Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

More than half the battle when you're trying to write is remaining focused enough to complete a project. It used to be that most writers complained about lack of time to finish their novels, even their short stories, and articles. Life has always had a way of distracting us from our goals - and that was  before  the Internet. Yes, there was such a time. It reminds me of that old joke. "How did we ever look busy at work before computers?" Now it's like,  "How did we ever fill our time before the Net?" A hundred years ago – in the evenings before TV - we sat in candlelight, singing songs around a piano. Or we got pissed on gin in a tavern. Then came TV and we sat around watching black and white drama and variety shows on the BBC, who (my mum says) told you when to go to bed when they stopped broadcasting. Now it's all gone crazy. 24/7 ...

New writers often ask me what they should write about. How do you get ideas?  they ask.  I know I want to write but I can't think of anything interesting enough to fire my imagination. To be honest, I think that coming up with ideas is a largely a learned skill that gets easier with practice. Writing regularly has a way of triggering the mind into coming up with ideas, almost as a byproduct of the writing process. But if you're stuck, how do you re-ignite your little gray cells? Here are seven strategies that may help you. 1. Read Outside Your Comfort Zone Don't read whole books, be a browser. Pick up books and magazines you would never normally touch and read things at random. Go to Amazon and download lots of free samples on science, anthropology, astronomy, history, eclectic stuff you wouldn't normally expose yourself to. Let your mind read enough to be puzzled, intrigued or fascinated, then stop and move on. This process will help fire different neurons in y...

The biggest selling book of all time is, of course, The Bible .  Given its place and significance in our cultural history, that’s probably not surprising. But, strictly speaking, the Bible doesn't count - for our purposes - because it's allegedly not fiction (though some might disagree.) I want to restrict my study of the bestseller to fiction - because to me, any book about things and people that aren't obviously real would have to pretty powerful to inspire millions of people to buy it. Okay.  Would it surprise you then to discover that the bestselling novel, ever, is, in fact, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities?   Shocked the hell out of me. Yep, we've consumed over 200 million copies of this saga about the French Revolution and its effect on English mores. After that, we're on more familiar ground with The Lord of the Rings at around 150 million - and this figure  isn't  skewed by the book often being sold as three books - they're...