Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

So - we made it to the end of the year.  I hope last year was all that you wanted - and needed - from your present life. We often think that the new year is a time to recycle all those old resolutions.  I think this can be a mistake.  Because we then send a message to our brains that goals and ambitions are to be confined to January - and forgotten when the year gets under way! The time to make resolutions is every day.  Just five minutes in the morning - say at nine o clock - spent making a short list of the things that are important to you - bearing in mind the long term, as well as the short, will pay huge dividends when it comes to reviewing your progress towards your dream life. Year's end is really only a time to ask: Am I living my dream life?  And if not, what can I do to make that happen by the end of next year? Usually any kind of success these days implies self promotion... Writers are often expected to self-promote, either thr...

Probably the most consistent problem I'm asked to help with is sustaining the momentum required to finish writing projects. Writing a book is apparently the secret wish of 90% of the population - as though writing a book somehow validates us as humans - and perhaps makes us a little more immortal. But only around 5% of people will ever rise to the challenge - and even they will falter more times than not. Of these would be writers, less than one percent will ever finish their books - and just to be depressing now, only a handful of that one percent will ever be published. Faced with t his punishing reality, how do you find the strength to carry on writing? Let me answer by telling you a story. Once, a very long time ago, I asked a practising motivational guru how I could become rich. I say it was a long time ago because in those days I was very cynical and I asked the question as more of a challenge than a query. The guru gave me a quick answer: "Want to be ric...