Writing Advice of the Week

Reading Time: 11 minutesWhen writing your book, it’s easy to get bogged down by craft and stylistic advice, storytelling methods, and research on genre conventions, structural maps, reader trends, and more. But if you’re writing a book, especially if this is your first book, it may be best to put away the advice while you’re getting that first draft down on paper.

Reading Time: 10 minutesHow to make New Year resolutions — and more than 100 links to writing advice articles, podcasts and videos from around the web.

Reading Time: 8 minutesIf you find your book vision is more of a hazy, amorphous blob than a fully thought out story, it may be time to get back to basics to find gaps to fill.

Reading Time: 11 minutesThis time of year, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and overloaded. For all the “most wonderful time” soundbites, it’s often the most stressful time of year for many. Get insight into how skill-stacking and focus can help you maintain your progress through the holidays and beyond.

Reading Time: 9 minutesFocusing all your energy on what the reader wants or needs is exhausting. And while you’re writing, it’s often not worth the effort. You simply cannot know exactly how another person will perceive your story. But there’s one thing you can know with absolute certainty: Do you, author, like your book?

Reading Time: 9 minutesIf December brings about reflection in you, you, too, may be undergoing profound change as you decide what you want out of your life and how best to go ahead and get it. While undergoing fundamental changes in who we are is a part of many creative professional pursuits, the change process itself can come with its own set of gifts to help us get through the tumult of change.

Reading Time: 9 minutesAn ambition to write or edit a book without clear and quantifiable goals and a path to achieve those goals — whatever that looks like for each of us — is just a wish. And wishes don’t write drafts. Getting back on track doesn’t need to come with a headache, though.

Reading Time: 8 minutesIf you find yourself spinning your writerly wheels without gaining traction, it may be time to step back from the project at hand. But this doesn’t mean you stop writing. Instead, it’s time to learn about storytelling, content structure, or other aspects of writing from life itself.

Reading Time: 7 minutesWe’re just over halfway through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and if you’re anything like the authors with whom I work, you may be hitting that mid-novel slump. And getting beyond the slump becomes the primary goal. So, how do you keep writing when the writing is hard?

Reading Time: 4 minutesOne of the most common bits of advice given to authors is to humanize their characters. Give them flaws. Dreams. Fears. Desires. Yada, yada, yada. But if you’ve filled out character profile sheets, you know how little value this piece of advice actually provides.

Reading Time: 5 minutesWe subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and gather the best posts for you every single Sunday. This week there’s plenty of advice about staying motivated through NaNoWriMo.

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhether it’s imposter syndrome that has you down, the stress of balancing writing against all the other things we do each day, feeling a lack of inspiration, or something else, I want to help you get out of your own way so you can complete your story and gain that coveted sense of achievement of having crossed off “write a book” from your bucket list.

Reading Time: 6 minutesWe subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got 96 articles, podcasts and videos about motivation, writing, and business and marketing for authors.

Reading Time: 4 minutesHave you ever sat down with your computer or your notebook, fingers or pen poised at the ready as you set forth on your storytelling adventure, yet the words refused to flow?

Reading Time: 5 minutesWe subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got 83 articles, podcasts and videos about motivation, writing, and business and marketing for authors.

Reading Time: 10 minutesNational Novel Writing Month is just around the corner and many of us are ideating or planning for the big 50K. But if you find yourself doing anything at all except what you want to get done within the next week and a half, check out these articles about balancing priorities and meeting goals and pick up a few tips to get through writer’s block, too.

Reading Time: 11 minutesWe subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, read about how to make your characters more human.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got lots of prep advice for NaNoWriMo, and how to sell books on your backlist — more than 100 brand-new links total.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got lots of advice about getting ready for NaNoWriMo.

Reading Time: 11 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got lots of advice about running Kickstarters and Amazon categories — as well as over 100 other articles, podcasts and videos about productivity, writing, and marketing.

Reading Time: 11 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got lots of advice about outlining and plotting.

Reading Time: 12 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got motivational advice, writing advice, marketing advice, and discussions of Amazon’s new AI policies.

Reading Time: 11 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Lots of advice this week on honing character craft through impactful dialogue, emotionally resonant arcs, and complex relationships.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. We have 90 links this week, covering every topic imaginable, with quite a bit about AI.

Reading Time: 10 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Lots of advice this week about AI.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Today’s list has 73 articles, podcasts and videos that cover pretty much anything an author needs to know, from staying motivated, to creating scenes, to marketing books.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got advice about punctuating dialogue, writing scenes — and using AI for marketing and editing.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. We have 90 brand-new links this week to articles, videos and podcasts to help you be more motivated, more productive, and more successful.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. We have 86 links this week, covering every topic imaginable.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we got an interview with Brandon Sanderson where he talks about the future of publishing — and what he thinks about AI.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, lots of great tips for creating a writing habit, plus practical advice for using AI to help your marketing — and your writing.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 175 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. This week, we’ve got some great videos from the 2023 AuthorTube Writing Conference.

Reading Time: 10 minutesI subscribe to more than 170 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. This week, we’ve got all about deep point of view, the pros and cons of using ChatGPT as a writing coach, and more than 90 other advice articles.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to more than 170 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. This week, learn about impostor syndrome, self-kindness, and how to set better goals.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 170 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. This week, more conversations about AI, but also the usual good advice about writing, publishing, and staying motivated.

Reading Time: 7 minutesI subscribe to more than 170 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification. Some excellent marketing advice this week.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than 170 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best advice from this past week for your edification.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week we had a couple of great podcasts about AI from Joanna Penn.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to over a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, Joanna Penn had a very inspiring and thoughtful podcast about AI-assisted writing — plus, there was great news about self-published author incomes from Alli.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Some excellent marketing advice this week, as well as the usual help for people struggling with motivation or needing help with the craft of writing.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week — remarkably little despair about AI!

Reading Time: 7 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week’s 70 links cover all the basics of motivation, writing, and marketing.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Some more AI resources this week, lots of process advice, and tips for getting unstuck.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to more than a hundred writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to 166 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Some good motivational advice this week — and more AI discussion.

Reading Time: 9 minutesI subscribe to 166 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, AI is a big topic of conversation again.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to 166 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, there’s advice about getting past writer’s block and finding your author voice.

Reading Time: 8 minutesI subscribe to 166 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. AI is a big topic. Again.

Reading Time: 11 minutesI subscribe to 166 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, writers continue to weigh in on AI… both pro and con.