Patricia Woodside gives you three ways to begin investing in your writing with Funding Your Writing Career.

JA Konrath talks about 7 things a writer can do to get more money in MONEY With a Capital M-O-N-E-Y.

Paperback Writer gives advice on tracking writing-related expenses in March: Expenses.

Holly Lisle provides some ways to prepare for quitting your day job and writing full-time in Dealing With Money.

And Miss Snark reminds us that money flows from the publisher to the agent to the author and never from the author to the agent or the publisher in Let’s Do the Math.

I’ve owned this book for about two years now and I reread it often.  It never fails to inspire me.  Secretly I want to be Lynn Viehl.  When she wrote Way of the Cheetah, she had published thirty-two novels in six years.  She’s up to 38 novels now over 5 genres.  Can you imagine writing so much?

She continues to refine her writing process toward greater efficiency and productivity and she shares her methods and philosophies in this book.
 
How It’s Put Together:  Lynn uses the cheetah as a model for writers and includes examples of the parallels that can be drawn between how a cheetah behaves and how a writer should behave. Each chapter of the book begins with the cheetah example, how it applies to a writer and ends with exercises that the writer can do to practice the advice Lynn provides.

Part One: Eye of the Cheetah

The chapters in this section cover why we write, the importance of telling a story, how to focus to increase your productivity, and how to use self-discipline to write every day.

Part Two: The Writing Savanna

Lynn talks about the lack of respect that writers often experience, especially from family members who think writing is just a cute hobby. She then gives advice on how to set up your environment (your work space, writing equipment like computers and printers, and even your mind and body through diet and exercise) to support and provide legitimacy for your writing. It’s important that you take your work seriously, even if no one else around you does.

Part Three: Running Down the Story

This last section goes into the writing itself. Lynn relates her own process for writing – a very methodical, step-by-step process that she’s used for over ten years. She lists out the ten steps she uses when writing a first draft along with her own daily schedule – writing new material from 4 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with an hour break mid-morning, followed by editing the day’s work from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. or midnight. She wisely recommends that a new writer NOT follow her own schedule, but instead work out a writing schedule that fits his or her own life. She then explains the daily edit process she uses, along with the full manuscript edit that she does when the first draft is complete.

How It Helped Me: This book gave me hope. I don’t have to be the most talented writer out there. I just need to be persistent and productive, because this is where many writers fail. If I keep focused on the story and keep producing the best writing I can, I have a better chance at succeeding than a more talented writer who spends most of his time talking about writing, rather than producing work.  (Come to think of it, Heather Sellers said the same thing in Page After Page.)

As Lynn says in the beginning – by following the advice she details in this book, she’s managed to turn out over thirty novels in six years. You may not achieve that level of productivity or you might surpass it. Either way, this book can point out ways for you to be more efficient and more productive in your writing routine. 

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  This book is good for beginning writers – to help them start out efficiently. It’s also great for more seasoned writers who are looking to increase their productivity and move beyond their current level.

Get this book and read it thoroughly. It’s a great investment in yourself and your writing career for only $9.95. 

Format:  72-page PDF file (e-book)

“You cannot decide once and for all to be a writer.  You must renew your commitment to writing every day.”  -Inspiration & Motivation, Paul Raymond Martin

It can be hard to maintain discipline and keep writing every day.  Little things, and big things, conspire to sap your energy or eat up your time and it is easier to let the writing slide than all the other things in your life. 

When I miss a day of writing, guilt and doubt creep in and I wonder why I ever thought I was a writer.  Wouldn’t a real writer be more disciplined?  Wouldn’t a real writer make the decision to be a writer and then never falter?

Then I came across the quote listed above and the metaphorical light went on.  You mean that I can start each day fresh and decide to be a writer that day?  What a concept!  Choosing to be a writer, one day at a time.

I can do that.

This is a book about encouragement and inspiration from Heather Sellers.  It’s not a lesson on the writing craft, but more about how to craft a life that supports your writing.  Heather’s light and casual tone makes the book a fun read.  The chapters are short and easy to consume in brief sittings. 

How It’s Put Together:  Thirty chapters divided into three sections:

Blank Pages:  Creating a New Writing Self

1. The First Day – overcoming your resistance to writing and change
2. Writing You Don’t Do Alone – writing is both secret and a community activity
3. Lover on the Side, Lover in the Center – is your writing in the center of your heart or do you keep it fondly off to one side?  Both are okay, just understand the choice you are making.
4. Tools 101 -a discussion of the tools a writer really needs (and they’re either cheap or free)
5. Journals – most writers have one or think they should have one.  Heather advises journaling with no rules.  Write daily or don’t.  Write in one or many different journals.  Just write.
6. Sleeping With Books – reading is an essential part of being a writer.  Keep books close at hand and immerse yourself in them.
7. Butt in Chair – learning to sit alone in a room to get the writing done
8. The Russian Lady – do you want to write or do you feel you should write? You can write or not write.  Only you know what is right for you.
9. The Rents – how your parents help define your writing life
10. Anxiety – managing the anxiety inherent in writing
11. Being Away From the Work – how time off from writing can cost you days to get back in groove
12. Reversing the Message – being open to learning and overcoming resistance (fear) that changes good messages to their opposite, such as “You can write” to “You can’t write”

