Review of Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Hey folks

As you can probably guess by the title this post will be about Heidi Grant Halvorson's book 'Succeed'. (Or so I thought until it turned out my own experiences could become a prime example of why Grant Halvorson makes such a good point in her book). Succeed is one of the quickest and most useful reads (at least in the first third) I've read in the past few weeks (and if you're following my blog you'll know I've been reading a lot. This read at least 1 hour a day thing is working out well for me).

It's my fourth finished book in 2019. (Yes I'm just showing off with this statement.)

Anyway. I never thought I'd relate to someone who uses their children in examples as much as Grant Halvorson does. Seriously. There is something about them in almost every chapter post the one-third mark of the book. This doesn't so much offend me (no matter what that first line might sound like) as it actually intrigues me because this author (as opposed to other self-help book writers) brings almost as many day-to-day examples from her own life than just random laboratory situations into the book. That is enjoyable and reads a bit like a memoir rather than strictly aloof science.

I digress with the examples though. We want to get to the meat of the story.

Let's start with the most important message of the book: It is better to be someone who wants to learn and improve rather than someone who just wants to be good. Why? Because being good leaves you in a huge depression if at some point it gets so hard you're no longer incredibly good or find your work easy.

Case in point: WriteBot.

WriteBot has a history of finding things very easy and not challenging enough. WriteBot does... a little less than its best and still passes every test and project and problem with flying colours. Until it doesn't. And if it doesn't it gets depressed and can't work for months. Story of my life. You'd think a mechanical entity that lives only to write would do great at writing... and yet often there are problems not pre-configured in WriteBot's algorithms. These make WriteBot insanely unhappy when they cannot be solved as near-instantly as all other problems.

A lot of these effects (depression or feeling unmotivated or like a failure) come from what Grant Halvorson calls 'be-good' goals - which are essentially there to allow you to show off. In fact this 'be-good' mindset is a concept she talks about a lot - you have a certain skillset and you're good and you strive to show everyone how good you are. This works when you're trying to hit deadlines maybe or when you want quick results. Any results in these cases is often better than none. Not so in other areas of life/work.
Grant Halvorson then goes on to reinforce (for me) what I've learned after I realized being-good (her label for the kind of thinking described above) just didn't work. The only way to continue after you're somewhat successful and want to reach that HUNDRED MILE ALL IMPORTANT GOAL is to change your mindset to a learning mindset. This, Grant Halvorson calls getting-better mindset, as opposed to the be-good show off mindset mentioned above.

The rest of the book basically builds on those two concepts. There are optimists who often rush rush rush through tasks and do them well but maybe not excellent (be-good mindset). They won't put much thought into what they are doing because they believe they will succeed either way. And on the other side of the spectrum you have pessimists. The ones who think of everything that could go wrong and work much more conservatively. Those are often the people who take their time and try to get-better at things.

Of course it's not that simple. There are other factors to take into consideration as well but this post is simply an overview of the most important point in the book.

That being said... I do recommend you read it. It's short. It's written in an easy-to-understand way (while still being backed by scientific data of Grant Halvorson's and her colleagues' experiments) and the first third in which she explains why be-good can sometimes have disadvantages to getting-better goals is really worth it. The last two thirds are somewhat vague and perhaps a bit rushed for the pages they are given but all in all the book has given me some good information with which to work on my own goal setting skills. I hope it might do the same for you!

Have a good night/day!
WriteBot.

PS: tomorrow I'ma make Kimchi. I'm hyped.

The Best of Non-Fiction 2018 (complete list)

Hey folks

This is a complete list of the two posts The Best Non-Fiction of 2018 Part I and The Best Non-Fiction of 2018 Part II combined and sorted by best book in each category (also sorted by best category) for your convenience.

Top Tier:

The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi: I love this book. There has been no better book in my life ever before. I actually loved it enough to buy a paper copy after reading it on my Kindle just to have it on my shelf (and that doesn't happen very often at all). This book (not 12 Rules) IS the Holy Grail of learning to live with yourself and working through/DESPITE your past traumas in a non-pretentious way. It refers heavily to the philosophy of Alfred Adler and I promise you it is impactful. If you read any book from my list at all then it should be this one.

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz: Another book right up there with The Courage to be Disliked and How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's on an entirely different topic (The 10X Rule was inspired by it) but so so worth it! If you read two books from my list it should be The Courage to be Disliked and this one. It's so much more accessible than the somewhat reckless airy-fairy tips of The 10X Rule and written so much more humanly relatable. In essence it's a simple guide on how to improve your life by dreaming well (however without any affirmation or visualization crap like you find in some of the more etheric self-help books) and by working on bigger and more fulfilling projects than you believed yourself capable of/could even conceive of.

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy: This one was great and definitely deserves the light red colour. In fact it should probably be pink to do it justice.
The title of the book refers to its content: Do your most important task (the biggest frog) first. I wrote a full blog post about it here: Review of Eat That Frog but for the sake of this list the gist of why it is so impactful is that:
a.) Brian Tracy does not waste words. He starts with relevant information and sticks to it. He does not add any fluff to his text and stays fully on course throughout. This is why the book is only 100 pages long (depending of course on your format) but it's so densely packed with information on how to get started and finish your most important projects it's 100+% worth the money spent on it.
b.) Tracy's tips are practical and can be used immediately. Do you want to become more productive in your most important work (your biggest frog)? Then read this book.

12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson: This was the first non-fiction of 2018 I actually LOVED. You can say what you want about JP as a person (and I'll not join that particular debate) but 12 Rules is highly relevant to everyone who wants to improve themselves/their outlook on life and the world. Of course, not all Peterson writes is Holy Grail material, and I would argue not much actually is, BUT in every chapter, there are nuggets you can pick up to improve your life and relationships. You can pick and choose what you wish to incorporate in your life or not. As such, the book is definitely worth a read. 

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: It took me a long time to get to this book. I knew it existed for almost a decade but couldn't bring myself to read it because the title sounds pretentious and fake as all heck. However... after hundreds and hundreds of recommendations I decided to give it a try... and it's great! It truly is an amazing book and not in the least pretentious or fake. A lot of people think 'But it will teach me to be false in order to make friends' but FAR FROM IT! The main body of the books deals with no-brainer tips everyone knows (such as smiling at people to lift both of your spirits and taking care of yourself) but needs to be reminded of because they are so easily overlooked. It also teaches you that when you are fake people will know and they won't respond to you at all - so it's the opposite of what a lot of people fear the book will try to make them do. I'll add my voice to this particular book's value: It's definitely worth it.


Second Tier:

Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande: This book is great! It talks a lot about the day-to-day business of writing and the fears you might encounter (and how to conquer them!). I recommend this for anyone who wants to be an artist.

Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande: The same as above but not focused on writing alone. It's a great book for everyone who feels slightly lost in life (I know I do...)

The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone: I've written a longer post about this one here. It's quite good if you want to have an overview of how much work you will be required to do in order to get ahead. It tells you basically to multiply every effort by 10 if you truly want to succeed. If you plan to contact 10 customers in order to sell your product, instead make it 100. If you plan to make 100,000 extra money the next year, plan to make 1,000,000 instead. In essence, it is better to fall short of HUGE goals than small goals. I believe this should be read once simply so you get the concept (and possibly change your working style for the better).

Give and Take by Adam Grant: A great book about leadership and becoming successful. The most important message of this book is (obviously) the importance of giving - not just in order to get, but simply to enhance your life. The book attempts to give you a blueprint on how much giving you should do and when/how to expect something back (to take).

Undoing Depression by Richard O'Connor: Highly useful/relevant if you struggle with mental health issues. You'll have to read it yourself to see the value of it. I simply can't sum it up well enough. Suffice to say it shows you how to deal with your dark thoughts and how to improve your life even if your depression cannot be entirely cured.

Atomic Habits by James Clear: A long review can be found here. This book is definitely worth the buy and read. It will reach you to REALLY improve your life - and in a sustainable way rather than all those 'just change/just do it' books. Any change happens gradually and in increments. Atomic Habits drives home that point and shows you how you can make habit changes permanent. It's really a useful book!

The Hungry Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet: This is a bit more in the health niche - specifically how the brain regulates how hungry we feel at any given point and what drives people to overeat. About 60% of it are incredibly useful and highly informative but the last three or so chapters drag. Here's a complete Review of The Hungry Brain. I personally read this book because I tend to stuff my face if there's something tasty around. It's gotten much better in recent years (after I started focusing on my health) but I notice that when there's something really tasty it's often very difficult to stop myself eating more than my stomach feels comfortable with. This book then was a way for me to understand why this happens (when consciously I don't want/need any more food but I still feel the urge to eat) and it did it's job! Recommended also if you're trying to lose weight!


The Runner-Ups:

Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker: This one is actually good! It looks at what successful people do different than most (spoiler: the most important difference as Simon Sinek says: They have a WHY that affects other people) that leads to them being successful in the first place. It shows you how many of your learned mantras about success (just imagine yourself being successful already!) are wrong and do not help you in any way. You should rather look at your own skills and/or weaknesses to find things you excel at. 

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy: On the coattails of James Clear's Atomic Habits. A longer review again here. I would not read The Compound Effect without having first read Atomic Habits. All the concepts of TCE are related to (and mostly the same as) Atomic Habits - but it's not explained or written as well by Darren Hardy as by James Clear. This book is best read to deepen your understanding of atomic habits after you've read James Clear. I sort-of recommend it but it's not a necessary read if you've read Atomic Habits.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron: This book was very hyped... but I found it mediocre at best. It has some good ideas but isn't in any way exceptional. It's a good read, still, and I do recommend at least looking at it to see if the content speaks to you, but don't force it if you don't like it.

A Handbook for the Productive Writer by Bryan Collins: Meh. I wouldn't recommend this. It's just a whole lot of blabla you can actually get for free on the Internet (and concisely from my writing tips page: http://jasmingelinck.com/resources).

The Science of Rapid Skill Acquisition by Peter Hollins: I don't actually remember this book at all. I think it's just one of those publish-as-many-as-you-can-to-make-money life-advice craps. Not recommended.
As you might notice there is one book (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F****) that I left out. This is intentional. I did not like this book and found it useless. That's why it doesn't even get a spot on the runner-ups.

WriteBot.

The Best of Non-Fiction 2018 (Part II)

Hey folks!

Today's entry is an addition to my recent The Best Non-Fiction Books of 2018 post. I wrote the other on December 20 so there was still plenty of time to read more - which I did. This one is supposed to simply serve as an update to highlight the last three non-fiction books I managed to finish in 2018 still.

Here we go - starting with the most useful book first.

(Note: the key to this list is as before the colour. Red = good. Light red = amazing. Black = don't bother with this one.)

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy: This one was great and definitely deserves the light red colour. In fact it should probably be pink to do it justice.
The title of the book refers to its content: Do your most important task (the biggest frog) first. I wrote a full blog post about it here: Review of Eat That Frog but for the sake of this list the gist of why it is so impactful is that:
a.) Brian Tracy does not waste words. He starts with relevant information and sticks to it. He does not add any fluff to his text and stays fully on course throughout. This is why the book is only 100 pages long (depending of course on your format) but it's so densely packed with information on how to get started and finish your most important projects it's 100+% worth the money spent on it.
b.) Tracy's tips are practical and can be used immediately. Do you want to become more productive in your most important work (your biggest frog)? Then read this book.

The Hungry Brain by Stephan J. Guyenet: This is a bit more in the health niche - specifically how the brain regulates how hungry we feel at any given point and what drives people to overeat. About 60% of it are incredibly useful and highly informative but the last three or so chapters drag. Here's a complete Review of The Hungry Brain. I personally read this book because I tend to stuff my face if there's something tasty around. It's gotten much better in recent years (after I started focusing on my health) but I notice that when there's something really tasty it's often very difficult to stop myself eating more than my stomach feels comfortable with. This book then was a way for me to understand why this happens (when consciously I don't want/need any more food but I still feel the urge to eat) and it did it's job! Recommended also if you're trying to lose weight!

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F**** by Mark Manson: I'm not going to say much about this. I already did a whole review and my opinion hasn't changed. This book is definitely overrated. It's not 'cool' or useful simply because it has a swear word in the title and foul language throughout. It simply re-chews and re-chews what other people have said much better already. Don't buy it. (Or do if you think you'll like it. It's your money!)

These three books about sum up my reading in the last two weeks of 2018 (good bye good year!). I read a fourth non-fiction book actually but it's even less worth talking about than The Subtle Art. It was so generic and yada yada (with the author actually recommending things like neurolinguistic programming (which is not scientifically backed to be effective at all) and psychosynthesis (which deals with personality and the human soul - the soul as if it's a scientific thing one can measure)).

Anyway! That about sums up my experience with non-fiction in 2018. I've recently read another non-fiction (my first this year!) which was Seth Godin's This is Marketing (The colour key doesn't count for this one!). It's not as good as The Dip but there will be a blog post about it on Monday where I'll be explaining my opinion on it in more detail.

What have you been reading so far? Do you have any suggestions as to books I might like considering what I've read in the last year? I'm always happy to receive suggestions! (Although my reading list is already chock-full.)

I hope you had a great first week of 2019!
WriteBot.

