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davidfarland · 2 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: Writing Priorities

One day twenty years ago I was working on a novel when my wife came in shouting, “The house is on fire!” Now, I had a rule: when I’m writing on my novel, I’m not to be disturbed except in rare situations. When the house is on fire, that’s one of the exceptions.

So, I ran up the stairs to find that indeed the garage was on fire. I opened the back door to the garage and a wall of flames greeted me, boiling high into the air. I could see just enough to realize that the fire was so large, I wouldn’t be able to fight it, so I slammed the door (to starve the fire of oxygen) and called the fire department, then searched the house to find my son Ben (who was five). He’d set the fire, then hidden in his bedroom closet.

We got the fire put out before it engulfed the rest of the house and no one was killed, but I felt amused at how my wife and kids all kept apologizing for disturbing me when I was writing. In my family, with the wife and kids it had become so ingrained that “you never disturb dad when he’s working,” that they couldn’t get over it.

For many reasons, this attitude is common with writers.

Writing has to be a #1 priority. Otherwise, your priorities “slip.” It’s easy to say, “Well, family is more important than writing,” so you take a week off for Christmas to visit relatives or take three months to take care of an ailing mother.

Or maybe you say, “My health is more important than writing,” so you begin working-out for four hours a day.

Or you tell yourself, “I deserve a vacation,” and you quite literally take a permanent break. (One #1 New York Times Bestseller called to ask if I would consider ghost writing a novel for him. I could tell he was burnt out. A couple of days later he retired—and just never came back.

Eventually, your writing can slip down your list of priorities until it’s not a priority at all. Doing your dishes, opening your email, and playing a videogame can seem like they’re more important than work. But when writing is #15 on your list of priorities, you can’t do anything at all.

You see, if writing isn’t a high priority, then your subconscious mind can’t focus on it. It will focus only on what it sees as a high priority—up in the #1 or #2 spot.

So if you want to be a writer, you have to set writing as your highest priority.

But you can’t do that, either. Trying to keep writing as your very highest priority leads to burn-out in just a few days. There are better ways to handle it.

I was at a major convention years ago and went down to have breakfast. At the restaurant, I found Poul Anderson (multiple Huge and Nebula Award Winner) sitting with his wife, waiting for the waiter to bring their food. I said “Hello,” and asked if I could join them. Poul was typing away, but his wife said, “He can’t answer you yet. He has to get his three pages in for the day.” So I sat and chatted with his wife until he finished his three pages. His rule was simple: you don’t communicate with others, even to say hello, until you finish your work in the morning.

He was right. As Dr. Jerry Pournelle once pointed out to me, “The desire to write is born out of the need to communicate. If you ever find yourself unable to write, just shut up: don’t read a paper, don’t talk to anyone, and wait for the voices of your characters to start speaking.”

So the cure for the inability to write is to shut up and write.

But you can’t write non-stop forever. You need time to recover, to recharge your creative batteries.

So you have to make writing your #1 priority but only for part of your day. You might say, “I’ll do it first thing in the morning.” Or when I was working full time, I made sure that I got two hours of writing in before I went to bed each night. In other words, I would set a writing schedule and make writing a habit.

I’ve found that if I say, “My writing day starts at 7:00 AM” and make sure that I’m sitting down, ready to write on time, my day goes smoothly. I usually have word-count goals linked to my writing goals. It’s not enough to just sit in my chair. I need to have something to show for it.

I also like to take writing retreats where I focus entirely on writing for several days. When I go on a retreat, I’ll say, “This next 10 days is just for writing my novel,” and that becomes my #1 priority. I don’t answer emails, don’t take phone calls, don’t read or go sightseeing, I just write, usually with some daily light exercise in the afternoons. I go out for one or two meals a day and eat light for the other meals.

However you do it, though, writing needs to become your #1 goal on occasion. So set that goal now: When are you going to make writing your #1 priority?

We are getting the new “Compleat Writer” program set up. We recently discovered that our server couldn’t take more than about 300 people viewing videos at the same time, so we are going to a new service. I’ll be giving out video tips for the Compleat Writer, so here is a sample of our first video.

Link to Vimeo…..

This month I’ll be adding a new seminar to the program, too: “Five Tips for Writing to a Massive Audience.”

Because it is Christmas Season, the Compleat Writer Bundle is on sale for $139 per year, but just for the next couple of days.

New Live Workshop—Twenty years ago I used to be in charge of the writing track at DragonCon, one of the largest conventions in the US. We had a core of about 20 young writers who seemed to come to just about every panel that we put on. So when I put on a nice panel on “Characterization,” twenty people showed up exactly.

Then I invited Tom Doherty, the head of Tor/Saint Martin’s to speak on how to write a bestseller, and decided I better get a bigger room. I asked for a room that would hold 200, and the con officials said, “No, we need a lot bigger room than that.” We scheduled a room that could hold 2000, and sure enough, the room was too small. We had to turn away perhaps a thousand people.

The thing is, I watched those 20 writers who attended our panels over the next couple of years. Nearly all of them broke into the industry and got publishing contracts. But the 2000 who just came to learn the secrets? Psssaw. None of them got published. They weren’t serious enough.

So I’m putting on a workshop on “Creating the Perfect Cast.” The basic idea is that you can’t write a novel with just one great character, you have to create characters who work beautifully together. If you really want to write, and you can make it to the workshop, you should consider coming. Check it out here: link to workshop.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing advice #writing tips #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 7 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: How Long Does it Take to Write “A” Novel?

One of the most frequent questions you’ll get as a writer is, “How long does it take to write a novel?” There are several perfectly valid answers, and some that are utter bull-puckey.

1: Bull-Puckey Answer: You can write a bestselling novel in just a weekend according to one coach. Another says you can do it in just 15 minutes a day in 21 days. Beware people selling easy answers. They’re just trying to separate fools from their money.

2: Two to Four Weeks: I can comfortably compose 1200 words per hour. If I have a good idea of what to write, and if each scene works successfully, it will take 80 hours of hard work to write a 100,000-word novel. Shorter books take less time. A huge book takes longer.

But it normally requires an hour or so just to get into a deep enough meditation to actually compose, and not every scene works as well as I’d like. So that 80 hour quickly doubles.

I can crank one out a novel in about three weeks. It might not be well thought-out. It won’t have much in the way of interesting twists or thunderous prose, but I can compose a piece of excrement about as fast anyone.

