THE RYW Blog
WRITING, SELLING, AND BALANCING YOUR LIFE
HOW TO FIND YOUR RIGHT READERS, PART 1
I mentioned before that it was more important to find your right readers, rather than appeal to some generic “universal” readership. Turns out a number of you were interested in getting more information about finding your “right readers.” (I’m going to...
How to get your writing career back on track.
Should you turn the ship around? I’m a plotter. While it’s a definition of my writing style, it bleeds over into my life. I like to plan for things when I can. I set goals. I cascade key performance indicators (sort of.) I like having a game plan. I went into...
Hints, Hooks & Payoffs
The Dreaded Info Dump Imagine you’re at a party, where you don’t know anyone. (Apologies if you’re an introvert like me, where “being at a party where you don’t know anyone” ranks right up there with “skydiving” or “being hunted for sport” on the list of things...
How personal?
How personal should your stories be? This occasionally comes up when I’m working with my coaching clients. For reasons they might not be able to identify, they will feel that their stories are stale, or their endings are safe. (Often, they’re not wrong.) I’ve talked...
3 Things to Know
There are three things you should know to be a successful writer. That may seem facile, clickbait for writing courses and coaches. But it really does boil down to three things: What’s your goal? What’s your writer archetype? What’s your process? They are...
Tap into Psyche
WELCOME TO THE ID. The Oxford dictionary defines the id as “the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest.” In a nutshell, the id is all about subconscious instincts, drives, desires. We might not think about them, but...
Confessions of a former planner junkie.
I used to be obsessed with planners. I watched Bullet Journal videos and beautiful hand-drawn monthly planners. I'd lust after Passion Planners, and check out other people's set up videos every January. I felt sure, every year, that I'd find it: that unicorn...
Goal setting
What's your plan for 2024? In the next few weeks, you’re going to probably see a lot of things about goal setting. Whether they’re calling it resolutions, or planning out next year, or asking “what are your goals for 2024?” it all amounts to the same thing: ...
4 Tricks When You Don’t Know What to Write
Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser (or a plontser – somewhere in between on the spectrum of story planning), there are going to be times when you stare at the page or plot outline and think… I have no idea what comes next. Sometimes you’ll write a...