2019 Reading List (Updated!)

Hey everyone

I've settled on the last details of my reading list. In this version I have two different lists actually - one fiction and one non-fiction.

Here it is! (By the way the reason that the authors of these books are rarely listed is because it's quite easy to find the book even by the title alone.)

1. Undersea Fleet (I find it so difficult to get a copy of this one!)
2. Dark Intelligence, by Neil Asher
3. Ascension (Water) (Another one where it's almost impossible to get a copy!)
4. Boundary
5. The Dark Tower series (These should all probably be under their own numbering...)
6. Halfway Human
7. Black Leopard, Red Wolf
8. The Departure
9. Spellslinger 5
10. The Abyss Surrounds Us
11. The Deep Woods
12. The Dreaming Stars
13. Smoke in the Sun
14. Of Fire and Stars
15. The World Walker
16. The Assassin's Curse
17. Forgotten Places
18. When the Future Comes too Soon
19. Sky Dancer
20. Sky Song
21. The Winter of the Witch
22. Tides of the Titans
23. Darkdawn
24. Lonesome Dove
25. All the Crooked Saints
26. Lotus War 1 (Jay Kristoff)
27. The Man in the High Castle
28. Godblind Anna Stephens
29. China Mountain Zhang
30. The Shattered Gates (Rifter)
31. Journey to the Center of the Earth
32. 8000 Miles Under the Sea
33. Nightflyers G.R.R.M.
34. Among Others - Jo Walton
35. Wildcards
36. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
37. Muse of Nightmares
38. The Stand
39. Sunsurge Quartet 1
40. Sunsurge Quartet 2
41. Sunsurge Quartet 3
42. Sunsurge Quartet 4
43. Children of Dagon
44. Sphere (Crichton)
45. Into the Drowning Deep
46. The Swarm
47. The Deep (Cutter)
48. The Andromeda Strain
49. Foundryside
50. Outside the Gates
51. Arkad's World

1. The Compound Effect (I have listened to this as audio but would like to read it as well. I am not great with audio books and probably missed quite a bit!)
2. A book about investment (That's not a title but simply what I'm trying to find at the moment!)
3. The Hungry Brain (I'm actually reading this one right now...)
4. Brain Food
5. Fasting and Eating for Health
6. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying
7. The Complete Guide to Fasting
8. Autobiography of Black Hawk
9. The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler
10. Autobiography of a Geisha
11. Wishcraft
12. The Evolution of God
13. The Future of Humanity
14. Start with Why
15. Leaders Eat Last
16. Total Focus by Brandon Web
17. Focal Point
18. Alfred Adler - The science of living
19. Man's Search for Meaning
20. The Confidence Gap
21. Think (Simon Blackburn)
22. The Slight Edge
23. This is Marketing
24. 1001 Ways to Market your Book
25. The 4 Hour Work Week
26. On Gestalt Therapy
27. Life 3.0
28. Creating A Life Worth Living
29. How to Be Rich
30. Learned Optimism

A lot of especially the non-fiction books in my list are books recommended in other books. These include How to Be Rich and Learned Optimism (which IMO sound like two great reads!).

What do you think? Do you have anything else to add to either list? I always welcome recommendations!

Did you make a list of books to read in 2019 yourself? How many are you trying to read?

Leave a comment below!

Have a good night/day! WriteBot.

Review of Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog

Hey folks.

I finished Eat That Frog as the 72nd book this year. I thought I wouldn't get above 71 but Eat That Frog was short and... very useful. I sped through it and plan to read it a few more times (I rarely re-read books in general so that's saying something).


All right. Let's talk about frog eating.

I guess the first thing you have to know that this isn't some weird book of the French culinary art. A frog (in Brian Tracy's case) is a task. A big frog is a big task and tadpoles are small and (often) unnecessary tasks. This means when he's talking about eating frogs he refers to effectively tackling tasks at work (or home).

Two things I immediately liked about the preface (surprisingly because usually I skip prefaces or am bored throughout them):

1. He promises not to waste time explaining what others have said already -the psychological and emotional explanations for procrastination and poor time management. He goes straight to the point - straight to the reason why most people bought his book.

2. The hook (the core of the book) is right there in the first few paragraphs: The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life. (This is also, coincidentally, one of the most useful sentences in the book.)

Already in the first two pages of Eat the Frog it is clear Brian Tracy knows what he is talking about and it's also clear to the reader (in this case me) that their time will not be wasted. In the first chapter I already learned more from two sentences than I did in the whole of Success Principles. These sentences are:

1. [...] your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop. (Later on in the book he mentions this again but in a more poetic way: The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus - a quote apparently stolen from Alexander Graham Bell but cited. Tracy's a polite thief let's say.)

2. Do something every day that moves you towards your goal.

Here are more:

3. The second rule of frog-eating is this: If you have to eat a live frog (by which Tracy means 'do a hard but important task') at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for long.

4. Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

5. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident, and more powerful you feel about yourself and your work.

6. One of the keys to living a wonderful life [etc etc.] is to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs.

7. A simple formula I created out of a longer sentence in the book: Decision + Discipline + Determination = success-habits (concentration / focus)

What else can you learn?

You can train yourself through repetition and practice to overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly. This involves a lot of planning as good plans = ability to get straight to work = no need to procrastinate. A lot of people seem to procrastinate because they don't know what to do/how to reach their goal - because they haven't planned how to achieve it.
I will try one of Tracy's tips immediately: Write a LIST of what you plan to do the next day to get further along with your goal
-> list of everything you want to do in the (near-ish) future
-> monthly list (made at the end of one month for the next)
-> weekly list (made at the end of the week for the next)
-> daily list (made at the end of one day for the next day)

As a person who suffers from depression a lot, it can be very harsh to have nothing to do, to feel unanchored, and I spent a lot of time chasing new experiences just to feel 'occupied', but after years of this not working out, I've begun to try new things. These new things involve planning my day (and meals, etc.) ahead, which means most of what I'm doing during any given day will be worked out by the time dawn comes around and which in turn makes downtime less painful to my brain. And if there is (unscheduled) downtime then the best way to spend it is to read on new tactics to plan/achieve my goals.

This daily planning also includes (as the book suggests as well) to have everything prepared for the day before you start. All your utensils, notebooks with thoughts, resources, and other material should be right there even before the work day starts. This puts a brake on procrastination, as it can be daunting to search for material, and it will already take a lot of your energy. If you did it the day before in your planning phase, then in the morning when you sit down, everything is ready to go, go, go!

Another useful insight connected to the daily planning mentioned above:

The 10/90 rule. The first 10% of your available time spent planning will increase your effectiveness of actual work. It will save you some 90% of the time necessary to finish a job once you started it.