In fact, if you’re an excellent stylist, your piece-of-refuse novel might even be superior to much of what passes as popular literature.

3: Inspired Novels Go Quicker: Sometimes lightning strikes in the form of a stimulating idea that hits at a time when the writer is able to get into the writing zone and has the time and inspiration to work on it. Generally, if it all happens well, you can get the first draft of a great novel in four weeks. Several classics have been written that quickly.

Shakespeare took about four weeks to compose each of his plays. He’d be acting and putting on plays during the spring and summer, would write for a couple of months in the late fall (creating three new plays), and then go home for Christmas and New Year. So “Hamlet” took a month. So did “King Lear” and a “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

But then again, were they really written that quickly, or just the first drafts? Shakespeare would revise his plays for years afterward, often re-writing scenes late at night after a performance. The works got better.

4: You Can Write Quicker When on Drugs: One of the bestselling novels in its genre was written under the influence of meth in about four weeks. Those who have tried meth report good results once, but tell me that it “fries your synapses” so that you can never write as well or as easily again. Don’t try this.

5: A Great Book May Take Years! JRR Tolkien was officially hired to write Lord of the Rings in 1937. He got writers block for many years and worked as a professor but finished a first draft in 1948. Then he had to write the “Appendices” over the next few years, so his first volume was not published until 1954.

You might say he took 17 years—except that he kept going back and revising even after his first edition. An upgraded version came out in 1965, and Tolkien went to work on The Silmarillion, which had further effects on LOTR. In fact, I suspect that Tolkien never officially finished Lord of the Rings.

If you dig up Tolkien’s grave, you may find him like a wight in his barrow, scribbling away on his appendices with bony fingers.

Tolkien once composed a story about writing, “Leaf by Niggle.” In the story, various elf-like creatures go about creating the world, and one of them, Niggle, spends an entire lifetime perfecting a single leaf while others create entire groves.

Yet when the world is finished and populated with vast forests and jungles, birds and insects, it is the leaf by Niggle, with its beautifully articulated veins and perfectly symmetrical edges, that is honored as the most beautiful creation of all.

It’s interesting that this story came out of Tolkien in 1937 as he contemplated his epic.

You may have books like that in you, too.

I’m finishing up a novel now that I’ve been working on for ten years. Yes, I wrote other books in-between. My novel In the Company of Angels took 18 months to research, three months to compose, and won a Whitney Award as best book of the year. And my novel Nightingale also won several awards two years after Angels. I’ve published a number of anthologies in the past few years, too. But I’ve been grinding away on A Tale of Tales for almost a decade.

Writing it presented a number of challenges. First, it is unlike any other book I’ve seen. I can’t just look at a model of “similar” books and try to top them. I don’t know of a similar story. I suppose I could crank out a quick tome and call it good, but that would be soul-destroying.

I want the story to be unique, and I want it to be powerful. I want it to express my vision, not anyone else’s.

Over the past few years I’ve had all the usual challenges—writer’s block, huge financial upheavals, and a couple of near-fatal illnesses.

Of course, I hear from “fans” that I’m taking too long. My wife is the most vocal of them.

People who want immediate gratification are like toddlers who smell a cake baking in the oven and demand to have it NOW. You could spoon out the molten glop, but it wouldn’t be what you envisioned.

You don’t have to rush every novel, and you’re being short-sighted if you try.

So how long does it take to write a novel?

A Lifetime. Every novel that you write is the sum of all your learning and experiences. I’m 62 years old, and when I finish this novel in a few weeks and people ask how long it took to write, I will answer, “62 years.”

I can’t wait to finish my first 100-year novel!

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing advice #writing tips #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 9 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips—Do You Want to Be an Apex Writer?

First, I wanted to have a little shout-out. I was on Facebook on Saturday for a few minutes and noticed that some of my past students had made some major accomplishments:

Martin Shoemaker’s hard science fiction novel The Last Dance hit #1 in its category on Amazon.com and stayed high through the Christmas season, garnering 722 ratings—the vast majority of them being 5-stars. For those who don’t know, hitting over 500 ratings is a major milestone. It ensures that Amazon’s algorithms will bump up the book’s publicity. I’m interested to see how high his sales climb over the next few years. He’s a dedicated writer with a very promising career path.

Monalisa Foster got a novel contract and an acceptance check for Christmas. Great timing!

Rebekah R. Ganiere’s romance novel Rekindling Christmas is being made into a film and will start shooting this week! I’m excited for her. Well deserved!

James Dashner, whose successful Maze Runner movies series recently ended, is getting ready to spring some major news on us. I’m hoping he’s graduated to the level where he has a book-movie joint announcement.

Brandon Sanderson went to his local Barnes and Noble on Saturday and was asked if he would sign some of the books on his “wall.” Now a lot of popular authors get a little extra shelf-space at the bookstores, but you’ve got to be moving huge numbers of books to merit your own wall! I’m including a picture of it. Wishing him great success!

While on Facebook, though, I happened to see a post by a young woman who had set a goal of publishing her first fantasy novel in 2020. She asked how to go about it and was getting lots of bad advice. Yes, some of the advice would lead her to get published—either self-published or traditionally published, but not published well.

If you do it wrong, getting published can be dangerous. Going to a small publisher who can’t get distribution into bookstores, for example, might cause you to make nothing in royalties, lose your rights to your novel for as long as you live, and waste years of your life. Going to the wrong agent—one who is crooked or just plain incapable of connecting with a publisher, can once again waste years of your life.

Even self-publishing may be a total bomb if you don’t know how to go about it.

I really wanted to help her negotiate the path ahead.

Yet this poor young woman had dozens of tips from people who had no idea that their advice sucked. I suspect that much of it came from people who had never published.

So, I suggested that she go to my website to read some of my posts on the topic—and was blocked by the site administrator for “self-promotion.”

I could have offered the writer a free video that might be helpful. I have a seminar on how to publish in 2020. (It’s in my writing Compleat Writer’s Program but hasn’t been put up for sale elsewhere.) But I suspected that the site administrator would have deleted that post, too.

I realized that I often feel blocked. I don’t want to tell you when another author is giving you bad advice. They’re my friends and peers, after all, and they’re trying to be helpful.

There are things that publishers, film distributors, bookstore chains, agents and social media companies do that are kind of dangerous to talk about—but that you need to know.

