Close your eyes and imagine you’re walking through the streets on a foggy day. The fog is so thick that you can’t see anything around you—just your feet on the pavement and the dull gray tint to the haze.
You can hear your feet walking along, and you detect distant voices. Are they calling out to you?
You can milk the extraordinary out of the ordinary— the details of everyday life are a gold mine waiting to be harvested for your writing. All you need to do is pay attention and put your life under a microscope and express it.
Here are just a few ways to get started.
I just released my very first book, called Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage, and the whole experience has been a huge learning curve for me. Writing the book was of course difficult in itself, but one of the most shocking parts of the process for me has been how much writing there still is to be done, even after the book is finished.
There are guest posts and articles and content for the book’s website and content for my own website — all of which (honestly) seem to be saying the same thing.
Sometimes it feels like the subject is getting tired, and my writing is falling flat.
Sometimes I feel more “blocked” now than I did when I was writing the manuscript.
You’re a writer, and you’re also a person who has some family, friends and acquaintances, which means you’ll eventually have to reconcile a basic conflict: Writing about the people you know without ticking them off.
Writing about people you know can get uncomfortable quickly. A fiction writer might say, “I hope my boss doesn’t realize I made him the ruler of the underworld in this story, or I might be looking for a new job soon.” Or “When this is published,” a nonfiction writer might worry, “some of these people might never talk to me again.”
Just changing names or a few details here and there isn’t enough to successfully address these issues. (Even writing only positive things doesn’t always work!) Here are five less-conventional ways to get what you want on the page without getting disowned by your family, dumped by your friends, and most importantly, losing the essence of what you’re trying to say.
Creating a novel series—such as the Harry Potter, Dune, The Wheel of Time, or even Border Trilogy series—is one of the best ways to build continuous momentum with your book marketing efforts. It’s also a unique experience and can open up life opportunities you may never have had otherwise.
However, creating a novel series can also take years if not decades of effort. How do you even get started?
The following are my top five tips for creating a must-read fiction series.