These are the most useful tips in the book. They can be applied almost instantly and you'll immediately see the results (I have personally incorporated a few of these tricks in my daily schedule already and I've noticed a difference in my mood/productivity).

There are however much more tips than just these but I didn't want this post to be a replica of the book itself. All I can say is that Eat That Frog is definitely worth it. It is an incredibly useful book and it's so short you can read it in two hours (which means you can re-read it easily and quickly should you suddenly despair about your work at some point). It's right up there on my Best Non-Fiction Books of 2018 list in a very bright red.

It definitely gets a recommendation from me if you're one of the people who always want to improve themselves and how they work. It's a more than just 'useful' resource to have on your shelf and I'm certain to try out more of Brian Tracy's books as a result of reading Eat That Frog.

Do you think you want to try out Eat That Frog? You can get it on Amazon at a decent price!

Let me know if it was useful to you if you decided to read it!

WriteBot.

Xenos and Worlds of Magic ONLINE!

Hey guys!

The two short stories collections I've been talking about recently have been published today! They are Xenos and Worlds of Magic.

Xenos is a science fiction work including such sub-genres as cosmic horror, first contact, weird events, and post-apocalyptic fiction. Some of them (as implied by cosmic 'horror') are actually very creepy. These are namely Of One Mind, which deals with the effects of tampering with humans minds, set between half a century and a century in the future of our own world, and Moonfarer, which is pure cosmic horror (and scared me the most while writing it).

Another story in the anthology is Immortal (A creature of a different world seeks a new body to inhabit on Earth). This one is one of my favourites because of its concept and because the alien main character is not the kind to just obtain a body by any means necessary. He goes about it much like a job interview instead.

Xenos also includes an older (but very popular) story called 2115. 2115's blurb: As alien spaceships descend on Earth, a worn-out soldier, a drug-addicted medic, and a little girl have to fight for their survival.

The Epilogue to Xenos is Eye in the Sky. I think it fits the cosmic horror theme quite well.

Worlds of Magic on the other hand is entirely different. It's half stories you'd read to children before bedtime - Lucy and the Magician, Catching Fireflies, Seafarer - and half fantasy for a more mature audience (but nothing graphic!) - The Hungry Worlds, Into the Still Places, The Path of Lost Souls -. These are gentle and adventurous stories. They excite through the adventure imagery they build and make you feel good because of the themes explored. The themes are friendship, love, and working together despite the odds. This by the way goes for both halves of the anthology!

The first story in Worlds of Magic is Seafarer. This is a pirate story with strange magics and a slightly wry way of telling it. The premise of this story went: How did the princess fall in love with the pirate? I had in mind the pirate would be a guy. But she wasn't. I had a lot of fun writing the pirate queen Aaea and the more modest (although not really) princess Isolde's father the King. They make a great comical pairing between the two of them.

Lucy and the Magician is another story (the second story in the anthology) very close to my heart. It took me a while to finish and it's fairly long but very complete in a way. While editing this story, the ending came around (I changed the first draft's ending) and it just fit. It's a story about gifts - and primarily the gift of friendship.

The other stories are Catching Fireflies (You've heard a lot about this one! It's the story that got me my first review back in September!) about a kelpie trying to seduce a girl to join him in the depths of his lake - with a twist. The girl - his prey - has a task to complete under the waves that only a human can do. And it's dangerous.

In the other half of the anthology you'll find the stories more geared towards adults (themes as well as rating of scenes. These stories are a tiny bit more bloody and serious in a mature way than the three above). The Hungry Worlds is a thief's guilty journey into a deep forest to save the village she stole from last. Into the Still Places portrays a war between two races of different worlds in which neither of them wants to give way yet both have to if they are to save their realms. The sixth story, The Path of Lost Souls, is probably the most adult-serious of the whole book. It's more grave than all the others combined (although still not graphic).

Want to give it a try? It's out on Amazon! (PS: don't mind the missing covers. I have faith in KDP that they'll update them eventually!)

Xenos: (creepy science fiction!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6KHNB9

Worlds of Magic: (magic adventure stories!) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6KQM28

Have a good night/day! WriteBot.

Review of Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect

Hey folks

I've been listening to the audio book these last few days (I don't usually like audio books at all but non-fiction seems to be easier to listen to than fiction) and wanted to give you a review of it!

All right. The Compound Effect. Most of the book's advice is pretty generic and not actual fresh and/or unique research. It's the sort of book that tells you 'The more you practice the luckier you get'. (The usual spiel about people not being actually 'lucky' but working hard so that when the opportunity arises they can take it. Whereas other people don't work hard enough so they cannot get 'lucky' when an opportunity presents itself.)

The author also likes to pat himself on the back with how many famous people he knows at different companies (Apple for example) and how their CEOs personally interacted with him at some point. That can be a bit annoying.

The gist of the book is hard/diligent/persistent work over time = success.

A piece of important information in the book is that small changes (in things such as habits) should be pursued over time rather than every big change you'd like to have in your life all at once. This means when you want to exercise regularly and get a better body it's important to start small-ish (say about 20 minutes of exercise a day) because if you start big (2 hours of exercise a day) then you won't be able to keep it up infinitely. It is important to create small habits that over time will compound into big habits with visible effects.

The concept is very similar to James Clear's Atomic Habits. Review of Atomic Habits here.

As Hardy explains his concept of compounding effect he also cautions against giving up too easily. It's quite obvious that if you go to the gym twice or eat one less meal once (if you're trying to lose weight) you won't immediately see the benefits. The same goes for writing. If you want to write a book, write 500 words on two days, then give up because you don't have a book yet, your whole endeavour is somewhat pointless. If, however, you keep going to your desk and you keep adding words, 500 words a day will eventually stack up, and in less than a year your novel of 100k word will be finished (as finished as a first draft usually is in any case). At the start of any endeavour you don't want to burn yourself out with either exercise (2 hours a day) or writing 9000 words a day (been there done that) and then not have the energy to finish at all. If you're just starting out it's fine to write 100 words a day. Or 200. And maybe exercise only for 20 minutes or only do 10 push-ups instead of the 100 you're yearning to do (crazy folks!).

You can obviously increase the amount of x you do once you get better at it. If you start small you can up the ante after some time: If you're used to writing 200 words a day it's much easier to make the jump to 300 and later 500. In no time you'll be writing those elusive 2000 (or even 5000/10.000) words a day.

However. The compound effect does not only refer to creating good habits but also how the small little tasks you do every day (conscious or not) make up your bad habits. This could be for example eating a piece of chocolate every day after lunch because you crave it (I usually crave something sweet after lunch). It doesn't matter much on one day, but if you do it every day, it has the same effect as writing 500 words a day. After a while it will become a detriment to your health. This is why Hardy also talks about how to break bad habits. He suggests to write down your habits in a list in order to easily see what you could 'drop' so to speak. An example he gives is saving more money than usual. How can you see where you're spending money unnecessarily?