I’ve decided that I need to start a closed group. How cliché. It seems like everyone who works in a counseling business starts something with a lofty title, like “The Billionaire’s Club,” and they usually charge an arm and a leg for it. So I’ve been resisting the idea for years.

I want to share this information only with authors who are driven, who are ready to take the steps forward, who are trustworthy, and who are also willing to share information.

I’m going to call it the Apex Writer’s group. The goal of the group is simple: I want to help take you from wherever you are in your career, (whether you’re just beginning or are in your mid-career, to become an Apex Writer). An Apex Writer is one who sells books by the millions, whose books get wide advertisement, and who understands how to leverage the advertising from the film industry to make major deals before their books are even released.

One study years ago said that it took the average writer seven years to break into publishing, and it took another seven to become a bestseller. What if you could do it in three or four years? What if we could save each other a decade of struggle? I think that we can do it.

It will take more than just good advice. You’ll need to be in a closed group of writers who are learning how to work within the system, and it will be easier if we share information and work as a team.

Now, you might think, “Ah, but I want to self-publish. I don’t want to work in the traditional publishing field.” That’s fine. But you need to understand that even if you’re a self-published author, you’re working inside a field controlled by Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and other mega-corporations.

It won’t be expensive to join the group, but there will be a small charge because, heck, there are costs. There’s my time and expertise, maintenance for websites, and costs for administration. So it will cost a couple hundred per year.

You will have access to a closed group on Facebook, to my Compleat Writer’s Program, to the new bulletin board system going up this week, to regular meetings held online—and to further program benefits as it grows.

If you are interested in applying to become an Apex Writer, simply reply to this email with one word: Apex. I’ll send you an application to join, let you know if I think that you’re ready, and tell you what would be expected.

(note: to apply to Apex Writers, visit apex-writers.com )

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing advice #writing tips #writing help #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 15 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips—Balancing the “New” and “Notable”

When you release a new book, it shouldn’t just be another book--#32 in your pantheon—it should be an “Event!” It should be something that readers anticipate and look forward to and even celebrate.

Years ago, I recall having my wife and daughter go to release parties for Harry Potter novels. They’d dress up in witch costumes, grab their wands and their wallets, and head out to Barnes & Noble a few hours before midnight.

It was a great experience—a sort of bonding ritual with other fans—but it was also a great photo opportunity. By the time Rowling hit book five in here series, every news network in America was covering the annual ritual, often days in advance. The morning that the books went on sale, I checked the news and found that all four major networks were running the story!

You can’t beat that kind of publicity. When I was asked by the president of Scholastic to help pick a book to push big back in 1998, I chose Harry Potter and then advised her how to make it a huge hit. But in my wildest imagination, I didn’t foresee those national news articles running on the “event” of the book releases.

Back at the time Harry Potter was released, I recall reading an article that said there were roughly 2-3 million readers of middle-grade novels. But the publicity surrounding Harry Potter was so huge that Rowling made 120 million sales. In other words, she was selling to millions of people who normally didn’t read in that genre.

That’s your goal. As an Apex writer, you want to break out far beyond the limits of your genre. There are estimates that maybe there are four million fantasy readers. But I want to sell to a hundred million readers. So how do you do that?

You have to be Notable. You have to have excited fans lining up to read your books. You want articles, special displays, awards, and so on.

So how do you turn your book release into an “Event”?

I faced that in 1999 when I broke the Guinness Record for the world’s largest book signing with a single author and single book. When I was asked by my publisher to do the signing, I was dubious. I’m not that huge as an author, and I’d had some signings that were read dogs.

But I allowed the publisher to pursue the idea. We held the signing in Hollywood. We brought in a couple of movie stars and television stars (so that their notoriety became linked to mine). We provided a couple of bands to play music so that folks could dance. We gave out root-beer floats so that people wouldn’t die or thirst while waiting in line.

In short, we tried to make it fun. We let the readers know that we were trying to break a record, and thus invited them to be participants in that effort. I ended up signing over 2000 books in a four-hour period.

So how do you make your release an event?

Set it up in advance. You need to pre-release a book six months in advance to let it build up pre-sales. You don’t just put it up on Amazon.

Advertise it. Don’t just put up newspaper announcements before the event—advertise it live and then do it again after the event. Our release was advertised live on the radio, but you can also invite news media and film it so that it can be shown on television news the day after. Don’t forget to memorialize your event in the newspapers and magazines.

Bring in rock bands, movie stars, popular scholars and other celebrities. People might not be willing to come just to see an author, but bring in a few extras, and it can go huge.

Look for fun items to give away. I’ve used posters, wrist bands, and toys for middle-grade books. Use your imagination.

Provide free or inexpensive treats. You never know how far your fans might have traveled, or how hungry they might be.

Make it visual. Consider what props you might want to use. With Battlefield Earth, the sellers used a huge blow-up monster hovering above the store parking lot. When Planet of the Apes came out a few years ago, I saw an army of Apes carrying cages full of human prisoners through the crowd at the E3 gaming convention. Static displays can be cool. Moving displays are better.

At your release, do a reading to help engage the readers.

Tie the event to personal and business news—information on the release of upcoming novels, announcements about how high you’ve hit on bestseller lists, a reading of a few advance reviews, mention of movie interest. But remember to make this personal. Tell the readers why you wrote this book now, why it is so vital to you.

Have raffles for prizes.

Book releases can be fun, but also remember that it doesn’t have to be free. Major authors sometimes have a cover charge for a release. A few years ago, one of my assistants paid $200 to go to a release in New York City of a Rowling book. She had to pay hundreds more for airfare and hotels. As part of the giveaways, the event raffled off 200 of Rowling’s books to her fans.

Just remember: your release needs to be an Event!

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing advice #writing tips #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 16 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tip: Seeing Yourself as a Writer

A lot of people have a hard time imagining themselves as full-time writers—and that is often the only thing that holds them back.

You might be a lawyer, a dentist, a coal minter, or a waitress, and you define yourself as that. Yeah, you love writing, but you don’t think you’re free to write. You may be wearing golden handcuffs, stuck in a high-paying job that you really don’t enjoy.

Or maybe you’re working rather desperately at a dead-end job that won’t really take you where you want to go.

I’ve met several fine writers who have medical conditions—back problems, anxiety, or depression that seem to define them.

I think that authors need to begin defining themselves. They need to begin “seeing themselves as writers,” much as a basketball player can prepare for a game by imagining himself make shots.

So the real question is, “What is the life of a writer like?” Is it worth working for?

