Kent Sanders We all know that reading is a vital part of the creative process. You need to have other inputs such as listening to great talks, watching videos and movies, seeing plays, and other ways to experience great art and content. But above all, you must read. Here is a simple method for reading more: take … Read more
If you spend enough time with fiction authors, you will eventually hear two terms: pantsers and plotters. Pantsers prefer to write by the “seat of their pants.” They develop a great opening and then discover the story as they write. Pantsers get bored if they know where the whole story is going ahead of time. … Read more
After two years of leading the Daily Writer Club, as well as having thousands of conversations with authors in recent years, I can tell you with 100% certainty that one of the biggest pain points for writers is book marketing. We love to create. We love to talk to other writers. We might even enjoy … Read more
If you’ve ever found yourself fresh out of ideas, you can quickly get more by using an exercise called “Idea Mating.” Let’s say you’re writing an article on how to be a better parent. First, make a column with ten qualities or traits of your ideal reader. In this case, it’s a parent. You might … Read more
In a scene from the 1984 Ghostbusters movie, the three Ghostbusters are trying to capture a ghost flying around a hotel ballroom. Their proton packs emit powerful energy streams that can catch the ghost and pull it down to a small box where it will stay trapped. However, Egon Spengler, played by Harold Ramis, warns … Read more
For well over two thousand years, people have searched for the Fountain of Youth, a magical spring that would reverse the aging of anyone who drank from it or bathed in it. The earliest appearance of this legend is from the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century B.C. Numerous other writers mentioned the … Read more
The creative life is not just about accumulating good things. It’s also about knowing when to let them go. Consider the books on your shelf. Some of them were relevant to your life a decade or two ago, but you have outgrown them. Every time you see them, you feel guilty. But you can’t bring yourself … Read more
Humans are emotional creatures. We like to believe we do things based on reason and logic. Yet if you stop and examine your actions, you’ll see they are mostly driven by emotions. It’s especially true when it comes to bad behavior. Eating unhealthy food, procrastinating when you know you should be working, avoiding hard conversations, … Read more
In the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, we meet Dorothy, a teenage girl who dreams of a life “somewhere over the rainbow.” She’s stuck in a drab, sepia-toned farm in Kansas and wants to run away for a more exciting life. But when she is swept away to Oz on a grand adventure, … Read more
No matter what type of books or content you write, you are a storyteller. Fiction, memoir, business books, blog posts, podcasts, children’s books, you name it… they all require great storytelling. I’m excited today to bring you this conversation with Troy Lambert, the Education Lead of Plottr, which is software to improve your storytelling. I … Read more