Your Imagination: Use Your Most Powerful (& Dangerous) Writing Tool

How’s your imagination? Everyone is creative and imaginative. However, writers tend to be more imaginative than most. As we discussed in this article on creative strategy, anxiety is a normal part of the creative process. Unfortunately, your imaginative faculties may make your anxiety worse: Here’s the thing about sudden unexplained anxiety: we tend to ascribe reasons to it to justify … Read more

Writing Tip For Motivation Monday: Show Up And Keep Showing Up

Writing Tip For Motivation Monday: Show Up And Keep Showing Up

I love this writing tip, “80 percent of success is showing up.” There’s some controversy about this quote: who said it first, and which variant was used first, whether it was said about “life”, or about “success.”’ Whatever—it’s a brilliant writing tip. A fundament writing tip: show up The quote’s often attributed to Woody Allen, who reports he did say, … Read more

Can You Make Money Writing On Medium? (Updated 2023)

Medium: social media

Over the past year, I’ve received questions about the online publishing platform Medium; whether it’s a useful freelance writing venue. It pays writers, who get paid according to how much attention their content receives. Increased reading time on an article increases the writer’s income. Medium describes itself as an “online publishing platform.” Evan Williams, formerly co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, … Read more

Improve Your Imagination: Anthony Trollope’s Secret

Writers often complain to me that they have no imagination. (Of course you do!) I love this quote from famous novelist Anthony Trollope on developing your imagination so that you can create fictional characters. How to develop your imagination Sir Henry Brackenbury recounted a conversation he had with Trollope in his book, Some Memories of My Spare Time: I said … Read more

Journaling Is For Everyone: 3 Tips To Create More And Sell More

Want to write more and sell more of your writing? Try journaling. Sadly, when I suggest journaling to some writers, they tell me that they don’t have time. “Journaling? I don’t have time to journal…” Somerset Maugham is one of my favorite authors. He kept writing journals all his life. (If you get a chance, read his book, A Writer’s … Read more