Twenty years ago, I got a call from the Deseret News, the largest newspaper in our area. They had heard that I was a writer, that I had a hit novel out, and they asked if that was true. I said “Yes.” Then they asked, if I could have any job, any dream job, what would it be? I was dumbfounded. I said, “I already have it. I’m a writer.”

It turned out that the article was for “Career Day.” The interviewer asked a person what their dream job would be, then called someone with that job and asked what their dream job was. They’d interviewed a senator, an astronaut, an actor, and so on. I was the last one interviewed. Writing was my dream job.

Why?

Writing is fun in itself. I find that any job where I create things—from pizza to painting is fun, but I get a unique sense of fulfillment when I finish the final draft of a big novel.

I get to work when I want. If I wake up at two in the morning and have an idea for a scene, I can go to work at 2:00. I don’t have to wait for office hours. If I want to go have lunch at my favorite restaurant, I can work it into my schedule. If I’m sick with a cold, I can sit down in my recliner with a blanket wrapped over me and write anyway. And since I love to write, it feels more like a reward than real work.

I can write where I want. I used to take writing retreats down in Cabo, where I would get up at dawn and go out and wrote while the sun rose over the ocean. Some people like to write in coffee shops, others in bookstores. I like to compose in airports and in restaurants. Where would you like to be? In a cabin in the Rocky Mountains? In a swanky hotel in Berlin, in the tropical highlands in Fiji? Or a castle in Scotland? I’ve written in all of those places and loved it.

I’m my own boss. I don’t have to worry about office politics. If one of my employees wants my job, I encourage them to give it a try. As my own boss, I get to choose what project I’ll work on next.

Your work can be as meaningful and challenging as you want to make it. Would you like your next novel to change the world for the better? Please, make it so.

There’s no dress code. I’ve worked white-collar jobs where you have to shave everyday and wear a tie. I don’t mind that, but right now I’m wearing some casual sweatpants and a t-shirt. No one is going to see my today, and nobody cares.

I get to keep all of the money I make. When I was young, I stopped at an acquaintance’s house. He was a tax lawyer, and he came home from work and told his wife, “I just figured out how to save the company $14 million today.” His wife said in a deadpan tone, “Great, how much of that do you get to keep?”

As a writer, your books can sell in dozens of countries—the US, the UK, Australia, and into translations in places like Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan and China. Your books can go into movies, television, videogames and other mediums.

It often surprises nonwriters how much money a writer can earn from various sources. You can have mediocre sales in the US but make a fortune in Poland, and your neighbors will become convinced that you must be a drug dealer.

Years ago, when I recommended Harry Potter to be the book to push big at Scholastic and outlined the advertising campaign for it, I really didn’t imagine that it would make Rowling a billionaire. Several other writers that I’ve trained have made millions, too. One has made hundreds of millions. Making money is not that hard if you understand the business.

It really shouldn’t be too hard to imagine yourself in a job you love, making good money. You just need to begin inching toward what you want to do. Take little steps: write each day, research your next novel, study new techniques. Work hard, and in no time at all, you can find yourself doing what you love.

I heard a story yesterday about a freelance comic artist. He said that when he left his full-time job working at McDoland’s, his boss put a fatherly arm around his shoulder, glared into his eyes, and wished him luck. He said, “Remember, if things get rough out there, you’ll always have a home here with us.”

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing advice #writing tips #writing help #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 22 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: What Story Should You Write?

Very often a new writer will say, “I have ten ideas for novels. Which one should I write?”

I’ve been fortunate enough to guess the right answer to that question a number of times. For example, more than 20 years ago I had a publisher ask which of their books she should push big in the coming year. I chose Harry Potter, then advised her on the advertising campaign that made it the bestselling book of all time. In addition, I’ve advised several other students who went on to become international bestsellers.

When I hear that question, part of me wants to answer, “Why, write all of them, of course!”

But the real question that they’re asking is, “Which one is most valuable? Which will be most rewarding?”

Here are three answers to that question:

Write the one that will make you the most money. Which of your ideas has the largest potential audience—one that you can tap into. If you have an idea for a big thriller that will sell two million copies, you probably should write that instead of the sad-clown drama that won’t sell fifty copies. You can easily do some research by studying bestseller lists to begin getting an idea of how well your book might sell. You can also go to publishersmarketplace.com and buy a membership to study how much publishers paid in advance for similar novels to what you want to write. If similar books rake in million-dollar advances, then you know what to do.

Write the book that your heart most wants to write. It might not make you a lot of money, but it will be fulfilling. Besides, if you’re emotionally committed to a novel and feel that you “have to” write it, your passion will show. Such novels tend to win awards and get better word-of-mouth advertising.

Don’t write a romance novel just because you think it will sell. If you don’t love the idea behind the novel, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll muck it up.

Be unique. A novel should be *novel—*a “one of a kind experience.” I know a few indie authors who have effectively started their own genres, things like “military fantasy” where wizards join in with modern warfare, or “literary RPG,” where fine stylists explore classic role-playing game tropes. In such cases, the authors are finding untapped niche markets and succeeding wildly. So which of your ideas is the most unique?

Ideally, you’ll have an idea that is unique, that you’re passionate about, and that fits into a large established genre so that you won’t have to go hunting for readers. Ultimately, though, you as an author have to decide, “What do I want from this novel? If I’m going to give it a year or more of my life, what do I need in return?”

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing advice #writing tips #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 23 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips—What’s Good Writing?

What’s “good” writing? Is it writing that wins awards? Is it writing that makes you a lot of money? Is it writing that simply makes people care about one another, teaching them empathy, or does it need to serve some higher moral purpose, like advocating change for good.

It’s easy to get confused.

Last week I heard from a young writer who had written several books and self-published them, but he said that he looked at his books one day and realized that they “weren’t really written to professional standards,” so he took them offline and decided to start over. He wanted to write books of higher literary quality, and so he rededicated himself to his craft.

It reminded me of a woman that I’d met last year. She’d started publishing romance novels and had made a lot of money with books that she described as being more pretty racy erotica, until she looked at the impact of what she was doing and realized that her fiction was “deeply immoral,” and so she took her books down with the goal or writing books that helped teach people the proper way to love.

In the examples above, one writer aspired to higher craftsmanship, another to writing stories that showed the more-noble elements of love. In short, there are a lot of ways for writing to be “good.”

