Writing Your Book Already?

Want your book to be as good as it can possibly be? These articles are all about writing skills, editing like a pro, and how to write with a little more outrageous flair.

How Do You Come Up With All Your Ideas?

Ever look at those snazzy business owners in your inbox and on the internet and wonder how on earth they come up with all their stories, emails, articles, and podcasts? Wonder no more—you can do that too.

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Wooden clown

Future You Will Thank You

If we wanna do a thing, we have to make time for it.

And look: I don’t hold with this idea that we all the same 24 hours in a day.

We all have 24 hours, for sure—unless you’re reading this on Mars or something in which case HI PLEASE CONTACT ME BECAUSE WE NEED TO TALK.

But our 24 hours are not the same. I don’t have children or a third job.

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Your body is incredible

Be grateful for what you can do.

Your body and mind (which are inextricably linked) are incredible. What you can do with them is wondrous.

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? we need tiny beetle steps not giant leaps

The thing about tiny beetle steps is, eventually they add up to great big leaps.

We get hung up on the great big leaps. We strive for massive improvements, to become an overnight success, and wish for miracles to happen fast.

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Vicky hangs in a tangle of trapeze, not quite sure what she’s going to do next

The Magical Shitty First Draft

It’s a magical talisman, the first draft. It allows us to let go of our self-consciousness, let go of expectations, and play. And from it, we can make the thing we want to make.

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Roast potatoes for brains

Post-festive-sludging and I feel like my head is stuffed with roast potatoes.

I am struggling to form a coherent thought, let alone write about one.

This is extraordinarily vexing to someone who writes for a living.

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What Does a Book Coach Actually DO Tho?

People worry a lot about writing a boring-ass book.

And when I say people, I mean me. I worry. About everything, all the time—but specifically, right now, about writing a basic-bitch book.

Check out these 8 mistakes to avoid…

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What do you want to do?

Don’t let anyone shame you into ridiculous productivity.

Don’t be pushed into doing more than you want to.

It’s okay not to be okay.

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Don’t rely on your friends

It’s up to us to persuade the right people that our books are worth investing in.

Nobody else is going to do it for us – and that’s a really cool position to be in because it means we’re in charge of our own destiny. We get to make our own successes (and failures) without relying on (or blaming) others.

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? ? ? Tell me about yourself

“Tell me about yourself”

Four little words guaranteed to strike terror into most people’s hearts, especially if we’re standing in front of a roomful of people.

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Derek the donkey thinks learning BJJ is hard

The Splendour Of Hard Things

We think that unless we can make giant leaps forward and see enormous and sudden improvements in what we’re doing, we’re not doing anything.

It’s hard to keep going when keeping going is hard (and boring).

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You are not your business

You are not your business. You are not your art.

Take the criticism. Allow the reaction. Then examine it carefully.

Is there a lesson you can learn and use to improve? Take it.

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That escalated fast…

Well, that escalated fast.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking and mulling over and wondering what to write (and resisting the urge to make terrible jokes because too soon?).

So today I’m going to share what I’m doing while the world goes into lockdown.

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Road disappearing into dark night, with stop sign

Going Through the Motions

What would happen if I let go of this need to be impressive, and instead focused on feeling and thinking on paper? What would happen if I played around with different styles, and wrote questionable poetry, and fictionalised some of my experiences?

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How to Choose a Book Coach

The short, sweet, and comprehensive guide to choosing a book coach who understands how to get your Big Book Idea out of your magical brain and onto paper

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How To Think Up Your Big Book Idea

The flash of inspiration you’re waiting for? It ain’t gonna happen. It is a myth; a myth that has stopped good writers from writing since humans first scratched their shopping list on the cave wall…

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Asking The Right Questions

Knowing what questions to ask when you start to write your book is the hardest part… We spend so much time looking for answers, we rarely stop to think if we’re asking the right questions. And sometimes we don’t know which questions to ask at all…

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Scratching out eyes

On Finding Mudita

Of all the negative emotions, after shame, I think envy takes the biscuit: it seeps into everything we look at and it keeps us stuck.

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Choking the onions

I’ve put off weeding that veg bed for a bunch of reasons, none of them good. And so I’ve wasted more time worrying about the onions than it took me to just do the bloody weeding.

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Advent calendar with text: Thisis our advent calendar. Every year we fill it with sweets and little notes to each other. This year we have filled it with ideas. Future stories.

Filling Your Bucket

Back in March 2020, it was like the entire world took a giant swig from the DRINK ME bottle, as we hurtled down the rabbit hole. I.e. the world shrunk. And individually, I shrank. Like many people, I retreated into my head, made a blanket fort, and hid there… and I stopped writing. I had nothing to

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New year new…?

Within the haze of end-of-year parties and admist the overindulgence of the festive feasting period glows an ember.

The glimmer of an idea.

The hope that perhaps this year will be different.

Maybe this will be the year we’ll write our books or run that marathon or start that business or go after that big contract.

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Sometimes your words will be crap

For the past three days, I have sat at my laptop first thing in the morning and cried tears of frustration.

Every word I’ve written has been dragged out of my brain with forceps and no pain relief – and arranging those words on the page has been torture.

Almost everything I’ve written has been total crap by my usual standards.

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You Can’t Edit a Blank Page

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” — Jodi Picoult

Well yes, Jodi, that’s true of course. I 1,000% agree with you.

But it’s easier said than done, amiright?

When I’m sitting there in front of my blank page, head buzzing with static, fighting the urge to clean the bathroom or peel all the skin off my lips, this statement always makes me feel like shit.

So let’s sort it out.

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How Talking To Your Clients Helps You Beat The Blank Page

Ever had insomnia? Not just a little trouble sleeping, but the twitchy, panicky, staring into the void teetering-on-the-edge of madness insomnia?

Every now and then, it feels like you’re poised on the knife-edge of sleep—so you grab at it, wildly, desperately, only to feel sleep slip away, leaving you grinding your teeth.

To me, that’s what the Blank Page Of Doom feels like sometimes. When I have the seed of an idea I can’t quite hold onto—or too many ideas, boiling across my brain too swift to catch.

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Why your projects are always late…

Whether your project is a giant railway infrastructure, a cottage renovation, or writing your book, it will inevitably take way too long and cost much more than you budget. It’s because you suffer from the planning fallacy — with a healthy dose of optimism bias and overconfidence thrown in.

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Just be yourself okay?

Our brains are wired that way, to always see the bad – the problem – rather than the good. It used to keep us alive back when we lived in caves.

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Vicky wears a faux-fur coat and is face down on a hotel bed in Bruges, being idle.

The Virtues of Idleness

This is a sonnet to laziness, idleness, loafing—a spirited rejection of the Puritan Work Ethic and all it implies. Read on and discover why idleness should be part of YOUR life.

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Writing for Joy

Right now we could all use a little more joy, and fun, and space to do something just for ourselves, just because we want to.

Not because it will be useful or profitable or productive, necessarily.

But for the sheer joy of it.

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Start Writing Your Book Today

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