Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Dear Fellow Writer, I hope your writing is going well - and that you're a happy camper. It's important you maintain a strong, healthy attitude about yourself and your capabilities when it comes to being creative. Last week  we looked at writing your first draft manuscript. Today we examine what to do next. Fast and Furious Writing One trick to maintaining a viable fiction-writing career is to aim to be prolific. It is tempting to think of this as a new phenomenon resulting from the digital age. However, writing many books over the course of a lifetime has been a successful career strategy for numerous authors, namely Enid Blyton (597 works), Barbara Cartland (722), John Creasey (600+), Alexandre Dumas (277), Nora Roberts (200+), Georges Simenon (500+), Agatha Christie (66), Dick Francis (40), James Patterson (130+) and these writers represent just the tip of the iceberg. It’s fair to say that if long term success is a writer’s aim, then quantity can seriously out-...

Dear Fellow Writer, A warm hello to this week's newsletter. Thanks especially if you've just signed up to my blog posts. My guess is that you've recently found me through Amazon. Well, here's proof I'm an actual real-live person, writing  just for you  on a weekly basis. Enjoy the article! Write Your First Draft - Without Delay Writers procrastinate. It’s a fact of life, often a conditioned reflex to the very thought of sitting down to create something new. How do you find the motivation to write? Let’s look at the standard advice, and see what’s wrong with it. According to some poor literary types, we should place posterior on seat and sweat out words. I’ve even heard writing referred to as bleeding on to the page, a nasty image that implies pain and suffering.  Which authors in their right mind would want to feel this way about their writing? Does a surgeon agonize over every incision? Does a bus driver experience angst at every turn? Does a build...

Dear Fellow Writer, The weeks and months go flashing by, don't they? One minute you have a whole year to complete projects, then it's halfway through the year and it looks like you've hardly touched your annual 'to do' list.  Onward! Be Your Own Best Editor There are people out there who will insist that you can’t write a book or a story without first being familiar with the rules of good writing.  However, I’ve noticed over the years that learning the basics is not in itself a very reliable method for getting new stories on paper.  Because, if you let yourself worry too much over the practical issues to the detriment of your wish to express ideas, emotions and images, you’ll never get anything much started, let alone finished. Indeed it could be argued that the reason why so few of us are creative in the long term is that other people’s insistence on strict adherence to predefined rules often makes us feel inadequate to ...

Dear Fellow Writer, Nice to speak to you again. All of my Kindle books are on special this week - less than one dollar for most of the titles in  The Easy Way to Write  series. Check out any of the covers below. Need a  FREE Kindle Reader  for your PC or MAC? Go  HERE . MY CURRENT AMAZON KINDLE BESTSELLERS: I've spent this week creating a paperback version of  The Easy Way to Write Short Stories That Sell  on Amazon's CreateSpace.  Did you know it's free to publish through CreateSpace? And that they even distribute your books in bookstores and libraries for free? It's odd because I still often get emails from people wasting lots of money publishing their books through rip-off companies like  Xlibris, Trafford, Tate, Whitmore, PublishAmerica, Author Solutions, iUniverse  et al - when  Amazon CreateSpace  lets you do it all for free! Seven Words to Help You Seven keys to unlock your dreams,...