You are to write down every single thing you spend money on during the week.

A cup of coffee at Starbucks? A candy bar from the shop to treat yourself after work? That's a few dollars right there you can save if you know about them. And in a week, or month, if you buy these things regularly, the amount you can save instead of spend will exponentially increase. The same goes for calories when you're trying to lose weight. Are you actually eating more than you need? Tracking your habits will tell you exactly WHERE you can change your behaviour to go from loss (for example of money by spending on 'little things' or loss of health by eating too many 'little unhealthy things') to gain.

The same loss goes for accumulating knowledge (in the news) that you will not use and which therefore goes to waste. Ask yourself: Do you really need to watch/read the news three times a day? How much of 'useless' knowledge are you gaining this way? Wouldn't it be better to spend the time to read up on information you can actually put to use (perhaps a book on weight loss/nutrition/personal finance/other hobbies you have long been interested in)?

Hardy also maintains that as you're doing all these little things to improve yourself it's also important not to be discouraged. As with anything you do there will be setbacks. If after two months of training at the gym or writing on the novel you still don't have that thin stomach or the complete novel, it's easy to become lazy. It takes a lot of time to obtain significant results. (Here the old adage comes into play, doesn't it? 'Nothing worth having comes free'.) You're guaranteed to want to quit at some point (can confirm this from personal experience with both exercise and writing!), but then you must become the proverbial tortoise and soldier on. Slow and steady wins the race. You put your head down and you take one step at a time. One scene at a time. One minute of exercise at a time.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you'd like to check out Hardy's book on account of this review it's probably best to buy it at Amazon (am still not affiliated with them). The Kindle ebook is somewhere around $7 and from the audio book it sounded like a fairly easy read. Although if you've already bought James Clear's Atomic habits it might not be as relevant for you any more.

WriteBot.

Why you need to raise the stakes

Hey everyone!

How are you doing this fine day? My own writing is... suddenly not going well even though it's been perfect the last few days (???) and I'm going a bit crazy. Ah well. It might sort itself out.

Today let's talk about the importance of raising the stakes.

The most recent example of a series (TV) that failed at this is The Man in the High Castle. I've been dying to talk about this for at least a week since I started to watch Season 3. There will be some (minor) spoilers so if you don't want to know the end of Season 2 stop right here!

What is there to say about The Man in the High Castle.

It started great. The first two seasons were coherent, connected, and everything made sense within the universe where it's set. I liked some of the characters (Tagomi) and hated others (Frank). All of them had their part to play and the first two seasons had UNITY. It had a plot.

Cue Season 3.

The unity evaporated like water in the desert. The characters are no longer doing ANYTHING related to any plot or within their character (established in the first two seasons). They've all gone insane, there is no plot, and the only thing the season has established so far is to put in a lot more fluff. This fluff comes mostly through kissing and unnecessary sex scenes as well as dramatic (emo) scenes where people talk about their emotions that are way too prolonged. Of course I have nothing against either romantic or 'deep' scenes but those are neither. The 'romantic' scenes often happen to characters I don't care about (who were introduced badly in season two and three and with whom the audience has no emotional bond whatsoever) and the emotional talk scenes... well. There's about ten every episode and it's getting old.

There is also (as I have mentioned before) no plot in Season 3 whatsoever. Unless you count the three or four scenes where a dark tunnel is mentioned that needs to be investigated.

All right. Let's get to WHY it doesn't work though. I've talked a lot about WHAT doesn't work. It's time to look at the details of WHY.

The WHY in this case is actually very simple:

The STAKES are not high enough after Season 2. In fact there are almost no stakes at all.

Consider the characters.

At the end of season two they have already lost everything they could lose (Smith his son, Chief Inspector Kido his second in command, Frank is supposedly dead, Juliana everyone she loved, Ed and Childan their shop, livelihood, and family, Joe his honor and pride and so on and so forth, and Tagomi gave up his family for the greater good). These are characters who have absolutely nothing left (and Juliana's sister reappearing in the second season? Well in the third that plot point is made completely useless as the only journey they go through is 'how can we get sister back to her world').

All right. The characters then have nothing left = no personal stakes.


Let's examine the public stakes of s1 and s2 briefly. In s1 the public stakes were beautifully set up and in s2 climaxed upon.

Here is season one's storyline for each main character: What's up with (Juliana and) the films? What will the death of Frank's sister and her children make him do? How far will he go? Will Joe betray them all? Will Tagomi be able to help his spy get the blueprints for the Heisenberg to the science minister and get him out alive? Will Chief Inspector Kido successfully apprehend the resistance member who has the film?

These (mostly personal) stakes are all set up and solved. At the same time Season 2 is set up neatly.

Throughout Season 2 there are even more questions that need answers. There is a new film Juliana needs to see. It is terribly important. Will she manage to get the film to the Man in the High Castle? Who is the Man in the High Castle? Will Frank be found out? Will he be accused of shooting the Japanese crown prince? Will he survive the Yakuza? Will Joe reconnect with his father? Will Tagomi reconnect with his family in the alternate world? Will Chief Inspector Kido apprehend the resistance before it's too late? Will Smith's son survive the season? Will we (the audience) find out more about the films and alternate worlds? Will all of them be able to somehow avert the coming war?

The public stakes here are HUGE. If the Nazi Reich and the Japanese fight over America then millions of people will die. Hundreds of cities will be destroyed. Thousands of communities. And the stakes are averted only at the last minute.

Then we get to Season 3. All the questions above have been answered masterfully. It wasn't perfect (some loose ends and red-shirt setups) but there was a silver lining through all of the two seasons.

Let's see if we can find ANY stakes in this season.

Season 3 starts with Juliana's sister back in her life BUT she has to go back to her own world for reasons unknown - which means the whole plot point of her appearing AT ALL has just been made redundant. It would have been a good ending for Juliana who believes in people and always helps them to get something BACK. But no. Season 3 destroys this.

Frank meanwhile has been hiding out with some jews in the mountains of somewhere. (Denver?). The first and second seasons he has always been adamant about not being a jew (and not just because the Nazis would kill him but because he simply did not wish to live the jewish life). Suddenly, all he wants in life is to be a jew. (And anyway how did he survive the explosion when the girl standing right next to him got smashed up?)

Smith does not react to what happened to his son. He's chill as usual. There is no emotion there where it should have been. Then again... I guess it IS six months later. Smith also has problems with people trying to do him in (or at least get him into prison for treason). A new character is introduced as the 'antagonist' but killed off relatively quickly because ???

