Category Archives for Articles

3 Ways to Inspire Yourself Out of a Writing Drought

One essential ingredient for your writing life is knowing how to wake up your writing spirit, which is that subconscious push to write. Writing droughts exist, but there are ways to avoid getting caught in them.

Writing can be fun with its expressive nature and can also be challenging through the fight to string words together to reach a sensible point. However, it can feel burdensome when you reach a dead end or fail to get inspired to write.

Your 30-Day Plan for Getting Back on Track With Your Writing

Have you stalled on a big project?

Maybe it’s a novel that you began a couple of years ago—and never finished. Or a blog that you started last January with great intentions—that you haven’t posted on in months. Or a side project that you keep thinking about—but never quite get around to doing anything about.

Whatever your project is, this is your 30-day plan for getting it back on track.

What I Learned About Professional Writing from the Harry Potter Series

My Harry Potter story is unique: I didn’t attend Hogwarts via the book series for the first time until I was 17, almost too old to be a student. The first Harry Potter movie I saw in theaters was Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in late 2018. I’d heard of Harry Potter growing up, but I had so many other good books to read, I simply never found the time.

But although I fell in love late, I fell hard. On any given day, you can catch me wearing my Ravenclaw Quidditch (est. 1092) sweatshirt, listening to the movie soundtracks, and drinking a butterbeer latte at a coffee shop.

The book series about a young wizard boy is a classic, but for writers, it’s more than just a good story: Analyzing what exactly made the Harry Potter books so successful can help us become better writers. Here are the top things we can learn from Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling (the first self-made billionaire author) to carry over into our own writing careers.

6 Big Mistakes to Avoid When You Write for a Living

You’ve always wanted to write full-time and make a living from it, all because you love to write. And, at long last, you’ve made it happen. But you’re also asking questions and wondering how to get it right, to quickly become a success story.

Well, the first thing you need to understand is that your writing is no longer a hobby. Instead, you’re now a professional writer and you need to treat your writing as a business, since you write for a living.

And the second thing you need to do is identify and stay away from mistakes that are big enough to limit or even prevent your success as a professional writer. These mistakes are too expensive for someone who writes for a living, so it’s better to avoid them.

Ready to find out the kinds of mistakes we’re talking about?

Let’s take a closer look at six big writing and business mistakes to avoid when you write for a living.