Every Monday morning, I go LIVE on Facebook to talk about the creative mindset. Following the gorgeous quote by Anais Nin – Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage – I talk about fear, cultural and family conditioning, and, of course, courage in this first video.
This month, I had the pleasure to interview Monica Leonelle, another soul I met in the self-publishing community, whose new book Should I Publish Traditionally or Independently? And Other Relevant Questions To Consider When Writing Your Dream Book was published only two weeks ago.
Monica is a USA Today bestselling author best known for her book publishing and business expertise at TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com. Her nonfiction series, Growth Hacking for Storytellers, has sold over 40,000 copies and helped thousands of writers write faster, become better storytellers, and find their way to success.
Before becoming an independent author, Monica led digital marketing efforts at Inc. 100 companies such as Hansen’s Natural and Braintree. She’s been an avid blogger of marketing and business trends since 2007. Her ideas have been featured in AdAge, The Huffington Post, the AMEX OpenForum, GigaOm, Mashable, Social Media Today, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Monica lives in a very, very old, 3-story home in St. Louis, MO with her husband and adorable westie, Mia. Visit TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com to receive free resources and email updates about books, business, marketing, and more.Read More →
Remember that crazy time I posted a Dutch interview… The horror, right?! Lucky for us, Maria Staal, together with Eva Kattz, has another book out, and this one’s in English!
Eva and Maria are two friends who, unknown to each other, both set out to write fiction. Eva wrote a number of short stories and novelettes and became reasonably comfortable playing around with words. However, any attempts beyond 30K words inevitably fell apart. Maria at least managed to make it to a 50K words first draft, but without the help of a decent outline, her story became hopelessly stranded in a curiously plot-less world.
While Eva went looking for a How To book or course to help her finish her more extensive outlines, Maria realised she was so new to fiction that she still adhered to the Greatest Myth in Writer’s Land, otherwise known as ‘a magnificent story will come to you if you just sit down behind the keyboard and write!’ They decided to throw their resources together and soon discovered they could have been far more creative and productive years before, if they just had known how to outline properly.
Together they developed a new writing technique that starts where all the other How To Write books stop. Eva’s intuitive approach and vast knowledge of writing techniques perfectly combined with Maria’s practical, pioneering spirit. Now, they both use their own Fiction Builder method to write successful genre fiction.
Our book is a guide for every author with loads of good story ideas, but who struggles with completing an actual first draft. They end up thinking they are ‘bad’ writers, or, worse, that they lack talent. Fiction Builder! is meant to show these authors that there’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ writer. Anyone can develop their writing skills, and plotting is a vital part of that.
This month, we’ll be diving deep with Sherrie McCarthy, a writer who currently lives aboard her boat Falkor with her family. Sherrie believes passionately in the ability of creativity to heal. She also knows that life is messy and wonderful and painful and phenomenal. And writing helps sort all of those things out, which is why she created Creative Mermaids.
Creative Mermaids is about helping creatives dive deep to help them find the real reasons they are not creating. It’s about having the tools to bust past those blocks and living a creative and vibrant life on your terms.
Creative Mermaids is different because I believe in diving deep. I don’t think the reason we are not creating is as simple as saying we need to manage our time better. Self-sabotage is real and it’s insidious. Our brain likes to lie to us about the real reasons we’re not living the life we want to live. Fear of success is just as prevalent as fear of failure. But in this social media world we also have the fear of a very public failure and success. It amplifies everything. In my courses, books
I am a big fan of Joanna Penn. I listen to her podcast The Creative Penn almost religiously, and admire the wild generosity with which she shares her knowledge about the world of indie publishing like nothing else. Naturally, when I heard her talk about her new book The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey
Joanna Penn is about as honest and open about what it’s like to be a writer as it gets, and the same goes for The Successful Author Mindset: A Handbook for Surviving the Writer’s Journey
The book is divided in three parts—Mindset Aspects of Creativity and Writing; Mindset Aspects after Publishing; and Tips for Success on the Author Journey—and in each part, Penn tackles the issues most associated with each of these. Read More →