Yet people get confused. Some people think that if you want to write good stories, your characters need to be saints. But you can tell great stories about deeply flawed people. Shakespeare did it in Hamlet. We saw it again with the television show “Breaking Bad.”

And you can tell bad stories about good people, exposing their minor faults and waving them around like dirty underwear as you seek to trash them.

But the question is, what is it that you want from your writing? Do you just want to make loads of money, or at the end of your days do you want to look at your work and realize that you did some good in the world?

I can think of dozens of ways that as writers we can serve the world. As nonfiction writers, we can uncover what is going on in the world and reveal uncomfortable truths. As mainstream novelists, we might show the world in all of its glorious imperfections and ask penetrating questions that make readers think. As humorists, we can elevate our readers’ moods. As novelists we can ease people’s burdens while entertaining them and teaching them to care about others.

This has been a traumatic week. So on tonight’s Apex call, I want to take some time to talk about how we as writers might be able to use our powers for good, and put an end to racism in America. It’s a big topic, one that I hope other writers will consider carefully.

Lately, my personal motto has been, “Do good each day until you are exhausted. Then go to sleep, rest, and then get up and do it again.”

Hopefully, with tonight’s call, we can learn some ways to affect lasting changes.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing advice #writing tips and tricks #writing tips

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davidfarland · 28 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: “Mental Toughness”

As writers, we’re faced with lots of different types of stresses. It’s not always just searching for the right word in a description or trying to meet a story deadline.

While working on novels, I’ve had to deal with just about everything. For example, I was once deep in writing a great scene when my house caught on fire once. I had to totally neglect my work while I went to call the fire department and try to figure out where my five-year-old arsonist son was hiding (in his bedroom closet).

I’ve been working when I discovered that a business partner had stolen my life savings, when a Russian mobster called and tried to muscle in on a movie deal, and when a doctor phoned to tell me that my mother was terminally ill.

Most writers, when they get stressed, will freeze up. They’ll focus on their stress rather than their work because that’s what millions of years of evolution has demanded we do. When a bear charges, you have to respond.

Most of us cope with stress by looking for ways to lessen or remove the stress. For example, when the fire struck, I dealt with the problem and completely removed the stress. It took a couple of days, but we got past it. Very often, there are exercises that you can do to reduce your stress. For example, sometimes I find that putting on a little mood music or listening to the sounds of a forest can help get me in a writing mood. Just sitting in my writing chair is part of my routine. Pre-imagining a scene also helps. In fact, very often the proper response to stress is to work harder.

This is almost always true with economic stress. Do you have bills to pay? Covid got you worried? Then apply your butt to your chair and get to work. Ideally, as a writer, you’d be able to compartmentalize your problems and keep working under duress, just about any duress. If I’m working on a scene and my wife says, “There’s a leak in the roof!” I probably don’t need to jump up and fix it. It hardly ever rains where I live, so I’ll call our roofer and get it handled when I’m ready. But some stresses can’t be lessened or removed or acted on later. I never was able to save my mother. I imagine that it’s like being a boxer in a fight. Sometimes life throws something at you, and you just have to take a blow.

Perhaps I admire commandoes—those guys who jump out of airplanes, land in enemy territory with a specific mission. Their job is to get things done. As a writer, I find myself wondering what it would take to develop that kind of mental toughness. In fact, I was talking to Forrest Wolverton recently about an Army Ranger who trained other rangers. He taught them classes in mental toughness, in confronting problems before they appear.

I realized that writers often need that kind of training, too, and asked him to begin developing a class on mental toughness for writers. We need to prepare ourselves to write on the bad days as well as the good—to stay up and be exhausted when we need to hit a deadline, or to deal with a tragic loss and still balance our workload.

Part of that, I’m sure, is nurturing the right kind of attitude. It’s conditioning. As a young man, I used to work as a prison guard. After just a few weeks on the job, we had a situation where I was working in the kitchen, supervising the inmates on the chow line, when one inmate began stabbing another in front of perhaps a hundred witnesses. For a moment, I froze in surprise, wondering what to do. The killer in this case had a very big knife and he was stabbing his victim quickly, plunging it down over and over as fast as he could. While I stood wondering how to respond, the guard next to me leapt over a steam table that was perhaps four-feet high and six-feet wide, rushed across the room, and tackled the killer. Afterward, I wondered, “How can I become the one who runs into trouble instead of hesitates?” The answer was simple: you just make it a life choice. You remember who it is you want to be.

Since then, I’ve come across auto accidents and similar situations a couple of times, and my response has been to confront the problem, to run toward danger rather than from it. I think that as authors, we need to do the same. We need to decide now that when we’re faced with some major obstacle, we won’t whine about it, won’t apologize, won’t cower away from it. We’ll just calmly face it. I think we can calmly let the stress wash over us, pass through it, and accomplish our mission

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing tips and tricks #writing help #writing advice

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davidfarland · 30 days

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: A Few Words on Career Management

I hate to say this, but even before you begin writing your first book, maybe you should be thinking about career management.

As you begin your writing career, one of the very first questions you need to ask yourself is, “Is there a large enough audience for my first book so that it could help launch a career?” or “Is this really the genre that I want to be writing in for the next twenty years?” or “If I wrote this book, who would be my agent or my publisher?”

You don’t want to get bogged down with such niggling details, yet you can’t totally ignore them, either.

A few years ago, a good friend excitedly told me about a book he had begun. He told me the premise, and I asked him a question: “Do you want to keep writing books after this, or are you willing to let this one book your career?”

You see, the author was intelligent and passionate—a great combination for a writer—but the book he described had no audience. If he wrote it, he would be writing it for personal therapy. I’m all for that—writing something because you feel you have to write it, or because you simply enjoy it—but I think you need to be realistic, too. If you want to make a living from your writing, you have to develop a story that people want to read.

So he wrote the book, and with great delight soon announced that he had found a small publisher. The book came out and got nice reviews. It even was a finalist for a major award.

But two years later he wrote me a note which said, “I should have listened to you. I spent a year writing and promoting that book. I sold exactly 52 copies. Of those copies, 51 were sold to families and friends. The last one, I have no idea who bought it. With such dismal sales, no one is interested in my next book. A publisher suggested that she might buy a novel from me, but only if I wrote it under a pseudonym.”

That’s one danger. You put a lot of work into a project and then discover that you have to start over, using a different name.