Turning Pages:  How to Maintain Your Commitment to Writing 

1. Blank and Cranky – when your mood is ugly, take time off and wallow.  It will get you through it and back to writing faster.
2. Dare to Suck – don’t let your bad writing scare you away.  Keep writing and get better.
3. Compost – use the material of your life, your history, that has matured and ripened into something rich
4. Dreaming Deep – getting into the Zone, focusing like a child to get at your best material
5. How to Be Unpopular and Why – writing requires a lot of stamina and energy.  To make room in your life to support your writing, you need to say No to activities that take up your time or energy.
6. Passionate Irritation – talk about life less and write more.  Keep the drama on the page.
7. Bad Childhoods – suffering doesn’t matter.  Awareness and insight about people matter.
8. Three Years – give yourself time to develop your writing.  You’re going to doing this for your whole life.  You have time.
9. Little Loops – learning to identify the self-defeating tracks that play in our head and stop us from achieving our writing potential
10. Blocked – a block is a snarl of complex fears and anxieties, but you can learn to manage it
11. When Do You Say It? – finding the courage to say “I am a writer.”

New Pages:  Finding Your Place in the World of Writing

1. Fame and Fortune – they rarely come to a writer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a success doing what you love
2. Mentors – finding a mentor by becoming ready or “mentor-able”
3. Rejection, Bliss, Speeding Tickets – learning to accept rejection as part of the writing life
4. False Modesty – knowing what you do well and acknowledging it is not a bad thing
5. Workshops – they can help you learn to deal with criticism and make better mistakes in your writing
6. Ambition – understanding what kind of writing life you want to have
7. A Wave Suspended – maintaining a state of passion and power just waiting to be unleashed and taking the next steps in your writing life

In each chapter she shares examples from her own life and follows it up with exercises that the reader can follow to try out her advice. 

Each chapter has from 1-5 exercises and they are unique.  Everything from writing a short love letter to your novel (treating it like a treasured lover you can’t wait to spend time with) to writing down a To-Do list of everything in your life that you need to do (all those errands and chores that collectively keep you from writing) and then burning it (so you can learn to say no to things that eat up your time and then use that time for writing instead).

How It Helped Me:  I read writing books for mostly one reason – I’m looking for the perfect “system”.  The process or way of writing that, if followed correctly, will result in the perfect novel, written in one clean draft, polished and ready to be snapped up by an ecstatic agent who vows it will sell within minutes of taking it on.

It’s a pipe dream, I know.  But I’m still looking for that system.  I want a good repeatable process that turns out the best book I can write, one after another.  Reading writing books give me a glimpse into the process that other writers follow.  Into how they think and get through the rough spots.

From Heather, I learned that she has learned to make writing part of her every day life.  That she loves books and even sleeps with them scattered about her bed.  That she waited a long time to call herself “Writer”.  That she has doubts about her own abilities, but keeps on writing anyway. That sounds a lot like me.

One of the greatest mantras to remember as a writer is written on page 115.  “The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself.”  In this chapter, Heather talks about developing the habit of practicing your writing.  Of doing it regularly, just like musicians, and athletes, and dancers.  We all assume that because we learn to speak and write early in life, we are automatically qualified to be a writer.  But the truth is that writing takes a lot of practice.  And one of the best kept secrets?  A writer who practices writing faithfully can often be more successful than a really talented writer who only writes when the mood strikes him.  There’s much to be said for dogged persistence and Heather encourages the reader to practice writing.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  Anyone who is looking for a positive, happy writing life.  If your writing has been drudgery and you have to drag yourself to your writing chair, pick up Page After Page and see if it doesn’t put some fun back into your writing.

One of the hardest things for writers to do is develop a daily writing habit.  Some self-help books advise comparing it to eating.  “You wouldn’t forget to eat each day” or “You wouldn’t tell yourself ‘I don’t have time to eat at all today so I’ll just skip it’”.  No, they say, you’d make time to eat, even if it was five minutes of fast food while running errands.  And likewise, they say, you would make time for writing as well, if it was really important to you.

So let’s look at eating every day as a blueprint for writing every day.

Breakfast – many people allow time to eat first thing in the morning, either before they get started with their day, while driving to work, or while sitting at their desk.  Can you do the same with writing?  Allow yourself 15 minutes to write as part of your getting-ready routine.  I don’t advise trying to write while driving, but you could speak notes or dialogue into a mini-recorder while driving.  You could also rehearse your next scene in your head, so you’re ready to commit it to paper when the opportunity arises.

