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The Need for Novel Ratings

Posted on by Easton Livingston

I am often involved in some interesting exchanges on Facebook. I belong to a couple different writers groups there and I try to help out as best I can if I have something constructive or helpful to say in response to writers and their questions. But a few weeks ago, a a topic was posted that really got the home fires burning. People came down on one side of the other and it was a powder keg topic. Some writers run away from those kind of topics because they don’t want to be involved in any kind of conflict whatsoever. I think that living in a dream world and that you sometimes just have to draw a line in the sand and give an opinion one way or another. This was one of those times and this is exactly what I did in reference to profanity and vulgar story elements in novels and having a rating system.

Self-Publishing Writing Business Writing Life

Cultivating Success Habits

Posted on by Easton Livingston

How do you define success? If you ask five different people you just may get five different answers. Success – if we are looking at this with wise eyes – is a different metric for every individual. But it’s apparent that some people are more successful than others when it comes to that individual metric. People will give all kinds of myriad reasons why that is the case. The truth of the matter is, successful people have successful habits. In these habits have turned their lives into something worth living.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and pressing into different forms of literature to renew my mind so that I will also have success by creating an environment of habits that is conducive to that goal.

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Me and My New Dragon

Posted on by Easton Livingston

As a writer, normally you are working two jobs at once. The job that’s bringing in the money right now and your writing which you would like to bring in the money later on on a full-time basis. At least this is the goal for those of us who truly want to do this for the rest of our lives and make a living at it. That being said, we are always looking for ways to be more productive in our writing.

On the most basic level, that will be how many words that were able to pound out in a day. How can we get the most words into our computers in the most efficient amount of time? Well for me, I have discovered a tool that is a tremendous help and my hope is that as you read this post that it will help you just as much.

All you need to do is purchase a lizard.

Self-Publishing Writing Business Writing Life

Writing, Self-Publishing, and Making Money

Posted on by Easton Livingston

I don’t really like to write too much about self-publishing and the business side of things on my website for a couple of reasons. The first would be I haven’t arrived yet so I can’t be giving out to much advice on the matter. As a matter of fact, I’m restarting everything. However, I have learned much and sometimes when I see something that I know that I know and it can help out someone, I’ll give out my little two bits.

Contrary to what some people say, wanted to make money as a writer is not a sin. It’s not an obligation either. Being self-published, you have to work hard at it. Real hard. There’s nothing wrong with hard work. However, that should be coupled with working smart. That’s what this post is about. There is more than one way to make money as a writer and one of those ways has nothing to do with selling books. It’s has more to do with working smart.

Self-Publishing Writing Business Writing Life

The Quest to Write Faster – Part II

Posted on by Easton Livingston

Last week, I posted how I was on a quest to write faster and I’m still on that quest. This week, I’m going to lay out two more reasons why writing faster is something that I have to do.

I feel I must preface this by saying that writing faster does not mean that you have to write badly. If you write faster, you’re writing more words. When you’re writing more words, you’re seeing the mistakes that you make and every time that you write, those mistakes will begin to dwindle in terms of content, structure, grammar, etc. They say that it takes about one million words for a writer to really get their voice and write well. I don’t adhere to that but if you did believe that then writing faster would simply get you to t hat milestone quicker.

Writing fast does not equate to writing junk and that notion needs to be done away with if you are interested in productivity in your writing. I’ve only been doing this for a little bit now, just scratching the surface really, and I can tell you that this has made a great deal of difference.