Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

I was recently interested to read about brain waves and how they work, and apply what I could glean to writing. Here's the basic info: Beta Waves In our normal waking lives our brain waves pulse quickly, at between 14 to 100 Hz. These are called Beta waves and are good at keeping us awake and attentive enough for our daily tasks - working, playing, eating, socializing and watching TV and movies. Curiously Beta waves aren't that conducive to prolonged study or activities like factory or office work because at the Beta level, the brain is looking for stimulation. It's as attentive as a butterfly, constantly vigilant for more stimuli and easily bored by monotony. Gamma Waves Gamma waves pulse at a higher rate - from 24 to around 70000 Hz and are normally associated with a 'higher state of consciousness' in that they seem to give us an increased sense of meaning and connectedness to the world around us. Commonly, during times of inspiration and joy, or playi...

  Does anyone actually read anymore? I'm not sure. I do, of course. I read fiction every day. Love it. But I know from my own experience that when I'm surfing the Net, I generally don't read articles all the way through. For most of us the purpose of surfing is get information quickly. And besides, reading off a screen can be tiring. So we tend to skim. Surfing is actually a good word for it. We rarely dive in and explore the sea of information available. We ride the surface of it, soaking in the spray, barely getting our feet wet... Okay, enough of this metaphor! Does anyone actually read articles anymore? I'm not sure. Scientists have proven that we don't actually read words anyway. What we do is recognize phrases - collections of words - that create mental images in our minds. It's those images that we use to absorb the information we need. Not the words at all. Hence the need for quick bites of info - the way news is reported nowadays, in puls...

  It's every writer's dream. To write something that sells millions and pretty much guarantees you a place in history. Now that's sweet - the idea of it anyway. Of course, you have to remember it's every publisher's dream too. I read a publisher's blog recently that said that even in the US, it was rare for any author to sell more than a few hundred of their own books - and only then if they were lucky. I know that mainstream publishers with worldwide distribution often have trouble selling the first print run of what they call their 'B List' authors - a title which pretty much covers the majority of us! That's the reality. For every bestselling author that sells millions of copies of their book, there are perhaps a thousand, more likely ten thousand other authors who get by selling barely enough of their books to justify their publishing deals. Many career writers who receive (often small) advances on their work usually don't start...

  If you want people to buy your work, you need to let them know about it. And you have to balance that with how successful marketing can seem a bit vulgar sometimes. Like the ads on Cable or YouTube or TV - we don't like them but we know that deep down, entertainment wouldn't exist without ads. It couldn't. Nor could magazines or newspapers - or, more especially, the Internet. (Sorry to burst your bubble on this but if you think the Net is in any way free, you're kidding yourself. For a start, how much do you pay your IP for access per month? And how exactly do Facebook, Google and Microsoft survive as the big three - it ain't charity, Bub, I can tell you that much.) We'd like to think, as writers, we can be quiet, reserved, indeed anonymous - and people will somehow hear about us and buy our books - by word of mouth perhaps. By luck or by other people's promotional skills. Alas those days are over - if they ever existed in the first place! ...