Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

You pick up a book by an unknown author.  From the cover you have some vague idea it’s a thriller of some sort.  You start reading. Two sisters, Pat and Jo, are on their way back to their mother’s house. They’re arguing, unhappy they shared the same boyfriend but have now both lost him. (You’re thinking, maybe this story’s about love, loss and forgiveness.) When they arrive at the house, the mother’s not there. (Maybe it’s murder mystery.) They call the police but they won’t act on a missing person for 24 hours at least. The phone’s suddenly cut off and they hear scuffling outside. It’s dark now, and the sisters are terrified. (Gasp! Maybe it’s a psycho!) The window upstairs smashes. Timidly, they go to investigate. In the main bedroom, the wind is howling through the broken window. In a mirror, they catch a glimpse of a shadow darting down the corridor. Jo follows but discovers nothing. (Oh no, what if it’s a ghost story.) Pat de...

Follow your instincts we are told. But is this good advice? Instinct helps us to decide what's right and wrong.  It can help us plan a course of action that sits well with our conscience or life-view.  We can do great things following our instincts. But our instincts can be wrong.  We all know of examples when, sometimes, our instincts encourage us to undermine or to hurt other people out of a misguided sense of justice or perhaps even revenge.  Not good. Intuition is different, a more nebulous phenomenon.  It is often a less than rational feeling whereby you're convinced something is the case, or more especially will be the case based on nothing more than a hunch. Recently I experienced an odd sense of foreboding. I was getting into my car and I just knew something bad was going to happen.  I just knew.  I ignored the feeling. Twenty minutes later I was involved in a four car crash in rush hour traffic...

You can always tell when the economic tide turns - whether it be in the short or long term.  There's an easy barometer: Online entrepreneurs and their companies go into overdrive. It's easy enough to understand.  When money gets tight, the bills still have to be paid and salesmen still need to sell their wares, if only to survive. So it is with writers.  Writers are salespeople too. We have to get our work out there - and seen by the people who can help us - and by readers who might want to buy our books. You can't afford to give up on the goal just because it seems too hard.  That's the point.  In times of hardship, you need to push harder.  You need to create your best work - and more of it - and submit it - and publish it yourself on Amazon - with even greater gusto. Because, as any businessperson will tell you, if you can't make it through the lean times, you're not really equipped to live off the fat. ...

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 this 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 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 and ...