Now, that’s not the end of the world. Many successful authors have had to re-brand themselves, recover from a bad start. But think about this: the average writer takes about seven years from the time that they begin writing to the time that they gain enough skill to get published. They typically spend another seven years from the time that they begin publishing to the time that they become successful.

Do you really want to add a few more years to that because you’re making career management missteps? How many times do you think you can screw up before you’re done? Do you want to write a bad novel—or a bad series—and then have to start over again?

You can write a book and sell it, but publishing a “small” book can give you a false sense of victory. Yes, you put everything into writing a book and got it published, but in doing so you won the battle while losing the war.

But there is another problem. One young would-be author once asked, “How do I write the bestselling young adult novel of all time?” I gave her a hard look and wondered, “Do you know what you’re asking? Do you really want to be that famous?”

So we sat down in my office and strategized. I told her how to write for the audience she wanted. We brainstormed the setting, the characters, and premise. We talked about how she would get her agent and her publisher. We strategized when she would put the book out and how she would promote it. She wrote the book and reached her goal.

Then came the put-downs from jealous authors. (Guess what, if you get a lot of success, you’ll also get a lot of abuse from other authors.). She got put-downs from irate parents who seemed to purposely misread the books. I heard stories of how fans swarmed her hotels on tours, and ruined a limo she’d rented. One cab driver told me that the author had crying jags while he taxied her to the airport.

Is that the career you want?

Personally, when I started in this business, I realized that I didn’t want to be rich and famous--just rich. I’d like the money, but I don’t want the notoriety.

Unfortunately, the fame may be tied to the job. I keep trying to figure out how to disentangle the two. So far, I’ve done an excellent job of avoiding both too much wealth and fame.

So, what are effective long-term strategies?

You need to decide who you are as a writer, first. What kinds of books do you want to write? How are they similar enough to others so that you know you have an audience? How are they different enough from other writers’ work so that you can build a reputation and a following?

Then you have to consider how you’re going to publish them? Will they be self-published or traditionally published? Why?

Once you ask that second question, you may find yourself tumbling down a rabbit hole. If I am going to self-publish, how will I promote my works? If I am going to publish traditionally, who is the best publisher for me and how do I get them?

You can worry far too much about things that you may never have much control over.

I think you see that worrying too much about such things could impede your work. You do need to consider career management, but can’t let the details run you ragged.

I used to have a schedule for brainstorming career moves. On Monday through Saturday I wrote. On Sunday evenings, I would consider my career objectives and meditate upon how to meet them—but first thing on Monday morning, I’d set my concerns aside and get back to work.

And now, back to writing!

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

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davidfarland · 1 month

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: Great Character Arcs

Often I will hear a young author talk about character arcs and realize that they have a misconception: just because a character changes, that doesn’t mean she has a character arc.

For example, let’s say you have a character who works as a pizza delivery person and suddenly she gets a new job working as a chocolatier. Maybe being a chocolatier is her dream job, but it still isn’t a character arc. She’s just changing careers, not changing who she is.

A character arc only occurs when a character changes the premises that he or she operates under and takes a new course of action, becomes a new person. They have to change a fundamental belief about how the world operates.

We all base our actions at some levels on models of the world that are false. Sometimes, we just really don’t understand the world. Sometimes the rules of the universe seem to shift under us. Once you discover that you’re operating under a misconception, you have to change the way you act toward the world and find a new balance. That’s a real character arc.

Every character arc has four main parts, traditionally, but I think that there is a fifth. Let’s go through them.

The Lie. The first part of a character arc is called the lie. It’s something that the character believes, and he or she builds their life around it. The lie can be anything. “My spouse loves me and will always be faithful.” “Let the professionals handle politics, that is what they are good at.” “So long as you work hard, you can make enough money to take care of yourself.” “My priest is a trustworthy person.”

Of course, such generalizations all have exceptions. Under the right circumstances, your spouse might betray you. Many professional politicians are no better than crooks. You can make plenty of money and still have your wealth wiped out by a tragic illness, and many priests are predators of one sort or another.

So once your character recognizes that he or she has fallen for a lie, you as an author have got a great opportunity to begin creating a character arc. The recognition that there is a problem is called the “Inciting Incident” to your story, and it begs to be written perhaps even as a first scene.

Let’s take the cheating spouse as an example. Years ago I knew a man who had killed his wife. He was a genuinely nice guy, according to many reports—a pillar of his community. I was a prison guard at the time, and I have to admit, I even liked him. He’d come home from work early and found his wife in bed with another man, so he got mad and shot them both. That moment of discovering your wife cheating is pivotal.

The Wound. A second thing that we have to show in a story is the reason the character believed a lie. Why do we believe lies? Usually it is because our past experience suggests the lie is true.

Why did this man believe his wife was faithful? He’d never seen evidence to the contrary. As I recall, he’d been married to her for ten years. They were both in their sixties. He had met his wife at church. She’d supported him emotionally. She’d cooked meals for him, taken care of him when he was sick, cleaned his house, bought him presents for Christmas. She’d never talked longingly about wanting another man. So of course he believed that she was faithful. In short, she didn’t just say “I do” at the altar.

As a writer, when you’re creating a character arc, you need to show the foundation for the lie, the reasons that your character believed that something was true. In short, the evidence points to one conclusion, that she loves him completely.

But as a writer, we also need to show the exception. Maybe there was something about this specific man that made her want to cheat. Was she drawn to his wealth? His prowess as a lover? His charisma? Was he a master at sweet-talking the ladies, or did she genuinely find someone that she felt was a soulmate?

In short, showing why the protagonist believed a lie is fertile ground for a story, but a lot of time can be spent revealing the depths and breadth of a problem.

Taking New Action. Every arch has its keystone, a rock that holds the two sides of the arch together.

In a story, the keystone is reached when the protagonist takes a new course of action. Now, in the story we’ve been looking at, I’m not a fan of the idea of killing your spouse, but perhaps leaving her would be justified, or perhaps trying to win her back.

Whatever course of action your character takes, however, it requires him to suddenly move from being reactive to become proactive, to consciously change things.

I think that the moment where your character begins to take a new course of action is pivotal. Luke Skywalker dreamed of going to the Academy and becoming a fighter pilot like his father, but when he suddenly begins to study the ways of the Force, he enters a much larger world of possibilities, and the audience is mesmerized by it. Luke is taking a pivotal action.

