Anxiety . . . What is it Good For? An Excerpt from Pitch Like Hollywood

/
Anxiety . . . What is it Good For? An Excerpt from Pitch Like Hollywood

I had the privilege of reviewing an advance copy of Pitch Like Hollywood: What You Can Learn from the High-Stakes Film Industry by Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis. The following is an excerpt from (pp. 109-115, McGraw Hill, February 2022).

The reason anxiety feels so horrible when you’re pitching is simple: You haven’t read the manual. You’re not using it the way it’s evolved since a saber-toothed tiger first chased Homo erectus.

Read More

Work-Life Balance Tips to Recharge Your Creative Juices

/
Work-Life Balance Tips to Recharge Your Creative Juices

*Guest post by Sophia Young.

Trying to separate work and life can be particularly challenging for writers. You want to go to work to practice your craft, and then return home to practice some more. Given the constant nature of the creative process, the stress that comes with it may bleed into your daily life. It can be hard to disentangle the emotions and exhaustion associated with creating and building new worlds from your everyday life with family and friends.

Read More

Story Planning: Three Ways to Get Started

/
Story Planning: Three Ways to Get Started

A few years ago I wrote a series of 12 blog posts about story planning. They were quite detailed and seemed to get a lot of views on Pinterest, so I ended up combining them into what I called “The Ultimate Guide to Planning a Novel.” I had written the posts over 12 days with each day focusing on a different step in the story planning process.

These days, I tend to want to plan my novels a little quicker than 12 days, so I thought I’d write a follow-up post and share some of the strategies I use now.

Read More

How I Published Ten Books in One Year

/
How I Published Ten Books in One Year

About two years ago, I was chatting with Becca Syme, creator of the Better Faster Academy while taking the course “Write Better Faster.” The course—which I highly recommend along with Becca’s “Dear Writer” books and super helpful YouTube videos—uses CliftonStrengths to determine what will work best for writers based on their individual strengths.

When I had my one-on-one session with Becca, I remember saying, “I have no desire to write a book a month. That’s just not me.” Well, two years later, I’ve continued learning about my CliftonStrengths report and it turns out, it is me!

Read More

Why I Chose to Self-Publish My Memoir and Forgo the Traditional Route

/
Why I Chose to Self-Publish My Memoir and Forgo the Traditional Route

* The following is a guest post by Linda Jämsén

When I first began writing my newly released book, Odyssey of Love: A Memoir of Seeking and Finding, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to see the light of day. My father had recently died, and writing was solely a therapeutic refuge in which I would escape into the manuscript. Did I really want to share parts of my personal life, including the demise of a long-term relationship, psychic sessions, and my romantic encounters overseas?

Read More

Book Review: Odyssey of Love by Linda Jämsén

/
Book Review: Odyssey of Love by Linda Jämsén

When Linda doesn’t receive the marriage proposal she had long been expecting from her boyfriend on her 41st birthday, she reluctantly visits a psychic, Angelica, who predicts that Linda will soon leave him for a romantic and music-filled Odyssey in Europe. There, a “Russian icon” will lead to her future husband, a “tall man with glasses.”

Read More

Book Review: Save the Cat! Writes for TV

/
Book Review: Save the Cat! Writes for TV

First, what is Save the Cat!®?

Save the Cat! provides writers the resources they need to develop their screenplays and novels based on a series of best-selling books, primarily written by Blake Snyder (1957- 2009). Blake’s method is based on 10 distinctive genres and his 15 story beats (the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet). Our books, workshops, story structure software, apps, and story coaching teach you everything you need to unlock the fundamentals and mechanics of plot and character transformation.

Read More