Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

It's been a interesting week. Hope it's been good for you. Poor Amy Winehouse, eh? I've never heard any of her music but I've followed her in the news. Hard not to. Who knows what she might have done with the rest of her life? Twenty seven is so young - but I knew she was in trouble when she drank a fifth of vodka at London airport at nine o clock in the morning - in public - on her way to rehab... that was less than a month ago. Just goes to show that fame and success don't always bring you what you need to be happy. She was alone on a Saturday night when she died. I'm starting to wonder whether these rehab places actually do any good at all. Their success rate with celebrities seems awfully low. If I ran them, I'd get people interested in gardening or some other seemingly mundane activity. I have a theory that simple things like messing with plants and cutting grass can do heaps more for a troubled soul than any amount of psyc...

Hope you're well and happy. These things: health, perceived wealth, positive mental attitudes etc, are so important to your artistic lifestyle and your productivity. The angst ridden artist rarely achieves much in his self imposed garret, whereas the joyful, purposeful artist who has the courage to let the world impress itself upon his emotions will find plenty to, in turn, express . To business... Last chance to take the Non-Fiction course (already receiving great reviews on FB!). Go here now: To fiction... Talking of reviews, people have been saying some lovely things about my book, Willow , recently. I'll be publishing the reviews on the PSI Kids Blogspot shortly. One esteemed reader pointed out that all of my 'bad guys' are in fact, female. Something I hadn't noticed myself. Makes me wonder what that says about me... Judge for yourself, here: Go here to get your FREE copy of PSI-Kids: Willow . ...

Another special day today. It's the Opening Night of my self penned musical play: KOOL KAFE! Go here for details. BUT - you know me. Never one to let the grass grow under my feet, I've been working on a new project. Namely, a graphic novel. Here's what I have so far: It's early days of course. I just wanted to show you what I've been working on this week - in between tech rehearsals for the play! Oh, and don't forget - you can still get a free copy of my latest novel. Just click on the piccy here: Go here to get your FREE copy of PSI-Kids: Willow . Keep Writing! Rob@easywaytowrite.com THIS WEEK'S ARTICLE: On Me Rob Parnell Readers of this newsletter often tell me they enjoy me talking about myself. I hesitate to do it often. Less is more as they say. But once in a while I guess is okay... People tell me I...

Special day today. I'm giving away free copies of my latest novel! Click on the image below: Feel free to download it, read it, pass it on to your friends and family, send copies to people, link to it in emails, whatever. You can even let me know what you think of it! I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. It's about a young girl's quest to find the murderer of her favorite magazine editor, Leo Forrester. Willow Barke is fifteen. She was orphaned shortly after her birth and doesn't know the identity of her parents - a scenario she isn't particularly happy about. On her quest for justice, she engages the help of a thirteen year old psychic boy and a ghost called Rick. The three of them set out to track a psychopathic murderer who seems to be able to kill people - without actually being anywhere near them! Yikes! Join Willow, Harley, Rick and a host of other fabulous characters on the ...

Yowzah! Watched Me and Orson Welles last night - brilliant movie if you haven't see it - and they used this Yowzah word in it (the film is set in 1937): I didn't realize the word had such old roots! Anyway, talking of literary trivia, I see there's a kerfuffle brewing over the "Oxford Comma". You may be wondering what all the fuss is about... It's that little comma that goes before the 'and' in a list, as in: The protagonist was cold, wet, and tired. Purists like the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White and even The Oxford University have argued that it's not strictly necessary - except where the sense demands it. Oxford Uni has apparently changed its mind and advises students to use its eponymous comma liberally (at least in their internal correspondence.) This - believe it or not - has caused a bit of a storm, at least in Twitterdom. My experience has taught me that Americans favor i...

People wonder why they don't achieve the success they crave. I have a theory about that. I think we all have an inbuilt level of expectation, something rooted deep inside of us. It's often subconscious - and not aligned to what we say to our conscious minds. For instance, we may do all the things that self help books advise: make plans, set goals and visualize the future. But still, our circumstances never seem to change, we don't get any closer to what we think we really want. No amount of conscious striving will get us any closer to our goals if our subconscious mind doesn't believe that change, growth and real progress and success are possible - and that we deserve it. We have baseline expectations about the world that were planted in our brains a long time ago - usually by our parents or by the world we witnessed when growing up. Seemingly inconsequential things like the way our parents and friends talk about life and how unfair it is - or how ord...

Hope you had a great week. We took some time off last weekend and didn't really get back to work until yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. Being a self employed writer is handy for that. If you're getting stressed you can call time out for a few days to recover - and you don't have a boss threatening to sack you if you don't come back into work immediately! I remember those days - actually more than a decade ago now - and I really resented those bosses, in fact I still loathe the whole system that makes us work 9 to 5. To be honest I really don't understand it - but sociologists tell us our society gets what it wants and that we actually want to work 40 hours or more a week for just enough (and sometimes less) money than we need to get by. It fulfills us they say. Oh yeah? I get emails every day from people out there that say the exact opposite... Maybe all these learned sociologists should leave their university campuses an...