The Character’s Wants. Every character has things that they want, and those wants provide the motivation for them to change. Typically, though, we don’t have the energy to chase after every possible dream. Still, the character’s “wants” can provide a strong motivation for their actions.

There is a rule in screenwriting that says that the protagonist must voice his wants by the midpoint of a film. The audience must learn what is driving him or her.

It’s a good rule for a novel, too. In once scene or another, you need to let the character show the reader what she really wants.

The Character’s Needs. More important than the character’s wants may be the character’s needs. Sure, your protagonist might want a Mercedes Benz, but all he can afford is a scooter. Ultimately, he might have to settle for a unicycle as transportation.

As your protagonist struggles to build a new future, balancing her wants against her needs will be a vital for plotting the upcoming sequences.

I think that the important thing to remember is that when your story starts, your character is acting on the basis of a belief system founded on a lie. As the story progresses, the protagonists uncovers the lie and adopts a new belief system, one that requires greater accountability, then moves toward reestablishing their lives based upon a new system of beliefs.

Please note that the new belief system doesn’t necessarily need to be “true”. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke Skywalker tells Obi wan Kenobi that he wants to learn the ways of the force and become a Jedi like his father. He imagines that his father was a hero who fought against the tyranny of the Empire. But in the next film, he discovers that his father is Darth Vader, and that all of his hopes are merely founded on a new lie.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing advice #writing tips #writing help #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 1 month

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David Farland’s Writing Tips—Wish Fulfillment

Awhile back, a writer was critiquing another author’s novel and said a little snootily, “This strikes me as a lot of wish-fulfillment.”

She was right, but the impetus for nearly all fiction comes from wish-fulfillment. If a reader is in the mood for a good romance, or a thriller, or a western, or a fable, she’ll hunt down something that suits her tastes, and if it delivers the emotions that she wants more powerfully than she imagined, she’ll be delighted.

In other words, books come in different flavors.

But some books are more complex and subtle in their flavors than the average reader would imagine, just as a fine chef will often surprise you with their unusual ingredients. For example, you might want a little romance, but the author adds in a bit of terror, profundity, and far more craving than thought you could tolerate—which only makes the ending more satisfying.

Sometimes our wish fulfillment doesn’t come at the level of trying to create an emotion. It might have more to do with intellectual curiosity. I often find myself wanting to understand how it would have really felt to climb Mt. Everest or to live in ancient Rome. I’ve even written historical novels like In the Company of Angels in part as an exercise, in an effort to try to imagine the heartaches and triumphs of others.

Some authors are storytellers whose sincere wish is merely to entertain vast audiences, to guide them through an imaginary adventure, and they become skilled entertainers

I know other authors whose wish is primarily to dazzle readers, to prove their superior storytelling skills, or to win awards.

In short, all novels are wish-fulfillment. Yet sometimes it is hard to understand just what wishes the author hopes to fulfill. For example, when you read a novel that is trite and poorly written, you might not understand that the author really did wish to succeed, he just didn’t understand what he needed to do to get there.

All of which has led me to consider something. When I start a novel nowadays, I ask myself questions like, “What will the reader want from this story?” I have a character in a dire situation, what would the reader want to have happen? Is the reader looking for a bit of romance, or a grand adventure? Do they want a deep and powerful mystery solved? Do they want to be transformed by a story? What would the reader want to see happen to the villain? What do I want from this novel? How can I facilitate those things?

When I’m plotting a novel, I find that if I write down the answers to these questions—if I create a wish list, I’ll discover that I’m trying to create a novel that is more intricate than what I first imagined.

For example, let’s say that I have a middle-aged woman whose husband was killed in a war twenty years ago. She wants to solve the mystery of who exactly killed her husband and confront that person. She wants to see what kind of monster he is.

Meanwhile, we have the story of a man who fought in a war, and in the heat of battle, out of his own fear, murdered a man who he realizes later was raising his hands to surrender. He’s been haunted by that image for decades and has endeavored to make amends. He’s become a doctor who runs a free clinic, dedicated to helping others.

And perhaps this is billed as a romance, where the woman travels to search for her husband’s killer and falls in love.

While I’m at it, maybe I want to entertain as wide an audience as possible and try to win an award. So let’s call it an epic historical mystery romance.

What would I have to do to accomplish all of that? Well, a little thought generates a whole list of items. I might consider first, “what war are we talking about?” Is this the French Revolution, World War I, or Vietnam? If I go with the French Revolution, let’s consider how the murder took place and what impact the Napoleonic Wars had over the next two decades.

I might have to look at what other authors have done, and consider how to beat their work. Crud, I’m going up against Tolstoy’s War and Peace!

I’ll want to make the story believable, so I’ll need deal with each step of how our heroine solves the mystery, seeking out every man she can from the troops that attacked her husband’s group, and so on.

I’ll have to consider how the killer changed and grew over time and create a chronology of major events.

I’ll have to weave in a powerful love story that is historically accurate and make it both shocking and utterly believable.

But in doing all of this, do you see how I am guided constantly by my wish list? That’s the fun of the process. The work is guided merely by your whims.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing tips #writing advice #writing tips and tricks

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davidfarland · 1 month

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David Farland’s Writing Tips—What’s Good Writing?

What’s “good” writing? Is it writing that wins awards? Is it writing that makes you a lot of money? Is it writing that simply makes people care about one another, teaching them empathy, or does it need to serve some higher moral purpose, like advocating change for good.

It’s easy to get confused.

Last week I heard from a young writer who had written several books and self-published them, but he said that he looked at his books one day and realized that they “weren’t really written to professional standards,” so he took them offline and decided to start over. He wanted to write books of higher literary quality, and so he rededicated himself to his craft.

It reminded me of a woman that I’d met last year. She’d started publishing romance novels and had made a lot of money with books that she described as being more pretty racy erotica, until she looked at the impact of what she was doing and realized that her fiction was “deeply immoral,” and so she took her books down with the goal or writing books that helped teach people the proper way to love.

In the examples above, one writer aspired to higher craftsmanship, another to writing stories that showed the more-noble elements of love. In short, there are a lot of ways for writing to be “good.”

Yet people get confused. Some people think that if you want to write good stories, your characters need to be saints. But you can tell great stories about deeply flawed people. Shakespeare did it in Hamlet. We saw it again with the television show “Breaking Bad.”

And you can tell bad stories about good people, exposing their minor faults and waving them around like dirty underwear as you seek to trash them.

