I asked Ted Dekker how long it takes for an author to find their voice.
“It takes four to five novels,” he said. So if the average novel is about 80,000 words, then you have to write 320,000 to 400,000 words before you find your voice.
This month, we’re partnering with Story Cartel to host the Covering the Classics Contest (wow, that’s a lot of C’s), a contest to re-imagine the covers of ten classic books. This is part of Story Cartel’s new book club, an online community to read and discuss the classic books of yesteryear.
By the way, if you want to brush up on the classics, plus get ten classic books completely free, you should check out the Story Cartel Book Club.
If you could re-imagine the covers of classic books, what would they look like? This is your chance to put your personal mark on some of the world’s most revered books. Sound interesting? Read on for the rules…
PRACTICE
Write a story or scene involving money.
Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section, and if you post, please be sure to leave feedback for a few fellow practitioners.
Happy writing!
The stereotype goes that writers are introverts – lonely, secluded souls who spend their days exclusively with their words. As much as this holds true for many, it doesn’t cover the whole bunch. Whereas some need to travel away and shut themselves down in order to focus on the project at hand, others thrive in environments full of people, jotting down their thoughts in cafes and bars.
There is, however, a third category for the luckiest of all – those who strike a balance between these two extremes. They call them ambiverts.
By nature, human beings are creatures of habit. We stick to what we’re good at it and we like to do what we’ve always done.
Habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.’”And habits are hard for us to give up. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to make a major lifestyle change—it breaks us out of our comfort zone.
For writers, though, habit can be particularly detrimental.