Lunch – Lunch is sometimes a meal out with friends or coworkers, a meal eaten by yourself or food consumed at your desk.  Can you have lunch with writing friends and talk about your novel, a scene, the progress you’re making?  If you’re eating by yourself, bring along a notebook to jot down ideas for character development.  If you’re eating at your desk and have Internet access (and your employer allows it), do some research for your current project.

Dinner – This meal ranges from take-out at the drive-thru to an hour spent at the table with your family over a home-cooked meal, discussing the day’s events with many variations in between.  If your evening is busy with errands, can you plan a scene in your head or jot notes while waiting to pick up kids?  If you’re having a sit-down meal with the family, can your children or husband clean the table and do the dishes while you write for a few minutes?

Snacks – Try a few minutes of writing while waiting for popcorn to pop or for the kids to finish their snacks.  Getting yourself a little something to eat?  Give yourself a quick writing break as well.  Five minutes of writing at different points throughout the day will slowly add up to page after page. 

Make writing a habit by fitting it into the small spaces in your busy life.  If writing is food for your soul, don’t let a day go by without indulging in some yummy words.

This is one of those very rare books – the kind you see advertised in a magazine and then decide to buy just based on the ad. How often does that happen? For me, not that often, but this ad did the job and got me to buy the book. And I’m glad I did.

Write is a Verb is all about motivation – doing whatever works for you to get the writing done. Since we are all unique individuals, we all have unique problems with motivations and writer’s block. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution to get you writing again, though many people will quote “rules” at you and insist that if you will just follow them you’ll start writing again.

Bill O’Hanlon’s been a psychotherapist for many years and he knows that what works for one person, won’t necessarily work for someone else. So what Bill has done in Write is a Verb is to give you multiple methods to get you writing again. At least one will be the right tool for you.

How It’s Put Together
The book has ten chapters and a bonus DVD inside the back cover.  Each chapter has exercises to follow to apply the material from that chapter and Key Points at the end of the chapter to summarize what has been covered.

Chapter 1: The Juice – Finding the Energy to Write
Bill covers the four types of writing energies, motivational patterns and how fear can tell you what your writing problem is. The motivational patterns discussion was very interesting for me. I discovered that Negative Present Motivation is a primary driver for me – “I don’t like having a day job where I work for someone else, so I’m going to write myself out of that job into being a full-time writer.”

The next seven chapters are devoted to different methods to get your writing done:

Chapter 2: Writing Begets Writing – Bum glue and moving fingers will get your writing done

Chapter 3: Do One Thing Different – Changing one small thing to get your writing done

Chapter 4: Baby Steps, Baby Steps – The small-steps method for getting your writing done

Chapter 5: The Promise Method - Using commitments to get your writing done

Chapter 6: The Solution-Oriented Method – Revisiting what has worked in the past to get your writing done

Chapter 7: Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly – Embracing mistakes, failure, and imperfection to get your writing done

Chapter 8: It’s Not About You, It’s All About You – Taking the focus off yourself to overcome writer’s block and other barriers to writing

Chapter 9: Clueless in Publishing Land – Three crucial tips for getting published
Chapter 9 is off-topic from the rest of the material on motivating yourself.  It covers the publishing aspect of a book thoroughly from the perspective of differentiating yourself with a platform, positioning and your proposal.  It’s valuable material though, and he goes into great depth to help you determine your unique focus or slant that will help you stand out from other writers.

Chapter 10: Common Writing Poisons and Their Antidotes – How to challenge unhelpful ideas or attitudes that will kill your writing dreams and ambitions.This final chapter covers five poisons that we allow into our thinking:

• Perfection
• “I don’t have anything original to say”
• “I don’t have time to write”
• “This will never get published, so why bother?”
• “I’m not inspired/in the mood to write”. 

He provides antidotes to these poisonous thoughts to help you get writing again.

Bonus DVD – The DVD contains a video of one of Bill’s writing and publishing boot camps along with electronic versions of all the exercise worksheets in the book.  Very convenient for printing out the worksheets, so you don’t have to write in the book itself. 

The DVD also contains six exclusive bonuses – handouts from Bill’s workshops:

1 – The 10 Ps to Getting Your Book Written & Published
2 – How to Research the Market and the Competition
3 – Crafting an Origin Story
4 – Four Essential Nonfiction Book Proposal Elements
5 – How to Get an Agent
6 – The Money & Legal Stuff About Trade Books

How It Helped Me:  Chapter 3 – Do One Thing Different was the most helpful to me.  It leads you through discovering the patterns that work for you (in setting, timing, tools, sound, people, and several others) and the patterns that don’t.  I discovered that while I tell myself that I can write with the TV on in the background, my reality is that TV distracts me and my work is of poor quality, if I get any writing done at all, while it is on.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  Anyone who is having trouble with getting motivated to write can use this book.  Because Bill outlines so many different methods, there is sure to be one listed that can help you.  The key to making the book useful is to actually complete the exercises, rather than just reading them.If you’ve been struggling to get yourself to write, take a look at Write is a Verb.