home feels like the realisation of a game-changing moment we’ve both strived hard to see.

It’s a three-bedroom end-of-terrace on the outskirts of Nottingham, and we absolutely love it. There were a few surprises during renovations, but we’ve moved now and are happily settling in. After three years of living in various forms of temporary accommodation, it feels like the mother of all blessings and one we’ll never take for granted.

If you don’t already know, my day job involves writing copy for a global software company. As you can imagine, it takes up a fair amount of time and mental processing. But they’re good people and look after me well. In addition, I’m pleased to have started writing fiction for an hour or two before work each morning.

In terms of fiction

Writing daily while working and renovating a house has felt like a real challenge. But it was also immensely satisfying because I pulled it off for the most part. Output dropped off in November when we finally moved in, but that’s to be expected.

Ultimately, plenty of words have been written this year with which I’ve been able to stick together and create a new book. And a long one, too, which is surprising because it was only meant to be a short story. (Then a novella, then a short novel. Now it’s book one of a trilogy. Oh dear, what have I started?)

Anyway, the first third has been beta-read, and the rest should be finished before the new year starts. One last edit is pencilled in for March, and should that all go to plan, I’ll have completed a finished novel from scratch within twelve months. Which is three times faster than a book typically takes me.

There’ll be another post about this mystery book project in due course. In the meantime, the only teaser I’ll give is that it blends UK crime noir with a heavy dose of sport and science fiction (!).

As for other stuff, I’ve also been able to produce a couple of shorts. One is a ghost tale, and the other is more like my usual science fiction. So, that’s around 150,000 words of finished work to send out. Of course, none of that may land on its intended target. But regarding fresh material, this is a big improvement over any year before.

The big wide picture

It’s good to have started a blog again. As pointed out in my first post, it’s a case of trying to learn from the mistakes of the last two and build something of interest for people who like to read my kind of work. I’m still figuring out how to do that, but hopefully, this site will become a place that fellow readers and writers will find helpful in one way or another.

In other news, er, that’s it. We’ve bought a house, and I’ve written a decent amount of fiction. Overall, it feels like a solid year to look back on.

Not many people know about all the health dramas that floored me between 2013-2017. Then the two years of rehab, followed by the turmoil of the last three. Ultimately, there’s no way of knowing if the years ahead will be any less seismic. But I hope things settle down.

It sounds cliche, but I can only be the best version of myself. At least, that way, I’ll stand the best chance of succeeding, whatever happens. But in terms of writing aims for 2023, well…I sincerely hope there is a publication somewhere to report.

So until the next year in review, take care and shalom.

Is Flash Fiction the Future?

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 fiction the best way for authors to make an impression online?

The engagement problem

Your success depends on all sorts of things, including the site’s overall load speed, content, and general layout and design. Optimising any one of these areas is a task in itself (and enough to fill a whole book on its own).

Such a small window of opportunity means we writers should think hard about how to make an impact online. Especially when there’s a wealth of apps and feeds competing for our reader’s interest and offering them all sorts of click-bait and cheap dopamine for their time.

In 2018, Will Self memorably declared that the novel is doomed to become a ‘quaint cultural activity, much like easel painting’. It made me laugh at the time, and in my bleaker moments, it’s hard to disagree. These days, any ‘water cooler’ moments in the office stem from content generated on video streaming services and social media platforms like YouTube Shorts and TikTok.

Stories and the written word

But there’s also a more optimistic view. Which is that we humans will always want stories. That’s an undeniable truth, and novels are still considered to be the best way to tell a full story from start to finish. After all, how often have you heard people say that the film didn’t live up to the book? Well, it’s true. It never does, and there’s a good reason for that.

The power of the written word occupies our imaginations in a vivid way that, so far, technology hasn’t been able to match.

Done well, prose embeds emotions and ideas alongside an experience or point of view. Of course, these could be explicit or implied. Still, either way, when a writer describes events through writing, a reader sees the intimate details that illustrate a character’s perspective. Then, combined with references to emotional codas, they can taste the experience and resonate with what it means.

Engagement with fiction online

Now, I say all this, but reading fiction online feels different. Like it’s accompanied by much more background noise. Unless it’s presented within an app like the Kindle, a laptop or phone screen doesn’t lend itself well to dense paragraphs of text.

As a result, copywriters often write websites in broken sentences and short paragraphs, while email copy is deliberately made to be childlike and easy to understand. It sounds harsh, but the data proves it. Most readers will switch to something else if the text requires too much effort.

My own hunch is that it’s partly to do with context. We make time to read a book. Carve out a portion of the day where we’re alone with the words. Or at least put on our headphones or draw the curtains while we give the text our full attention. But when we’re on our phones or laptops, we’re so used to surfing and multi-tasking that we engage wholly different areas of our brains.

As I say, this is only a hunch.

Flash fiction is perfect online

But if reading short fiction on the phone seems unrealistic, flash fiction feels just about right. I love refreshing the pages of Daily Science Fiction each day, for example. Or reading M. John Harrison’s blog roll whenever it’s updated. My only wish is that there was more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never lose my love of novels. Or longer form ‘short’ stories. But as a writer and reader, flash fiction feels like its the perfect type of story to be consumed online.

This then begs the question: is flash the future of online fiction? Some final frontier, at least with regards to stories? Or am I wrong? And have you written any? Where would you read or publish it if you did? Answers below the end of this sentence please.

My New Fiction Blog

It’s been a mad few years. But when I think about it, my life has seemed a bit odd for well 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 (which has meant my fiction blog has suffered).

Lost and found

So much has happened, from the onset of chronic pain to near-death experiences to transcendent spiritual journeys and then marriage – two weeks before lockdown. Oh, and then fatherhood, sneaking in at the end there and changing everything further still.

But these are only the headlines.

Of course, the last few years have been tough for everyone. But when I look back to 2012/13, only a few things remain the same. Namely, I still write science fiction (and I’m still largely unpublished). Oh, and there’s the whole heavy-taste-in-music thing. But otherwise, nothing about my life looks the same.

Just recently, my wife and I moved into our first home, and maybe that event – along with the fact I now have a desk for the first time in ten years – has spurred me into kick-starting a new blog.

Let’s hope that it’s a case of third-time lucky.

Fail harder

My first fiction blog started twelve years ago and was a largely hit-or-miss affair. Mainly because I had no idea what to do with it. Undisciplined and lazy, the whole thing crashed into a ditch around the time my health troubles started in 2013. But you know what they say. No failed experience is wasted.

The second fiction blog started when I was in the middle of surgical treatment for a CSF leak and continued for a good few years after that. Then my condition miraculously improved, and my body began the long road back to rehabilitation. Since then, life has been one long headrush of events as I’ve scrambled to take care of my new family during a pandemic.

Understandably, spare time since then has been at a premium. So if I have found any, it’s been used to write fiction. Unfortunately, this has meant the second blog has also fallen by the wayside. But since I recently found a way to free up a few more hours, now feels like a good time to give a proper WordPress site a try.

The magic number

So, here we are. After fifteen years of writing but with only one story published, I have no audience. Oh well. That just makes this project more of a challenge.

As for me, my name’s Will, and I write a mixture of horror, slipstream, and science fiction. For the time being, this URL is where you can read about my work and what I find inspiring. I also hope to post some exclusive excerpts and the odd piece of fiction now and then. At some point, I’ll also share my thoughts on marketing myself as a writer with no audience (which may help others in the same boat).

Combined, this output should encourage some of you to return. Otherwise, I’ll abandon blogging and communicate solely through smoke signals and hieroglyphs. Which – given all the noise surrounding social media recently – sounds more appealing by the minute.