Chief Inspector Kido is (as always) doing his own thingamagic. However, all that translates to is his growing relationship with some white woman in a club. I will admit, that's at the moment the only part of the series I enjoy. I like how Kido went from 'I don't talk to working girls' to her being the only woman (person) he talks to honestly. Also she's taller than him which is cute.

Tagomi... is a mystery. He has averted the war in his world. He achieved his mission and why he left his family back in World 2 and returned to Nazi World. So why didn't he go back to them? He was happy there and they were starting to accept him again. BUT he has a new girlfriend (some Japanese painter who says she has a husband but still flirts with Tagomi every chance she gets???). It's all fine. He only loved his wife enough to learn how to traverse worlds.

All these characters do throughout 2/3 of the third season is... nothing whatsoever. Oh of course they're running around doing stuff but none of it has any stakes. Random romantic (or not so romantic since I don't care about these random insert characters who only popped up to have sex with one of the main/side characters) scenes happen. Juliana goes crazy. Frank suddenly becomes a jew. Smith kills more people. Joe loses his mind and then his life (in a rather graphic way that didn't fit the rest of the series at all). Tagomi is just derping around. Chief Inspector Kido... well at least his relationship with the woman from the club is cute.

There are no personal stakes for either of the characters throughout the season. The only characters with personal stakes (Smith and Tagomi) solve them pretty quickly.

There are also no public stakes.

Remember the war that almost happened at the end of s2? Knowing there was a s3 I kept thinking 'something must happen'. The atomic bomb MUST BE dropped onto the Japanese (by accident after the 'bad guy' is apprehended or just SOMEHOW). The atomic bomb MUST be dropped. Well. It wasn't. The war was averted when (thinking about setting up s3) it SHOULDN'T have been. Because what happened in s3? All the stakes were suddenly gone. The characters (as I mentioned) went through so much and lost so much they have nothing left to lose. The public has nothing to lose either at this point.

There simply are no stakes. And that's a terrible thing when you've watched s1 and s2 and know how much opportunity it had!

The best I can figure about the stakes of s3 is that the public stakes are supposed to be the fact that the Nazi Reich is trying to build a wormhole/whatever into other worlds to spread the Nazi Reich into them.

But why? They haven't even conquered their own world yet. They are too afraid to start war with the Japanese but at the same time they're working to conquer whole new worlds? What? It makes just as little sense as the 7-10 kiss/sex scenes in every single episode.

I applaud you if you've stuck with me so far. I would have kept it shorter but I wanted to make a good example of this. (And also the horrible storytelling of s3 makes me really angry after how good the first two seasons were).

This is story-telling 101.

If your first book ends in preventing a war then your second book can't hang on to all kinds of personal sob stories of your characters. You raised the stakes by starting a horrible war... and then let everyone down by going back to 'oh yeah but listen these characters are suffering individually' (and then they're not even suffering anyway but just being or randomly jumping into bed with everyone else).

Of course it's hard to top two great seasons and make the third better. But s3 was just horrible to watch - and so are many other book and TV series these days. The purpose of raising the stakes is to keep reader/audience interest. It doesn't work when they first avert a war and then go back to doing nothing at all for a whole book/season.

I really hope this wall of text will help you figure out why stakes are so important and how to use them well! And if your book two is already great and you just can't figure out what to do for book three? THINK HARDER. THINK BIGGER. If they averted a war in book two it's time to deal with that exact same war in book three OR bow out. There can be no going back to a normal 'comfortable' life after that. Not if you don't want your readers to fall asleep while reading your book (cough Authority by Jeff VanderMeer).

WriteBot has said its piece. Have a good night/day!

WIP Progress Report

Hey everyone!

It's been a long day already for me. I finished editing Catching Fireflies's bonus draft (I did not choose the adding-another-8k-words-to-the-story life! The adding-words-life chose me!) and it's complete at 9k words. These 9k words were edited over the last three and a half weeks since my post on 10X WIP here.

Today I'd like to report on my progress and show you what I have done since I started setting actual tangible goals to work on every day. If you want, you can read my initial post about these 10X WIPs (by the way from Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule) through the link above.

Let's get started with my WIP list as it was three and a half weeks ago.

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies.
• editing Of One Mind.
• editing Eye in the Sky.
• editing Hourglass.(And the other books in the series)
• finishing Ris's story.
• writing the NEW STORY.

• publishing short story collections. Into the Deep, Xenos, and (placeholder name) nice magical stories.
• publishing Elegy of the Stars.
• publishing Warlike/The Torn Earth.  

  I've so far done:

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies. (The updated version will be on KDP tomorrow! Yey! Hype!)
• editing Of One Mind.
• editing Eye in the Sky.
• editing Hourglass.(And the other books in the series)
• finishing Ris's story.
• writing the NEW STORY.

• publishing short story collections. Into the Deep, Xenos, and (placeholder name) nice magical stories.
• publishing Elegy of the Stars.
• publishing Warlike/The Torn Earth.

I have also edited Immortal, which was not on the list to begin with, and am writing two more short stories as well. These are a bit more difficult and longer than my 9k average short story word count. In addition to this I'm committed to one blog post a day (at least) and have been actively improving my author profiles on various sites and finding/hiring new artists for book covers.

Let me give you some thoughts on how planning is working out for me.

1.) Having goals actually makes me sit down and work

2.) I often don't feel motivated to write still but I do it anyway. I have a goal to hit.

3.) The more often I sit down to write the more often I will find SOMETHING to write

4.) In the last three and a half weeks I've been more productive than during the last two years before them

I think the last point is the most important. I started to plan as an experiment (I'm usually someone who does not like to plan what they will do and when) and to be able to talk about my experience with it. As soon as I sat down to plan I found out I actually LIKE planning. I just don't like when my plans go awry. (But of course they do). Still. The numbers don't lie and the numbers are quite awesome (see 4.) again!).

Why don't you join me in my experiment? Come and be productive with me! I promise you'll still be able to procrastinate (still working on getting rid of that habit...) BUT you will also get much more done than you ever thought you could!

Try it out? Tell WriteBot about your own experiment! Let the comment section be open!

Have a good day/night! WriteBot

Chapter Preview: Warlike!

Hey everyone!

Because you liked the character introduction I did yesterday so much (seriously! I got like three or four times the views of my other posts!) today's blog post will be a chapter preview of Warlike.

Without much further ado...

CHAPTER ONE

I told myself I didn't need the Elder's permission or even tolerance of my plan to do what had to be done. If we were to survive against the raptors, we needed weapons, and despite Kava's dire warnings, weapons were what the artefacts of old civilizations had left behind in that ancient, terrible haunt, the Deep.

