Blogging about my books, the writing process, mindset, and anything else I feel like sharing.
When people think of poems, they often go straight to love poems, but there are many different forms of poetry. You could say there’s something for everyone! I thought it would be fun to share the beginning of my rhyming picture book designed to teach kids the value of budgeting and taking good care of their money. It will also be fun to look back on this post and see how much my illustrations have changed!
Enjoy!
Read MoreMany people dream of writing and publishing a book ‘someday’, but statistics show only about 2% of those people actually realize their dream. I’m going to share a secret weapon with you that’s helped me with my books, and I know it will help you too!
It’s very fitting that I’m writing this post on March 8, 2019, International Women’s Day. It’s the final day of the Women In Publishing Summit, hosted by one of my favourite women in publishing, Alexa Bigwarfe.
Two years ago, I met Alexa after I won a spot in her group coaching program for writers as part of an online summit I was speaking at. Talk about divine intervention—I didn’t even know there were prizes for speakers or that one of them was for writers. I had just published my first book and had started working on my first novel, so I was super excited to meet Alexa and learn about her program.
Read MoreK. Kris Loomis was one of the first authors I virtually met in a Facebook group when I was just getting started on my self-publishing journey. I read How to Sneak More Yoga Into Your Life some of her short story collections and instantly fell in love with her writing style and sense of humour.
I’ve enjoyed watching Kris’s progress as a self-published author since meeting her in 2016. In the past year alone, Kris wrote and publish two novels and the non-fiction book, Surviving Revision. Kris’s guest posts are some of the most popular on my site, so I knew I had to interview her and share her tips!
Read MoreIs your writing hobby actually a business? And does it really matter? Absolutely! Especially if you want to save a bit of tax while you’re getting your business up and running.
So you’ve been earning a bit here and there with your self-published books or maybe bloggers have been paying you to write posts for them, but when you look at the money you’ve spent to publish those books or the tools you’ve paid for to run your freelance writing business, you realize you haven’t broken even, so you decide not to include your writing “business” on your taxes.
Read MoreJanuary is popular time to reflect on the past year and look at setting new year goals. I don’t really like resolutions, but I do like setting goals and planning how I’m going to achieve them. Remember when I wrote about September being the new January? Well, now that it’s January, I find myself re-evaluating my goals for the new year.
In 2018, I remember saying I wanted to publish four or five books. I published one. In September, I set an income goal of $3,000/month for myself. The closest I got to that in the last quarter of 2018 was $1,100/month.
Content marketing is one of the best ways to show off your expertise, grab the attention of potential clients, and grow your business. It’s all about using information to sell your products and services rather than blatant self-promotion that nobody really wants to hear anyway.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, the amount of traffic to your website is directly related to the amount you publish on your site, with sites publishing four times per week experiencing three and a half times more traffic than sites publishing zero to four times per month.
Read MoreWoohoo! It’s the final day in 12 Days of Planning a Novel. I’ve had a lot of fun writing this series and I’m a little sad it’s coming to an end, but I hope it’s helped you create an amazing novel outline that will help you breeze through writing your novel.
Today I want to talk a bit more about staying organized while still having the flexibility to make changes in your novel outline without causing yourself a lot of extra work. My last post focused on how to do this using sticky notes or recipe cards. This post is for those of you that prefer to use as little paper as possible.
Read MoreJust two days left to go in 12 Days of Planning a Novel. If you’re like me, you probably have tons of notes for your outline but you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. As you’ve been working through this series, you’ve made a lot of additions and maybe some changes. Your tidy notes now have arrows and scribbles all over the place.
Don’t worry, these last two posts are going to show you how to organize your outline while maintaining the flexibility that’s often required when writing a novel. Part 1 will focus on the physical methods you can use to do this and in the next post, Part 2, I will discuss some digital ways to do this.
Read MoreHi, I'm Michelle! Writing is a passion of mine. I love to entertain and educate through my writing. I started out writing about business and money and have moved on to thrillers and picture books.
Spending time with family is what I'm all about. Life's too short!
I have two amazing sons who love Lego and ninjas...and TV (sigh)!! We read a ton of storybooks to make up for the TV thing. One of the best ways to explain things is through stories of course.
If it was up to me, I'd have chips and dip for dinner every night with a super dark chocolate bar to round out the meal...and maybe an apple! It's a good thing I've got kids and a husband. They keep me responsible (and healthy).
