Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

How do you remain happy? How do you get what you want? Success is often a perception. You either believe you have it or more often you hate yourself for feeling like a failure. Here are my Writing Academy seven rules to live by if you truly want to feel good about yourself - and achieve your most cherished goals and dreams. 1. You are the expert on you You don't need anyone to tell you what you're like or what your are capable of.    Nobody else knows you as well as you do.    Therefore, you are the only person who can and should decide what is right for you. No-one else's opinion matters. 2. You are not broken; you do not need to be 'fixed'. This may come as a shock to your friends and family - who probably never tire of listing your faults and reminding you of your failures! You have an essential right to be exactly who you are, and decide what you want to do with your life. You must embrace all of the qualities you possess, good and bad. It is your...

  Getting what you want in this world requires an act of will over nature. If the natural un-tethered state of things is to move toward chaos, then humanity is here to inject order. And to create order we must make decisions about what makes our lives better, more comfortable and more effective, if possible without causing too much strife and discomfort to nature, to what's already good, or to those around us. It's all very well having a Zen-like respect for the universe, and a belief in karma, but we humans are designed to be creative. And as we know from physics, nothing is created from nothing - it is all disassembled and reorganized energy. In this sense, all creativity is disruptive. And often the most disruptive thing a writer can do is to insist on having a writing space somewhere in their living quarters! I fought for years to get my own writing space. It was hard when I had no writing career to speak of. Trying to convince partners that I should...