Everyone loves a good mash-up. Taking two (or more) different songs and seamlessly blending them together to create an entirely new song turns old music into something fresh and exciting. The same thing goes for novels. If you take old concepts and mix them together, you can write something worth raving about.
Often times when writers dream of becoming bestselling authors, they picture worldwide success, with their novels translated into dozens of different languages and adapted into major motion pictures. One of the most important things to keep in mind, though, is that learning how to sell books is a process that starts small and, usually, starts locally.
Every author dreads that inevitable torture of not knowing what to write next. It happens to all of us, some more often than others, but it happens nonetheless. When our minds go blank, and we don’t have ideas, we’re left with one thought: what now?
Recently when I looked over the first draft of my latest novel in order to buckle down and start editing, I noticed that there were a lot of sections that bored me. My mind started to wander and I couldn’t figure out why. Looking more closely, I found the answer: I was playing it too safe. In order to ramp up the tension in excitement, I had to master this one technique; I had to get uncomfortable.
Spring is almost here, which means it’s almost time to spring clean. Spring cleaning isn’t only good for cluttered houses, but for cluttered minds, as well. As writers, it’s important to learn new skills so long as it’s not at the expense of polishing old ones. Spring is the perfect time to do take a look at your writing and do some review. Here are five things you can do to avoid falling into bad habits.