And I wouldn't let Venya's war party have died in vain.

The setting moon had darkened the plant-life around me by the time I approached the Deep's craggy outskirts. I hadn't told Iva where I was going, either. Iva wouldn't understand, the same way she hadn't understood my rage after I tried to convince Kava that after the loss of Venya's war party we couldn't simply stand by, but had to protect ourselves. I wondered whether they were missing me by now. They probably did. It wasn't like me not to come home after a patrol. Kava probably knew where I was and Iva would suspect the same thing if she noticed I hadn't come home yet. It made me wonder briefly who might realize where I was headed first. Iva, who'd been my companion since I turned into a huntress, or Kava, the Elder, who could predict a rainstorm days ahead.

In front of me the brush opened slightly.

I was as close as I ever dared to come before, close enough to see the strange metal spikes, some of them scattered on the ground and the mesh of metal wire covering the ground like a carpet. I'd once tried to follow this carpet to the other side, but I'd not come far. The carpet ended, was torn, and there was no more pattern to it.

In the past, before the year 2138, it might have stood erect, like the fences we used to keep animals out of the village.

But what did they want to keep out? Or in? Had the plague of raptors already been a problem all those centuries ago, when the fence was erected (though I couldn't imagine the thin metal mesh would have held them) or had there been worse threats?

Beyond the fence, the land rose slightly. Trees were growing back slowly here, where they hadn't for centuries, and they were strangely tall, imposing, where they stood isolated. The rest of the area was clear, giving a good view onto the gigantic structure in the middle: the Deep.

It rose from the ground like a massive piece of grey rock. Veins and stranglethorns grew on and over its walls in patches, and usually, the raptors weren't far off. I slowed down my steps, went into a crouch. I was wearing red, of course, but the raptors weren't entirely stupid. If they saw movement, they'd assume something living, because there was no wind. They didn't care what it was they attacked, as long as it was meat. Humans, great cats, water bears, meat.

I ducked past the single standing remains of the giant fence, grown against and within a giant's fan, and slid into the underbrush. The going was difficult here, the brush thick, because no one had been here for a while to clear it. The atmosphere was quiet, no raptor showing its reptilian face. The air smelled slightly rancid, with a lingering, ancient taste of something sharp and metallic, like blood. The closer to the Deep you came, the stronger the smell, but it never sharpened enough to bite your nostrils after all this time. And it had been a while. No one of my tribe remembered what the Deep was for, or when it'd last seen people.

Around the Deep, the night turned cold and the red furs on my shoulders ruffled in a chill wind. The sudden change in temperature made my my fingers stiff and I felt for the metal tube on my back for reassurance. I couldn't have said why I brought it, since it didn't work. Maybe there was no reason at all, and I just liked the feel of the metal. But perhaps I was hoping it would protect me should something happen, that it would suddenly spring to life.

But then, when it happened, the tube stayed as lifeless as it'd been before.

In a short time, I was close enough to the Deep to see the scars on the surface of its walls. The material was unfamiliar to me, a girl of the jungle-forest. It was like stone, but grainy, and, as I later learned, not as hard. It had the colour of stone, too, but no stone ever was as evenly dark grey as the mass of the Deep's wall.

I approached it carefully, making no sound on the broken leafs and twigs around it. Here and there, debris glittered on the ground around me, like puddles of water that should have long evaporated. The air smelled again of the sharply metallic smell. It reminded me momentarily of the time our elders sacrificed a lamb to appeal to the rainstorms.

I snorted inside.

It was little consolation that they hadn't repeated that trick ever since.

I was about to turn towards the structure to examine more closely the material the Deep's walls were made of when the earth trembled slightly beneath my feet. Earthquake, my brain warned. Danger. But then, before instinct could send me to shelter, movement in the corner of my eyes caught my attention. In the same breath I realized how quiet it was, the constant noise of the small jungle-forest animals drowned by something... bigger.

Raptors.

They came out of the treeline, almost half as tall as the trees themselves. Their hides, a green and yellow, covered in thick scales the size of a human head. And those were the smallest of them, the foragers. The bigger ones could reach up to the tree crowns without much difficulty. The raptors' skins were tough as metal, reptilian, but at the same time pliable as leather, and the only thing that could penetrate it was metal, the kind we didn't have, and the reason we couldn't fight them. Thin, short arms, with claws the size of half a man and knife-sharp teeth half again the size of one of my tribesmen threatened if you ever were caught, and getting caught happened too often, even though my tribeswomen didn't stray far from the village and the raptors weren't smart enough to know we were all gathered there.

My breath stalled. I was closer now to the raptors than I'd been before in my life, and an absurd thought suddenly emerged in my mind. Had Ion and Tarin been as terrified when they scouted the Deep? When they somehow managed to kill that raptor we found, later, when we already knew they were lost?

I pushed the thought away almost as soon as it surfaced. Terror was useless. Terror made you careless, made you do things you wouldn't do in your right mind. I needed to keep my wits. I needed to ignore the fear and get out of here.

I made myself as small as possible and slowly slunk back into the shadow of the Deep's wall. There was nowhere to hide except in plain sight. I couldn't fight the raptors, not with the knife on my belt, not with the metal cylinder strapped to my back, but they might not see me if I didn't move. The foragers' red-rimmed, slit-pupiled eyes easily spotted movement, but scenery, especially red, essentially made them blind. The red of my clothing would make me melt with the wall like another rock. The only problem then was their sense of smell. My heart pounded rapidly, quickening my blood, producing more sweat. Blood and sweat. The ultimate cocktail to lure a raptor, and their scent was the second superior sense to their hearing.

I had to move if I wanted to survive.

But I couldn't move.

Foragers were fast, their two hind legs strong and springy. I wouldn't outrun them.

I inched a step to the right and immediately froze as my attention was drawn to the other side of the clearing. To the north-west, where the moon was dying, more of the foragers, outlined against the bright, dark-red glow of the rising sun's corona]. Trapped. Air went through my windpipe with effort. But the wind hadn't turned to bring my smell to either of the raptor schools yet. I could run, make it to the boundary of the Deep, if I was quick enough, and then lose myself in the thicket. But I didn't fool myself. I couldn't outrun the raptors if they caught sight or scent of me and the underbrush wasn't an obstacle for the small foragers and their sharp claws. But the wind wouldn't hold. The night wind always turned south during the day. It could be seen in the shape of trees around the village and around the Deep.

Then what other option did I have? Shaking with the night's cold as well as fear, which I tried to no avail to suppress, I turned back toward the Deep]. It was obvious the Deep wasn't a natural outcrop just as our huts weren't. There'd been rumours, and even more so when Ion and Tarin disappeared, that the Deep was a dwelling place of old. I didn't care about the rumours and I didn't believe the Deep was anything menacing by itself, especially not the birthplace of raptors. I cared not to be spotted, not to end up as the raptors' dinner.

