Live Write Thrive | Insights, inspiration, and practical advice for writers

Why Writers Should Take the Risk and De-Isolate

July 19, 2021 in Writing for Life with 2 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Lou Normann

Writers isolate. We do.

We want to be alone, we need solitude, we crave the company of one. We all know it.

After all, you’re working on your masterpiece and you can’t be bothered by the phone, the TV, internet, the family, the radio … Okay, well I have heard that many writers write with the tube or music on, streaming media. Stephen King says he writes with hard rock blaring in the background, but most of us need that vacuum of nothingness.

I am one of those. If anything is on while I am writing—it might be the TV with the volume very low just to hear the noise—I’m not paying attention. If you write, the muse needs to run wild, uninterrupted, and be able to fill you with the magic of words, plot and world building.

The art of creation surely stems from ideas springing up in one’s mind and that person’s ability to give it expression, be it literary, musical, painting, or dance. We in the community of the arts want to hone that skill, finalize the product, and share it with the masses. It’s what we do. And most of us do it in isolation until we are ready to unleash.

So, have you considered de-isolation? Continue Reading…

Getting to the Heart of Why You Write What You Write

July 12, 2021 in Writing for Life with 5 Comments

Understanding why you write what you write, and what brings joy to your writing, is key because if you are going to write for life—if writing novels is a career goal for you—then you want to make sure you are writing in a genre that you enjoy and that fulfils your need to be creative.

You motivation plays a big part in your success and happiness.

Sure, you could chose to write something you dislike, and you might not care. Maybe what you write isn’t at all important to you and doesn’t affect how you feel about writing. Some writers only write to make a living and they view it as any other job.

There is nothing wrong with that. But other writers find it difficult to spend hours, weeks, even years of their life writing material that doesn’t interest them. And it often shows in what and how they write.

I firmly believe we should be able to find joy and fulfillment in everything we do in life. And when it comes to writing fiction, I don’t believe any writer should be miserable or hate writing, because they’ve chosen to write something because it sells and can make them a living. Continue Reading…

Considerations When Choosing Your Niche Genre

July 5, 2021 in Marketing and Promotion with 0 Comments

Amazon has many categories and subcategories for fiction, and if you upload your book into the Kindle store and choose general categories, you’re going to be competing with hundreds of thousands of books.

What you want for best discoverability is to have your book in categories that sell well yet don’t have tremendous competition.

All novels can fit in a multitude of subgenres, which we’ll see in just a moment. So while you might have in mind to write fantasy or mystery, which are popular genres that sell well, notching down to a couple of smaller niche genres will help your book have a better chance of coming up high in the search engines.

You need to be willing to adjust the type of novel you write or want to write. You may already be writing in a popular genre, such as romance. But this objective of finding a niche subgenre might mean you have to consider writing something a bit different from what you currently write or want to write. It may mean choosing an entirely different genre altogether.

What’s most important when considering a genre to write in is this: You should feel competent or comfortable with the thought of writing in that genre. Continue Reading…