But the question is, what is it that you want from your writing? Do you just want to make loads of money, or at the end of your days do you want to look at your work and realize that you did some good in the world?

I can think of dozens of ways that as writers we can serve the world. As nonfiction writers, we can uncover what is going on in the world and reveal uncomfortable truths. As mainstream novelists, we might show the world in all of its glorious imperfections and ask penetrating questions that make readers think. As humorists, we can elevate our readers’ moods. As novelists we can ease people’s burdens while entertaining them and teaching them to care about others.

This has been a traumatic week. So on tonight’s Apex call, I want to take some time to talk about how we as writers might be able to use our powers for good, and put an end to racism in America. It’s a big topic, one that I hope other writers will consider carefully.

Lately, my personal motto has been, “Do good each day until you are exhausted. Then go to sleep, rest, and then get up and do it again.”

Hopefully, with tonight’s call, we can learn some ways to affect lasting changes.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing advice #writing help #writing tips #writing tips and tricks #author

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davidfarland · 1 month

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David Farland’s Writing Tips: One Tip for a Powerful Ending

A few days ago, I was thinking about the endings to stories and what they made me feel. In particular, I was wondering, “What makes a story stick with me? What makes it feel like a classic?”

One author suggested that a great story typically arouses a sense of tragic romance. In other words, love ends badly. I have to admit, there are some great stories that end that way. For example, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars has two romantically involved teens who fall in love, but one of them dies. Since it is a first-love, it feels doubly tragic.

Of course, it is a retelling of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliette,” except that it is cancer that holds the two lovers apart instead of a street gang. We see the same kind of emotions being aroused in many other powerful romances, enough so that I’ve heard Nicholas Sparks describe himself as a “tragic-romance” writer.

Let’s face it, if every romance ended in tragedy, I’d be scared sockless to fall in love. There are plenty of stories with “happily-ever-after” fairytale endings, where one hopes that the lovers live practically forever before they die in their sleep.

Yet many of those seem rather weak when compared to stories that have a stronger bite.

So this makes me wonder: what about non-romances? Let’s take a genre like horror. Do we need to have tragedy mixed with our horror to make it work? I don’t think so. Watching a world get irredeemably trashed doesn’t work.

Probably my all-time favorite horror film was “Alien.” At the end, I felt a strong sense of triumph along with creeping menace.

A few nights ago, I watched “Django” for the first time, a show where a black bounty hunter shoots up the south back in the 1800s, and we as an audience cheer giddily as he tries to “kill all the white folks in the south.” I found myself smiling over some of the better jokes in that one for two days.

I could go on, but I began to see a pattern. With stories that affected me the most, I noticed that they almost always arouse dual emotions.

Aristotle suggested that those two emotions be pity and fear. Pity for the protagonist bound to a horrible fate, and fear that “but for the grace of god, there go I.” Those are powerful together, I suppose, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of a tale that I love that arouse those emotions.

What I do think I see though is a pattern: the best tales tend to arouse two emotions at once. In Lord of the Rings, as Frodo leaves the Shire forever and goes to live in the Gray Havens, there is a strong sense of triumph, that something good has been accomplished, along with a sense of loss, for Frodo has not won the Shire for himself.

I could go on all day, but I think that perhaps you see where I’m heading. If you’re hoping to write a timeless story, pick the primary emotion that you want to arouse—wonder, fear, love, redemption—but then see if you can somehow meld it to an unexpected secondary emotion.

For more on David Farland's Writing tips, visit https://mystorydoctor.com/writing-blog/

And you can also click here to get your David Farland Daily Meditations.

#writing help #writing tips #writing advice #writing tips and tricks #author

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davidfarland · 1 month

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Join the Apex Writers Family Now!

You ever feel like time's slipping through your fingers like sand?

That's me right now.

Because guess what?

There are just 5 spots left for Lifetime Access to Apex Writers.

Five.

That's it.

And once these 5 last passes are gone, well, that's all she wrote.: https://docs.google.com/.../1UW2ZKMxUotvsiCEATA3u.../edit...

Ben Wolverton

#writing groups #writing group

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davidfarland · 2 months

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Only 9 Spots Left – Grab Your Golden Ticket!

I hope you're sitting down for this because I've got some news that's hotter than a July barbecue.

Those Lifetime Access passes to Apex Writers I told you about?

We're down to our last 9.

That's single digits, my friend.

Niner.

The kind of rare you don't want to miss out on.

Let's cut to the chase – if you've been humming and hawing, waiting for a sign to jump on this, it doesn't get clearer than this.

This is your call to action, the bell in the last round, the final lap of the race.

Why should you care?

I’ll tell you why.

Because what you're getting isn’t just a pass – it’s an inheritance.

It's the legacy of my dad, David Farland, who could spot a diamond in the rough faster than a magpie.

He was the guy who believed in the greats before they were, well, great.

Sanderson, Dashner, Meyer – they all got that Farland faith when they were nobodies.

Imagine that – getting the same mentorship that shaped the authors of the books that probably sit on your shelf right now.

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And let's talk turkey for a second – this is the best deal since someone decided to put cheese in a burger.

We're talking less than the price of a weekend getaway for a lifetime of value.

No yearly fees, no hidden costs, just you planting your flag in the world of writing.

But here's the kicker – these 9 spots, they're the difference between us getting that legal eagle to swoop down and snatch our page back from the hacker's claws, or letting them win.

This isn't just about a product.

It's about a cause.

It's about standing up for what's right, for what Dad built, and for the dreams of writers everywhere.

This is your chance to be a part of a community that's all about pushing each other to greatness.

Apex Writers isn’t just a group.

It's a family.

And in this family, we don't just share tips – we share victories, heartaches, and everything in between.

So, what's it gonna be?

Are you going to be one of the 9 who steps up and says, "Count me in"?

Are you ready to take your seat at the table where the next big names in writing are just getting warmed up?

Don't let this moment slip by.

Opportunities like this come around about as often as a perfect solar eclipse.

And trust me, you don't want to be the one hearing the stories about what you missed.

This is it – your moment.

For Dad, for your dreams, for the story inside you that’s just itching to get out.

Grab your spot.

Join the ranks.

Let’s make history.

⇒ Grab 1 of the last 9 spots now and achieve Apex status

Write on,

Ben Wolverton

#writing tips #writrblrg #nanowrimo

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davidfarland · 2 months

Text

David Farland’s Writing Tips:

A Few Words on Career Management