So you’ve written a novel, or a story, or a comic, and you want to turn that into a career. What do you do now?

First, you need to assess your mental state. Are you strong enough to handle people seeing it? Commenting upon it? Critiquing it?

If not, don’t worry. Fear is a normal reaction. Listen to it, query it, figure out what you’re afraid of. You might need professional help here, or just a good friend that won’t hurt you.

But let’s assume that you have built up a thick skin. You can handle it. What then? (more…)

Let me share something written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

Now, before I go too far here, let me clear up something. I do own a publishing company. WMG Publishing publishes all of my work. (Eventually, anyway. I do publish some things in anthologies and other venues, sometimes first.) The team there does a huge amount of advertising, usually on a budget, and always effectively. They’re refocusing their efforts because we have a new Shopify store. They’re slowly getting our 1,000 titles on the site.

Note that 1000 titles at the bottom. That’s a thousand titles put out by Kris and her husband Dean Wesley Smith. A thousand titles by two authors. And that’s not even fast. (more…)

I had fears. Big fears. Soul-crushing fears.

Let me give you an example. In 2003, I was a semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. I’d sent in my story (which, BTW, predicted Bluetooth headsets 15 years before they became a thing) after months of sleepless nights and fearing what would happen.

I finished in the top 10, but I didn’t win.

Every quarter, WotF receives some 4 000 entries. My story was in the top-10 of those entries. The top 0,25%. It was judged to be better than 99,75% of all stories submitted that quarter.

But I didn’t win. (more…)

There’s a battle going on right now, between the pro-AI futurists and the anti-AI rights creators. Both sides got some excellent points that you can find online. I’m not going to comment on that.

I will say that I’ve been using the Midjourney Art AI and while it took quite some getting used to (and the results, as yet, can’t compare to a true illustrator – for one, a human illustrator can count the number of fingers on a hand,) there are some things that AI is really, really good at.

Like scraping lots of images and extracting the similarities from them. Which is exactly what we do when we’re doing cover research. Take a look at this:

It may not be the greatest covers in the world, but they’re definitely western covers. That’s the prompt I used “book cover, western”.

If I was writing western, assuming I knew nothing about the genre or the covers, I’d instantly know a few things: (more…)

You’ve finished your first short story. You’re proud, maybe a little scared. And you have no idea what to do next. Should you start editing it? (no) Should you hire an editor? (no) Should you throw it in the trash? (no, no, and a thousand times no)

This is what you do (and I’m fully aware that I’ll get some hate for this, but this is how the writing world works):

You correct any obvious spelling and grammar mistakes, and you send it out to markets that publish this type of story.

Yes, unedited.

Why? Because right now, you’re likely not able to edit it. You don’t have the skills for it. Anything you do to it will make the story worse.

How do you get those skills? (more…)

This is a reply to John Scalzi’s post on not using art AI:s.

I’m going to stick out my head to get it chopped off: I’m somewhat AI-positive myself.

Yes, that includes writing AI:s like GPT3, too, even though I’m a writer.

The reason for this is twofold:

First, I’m leaning against the lessons from the Bittorrent debacle in the late 90’s and early 00′. A lot of powerful people screaming how music piracy would destroy music, how no musician would be able to afford a living, and we’d all lose out.

What happened? (more…)

Another Seth Godin post, because the man’s an underappreciated marketing and business genius.

When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.

Sunk costs are the number one reason for inertia, for failing as a company. You’ve invested so much money, prestige, emotions into something that you can’t change course.

You’re stuck in the past, rather than considering the future. You’re working with old paradigms, trying to get your foot in the door at a Big 5 publishing house when you could just as well go indie, or go with small genre publisher, or share your writings for free and earn money from supporters.

There are thousands of options. Don’t be the one who holds onto hard-won knowledge that’s become outdated!

And read Seth’s take on sunk costs.

1. Stop making excuses and write.
2. Stop whining and write.
3. Stop fucking around and write.
4. I take my own advice.

Read: Nora Robert’s Here’s How I Work on Facebook

As an artist, you are a manipulator. Your job is to make the audience believe you. To make them trust you. And the way to do that, is through imperfections.

Check it out.

First: write.

That’s it. Write. You’ll need to learn a lot, but writing is a craft as much as an art – you’ll learn a ton by just writing.

Second: keep writing.

The most common “mistake” prospective writers do is giving up. Learning is difficult. It can be hard. There will be parts where you feel like everything you do is crap. It might even be crap. (more…)