So, instead of trying to outrun certain death, I turned toward the Deep and started to inch my way around its wall by the feel of my clam palm against the concrete.

Where there was a man-made structure, there had to be an entrance. And that was my only chance to survive.

I hope you enjoyed it! The link to the book can be found here: Amazon Link!

Have a good evening/day!

Character Introduction: Thresha (Warlike)

Hey folks!

I just came home. Today was the first time I had Dim Sum and it was pretty tasty!

Anyway. Today's post will focus on something different than usual. I usually like to do book reviews and give writing advice but this time I want to introduce you to the fun and adventurous main character of Warlike.

Why? Because I think she's really awesome and also because Warlike has gotten quite a lot of good reviews lately and that just makes me very proud.

All right.

Let me introduce you to:

Thresha. The jungle girl.

 A sketch by one of my artists:

Thresha is a warrior in a small tribe within a jungle-like forest. Adjacent to a large desert (the End of the World) this jungle-forest is plagued by great reptilian hunters called the raptors. These are quite dinosaur-like in both appearance and demeanour (think Jurassic Park!) and prey one everything they can catch. They are also quite smart and this means Thresha's tribe has been hunted almost to extinction.

Thresha herself is a strong-willed and stubborn (one could say they are the same) girl who doesn't believe in hiding to assure the tribe's survival. Her philosophy is like that of any warrior out to prove themselves. Thresha wants to fight for her tribe and especially the girl (her clan-sister) she loves.

Thresha gets the chance to stand up to the raptors when her tribe's most skilled warband is killed by the raptors. Warlike's story starts after this elite band of warriors is vanquished and Thresha does not agree with lying low. The death of the venerable hunters Ion and Tarin pushes her to question the Elders of her tribe and in effect chose her own path to fight the raptors.

On her journey out of the jungle-forest to find the legendary weapons that she knows have once existed on Earth she will however meet a lot of resistance. This adversity comes in a lot of shapes and forms as a world opens before her she and her tribe didn't know exited. Thresha learns there is more than just the jungle-forest left of Earth. A chance encounter with a young man from outside the jungle-forest takes her into a spiral of discovery and danger. Among them are a woman who wants her dead because she disrupted the balance of her enclave. And a host of flying metal men (called 'sems') intent on destroying the rest of humanity and assimilating them into more sems. But that's not all. As Thresha is taken far and wide by her ambition to destroy the raptors once and for all she will learn more secrets about the torn Earth she inhabits than her whole tribe thought possible.

Does this sound like something you'd love to read? It's a great adventure with a badass main character who won't let anyone tell her what do (even when she suffers from her decisions).

Check out the book here: (goodreads link)

It has five reviews so far and they're all quite good! WriteBot is quite happy people are enjoying the novel.

WriteBot hopes you'll love Warlike and Thresha! Check them out and have a good evening/day with it!

About STORY PLANNING 2

Hi folks!

As some of you know, in the last couple of weeks I've tried to improve my working style by learning how to set goals.

So this post will be about goal-setting and self-improvement.

I will say without being ashamed: I'm not really good at it yet. I'm still learning how to do it. This means I've been buying and reading a lot of books. My favourite so far is The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, but I also found Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule quite helpful. If I had to choose, The Magic of Thinking Big would win out. This is a book I'd recommend EVERYONE to read. It's a really really important book if you want to improve yourself. It's also fairly short.

Ok. Let's continue.

Why did I even change my happy-go-lucky style to something more SRS? Because it was no longer working out just being happy-go-lucky. I've made a couple of mistakes I would have loved to avoid. I spent a lot of money on THINGS that didn't work out (for example the start of a degree in a completely unrelated field to writing). I started a lot of stories that will never be finished. But then something else happened.

I decided IT CAN'T CONTINUE LIKE THIS. It's time to actually BE SUCCESSFUL. I bought the above mentioned books and read them in two days each.

I knew this about myself: I hate planning things out. It's just not my style. It's stifling. But also: It is important to plan IMPORTANT things out. Why? I think we all know this. There are times when you can tell by your own stories that the bigger they are the less coherent they become the more you write on them. And that doesn't encourage anyone to edit.

So here's an experiment: Plan your next story. The outline doesn't have to be finished in a day. It will probably take much longer (depending of course on the greatness and length you want in your story). Write a summary. Write two summaries (or twenty). Change the outline you have if it doesn't work the first time around (and it probably won't). What this will give you is a FEEL for the story. The more you THINK about it (don't write just yet unless you absolutely know where you're going!) the more you will know it. A lot of successful peoples' best ideas come from solitude and thinking about their goals/plans. Why should writing be any different?

A caution, however, needs to be added. There is such a thing as overthinking it. You know this is happening when you start getting impatient or just want to write (without knowing WHAT you want to write) heedlessly. This happens when you're TOO CLOSE to the material. When you stop seeing the trees because the forest became too dense.

How to know when this happens? Well, usually it is accompanied by despair, by the urge to pull out your hair (or whatever else your habit is when you're overwhelmed), by my-head-is-about-to-explodiness. Then you need to observe the unofficial Rule 3 of THE WRITING RULES. Take a BREAK! Relax. It might be hard (it is for me) but it is beneficial! Do something else. Learn something. Write on a different story. You need to clear your mind of all the unrelated and confused ideas so you can come back to your IMPORTANT WIP refreshed later!

Does this make sense? Tell me about your tips! How do you plan stories? I'd love to know!

WriteBot off... to plan STUFF.

Why you should read Warlike

Hi folks!


Let's talk about WARLIKE.

Warlike is my second book published. The official description depicts a young woman's quest to free her (jungle-forest) tribe from a menace called raptors. The young woman is called Thresha. After the most skillful war-party of the tribe is killed on a hunt, Tresha wants to go out and kill the raptors herself. In essence, the raptors are dinosaurs, and they've been plaguing the tribe for decades. The book is set in the year 2250.

Let's start with a simple question: Why dinosaurs? In 2250? In this story the Earth is practically abandoned. It's not been left behind by space travel but rather humankind caused themselves to become extinct. There were several wars and so much pollution the Earth changed. What's left of the great cities are structures like the Deep (a crumbling hospital). The rest has been covered (at least in Thresha's part of the world) by a jungle-like forest. As forests are not the most food-producing ecosystems (this is a fact) the tribes that sprung up are small hunter-gatherer tribes with some degree of awareness of technology although nothing technological really has survived.

In this setting then Thresha is told to stay down even as her tribe's most revered hunters are killed in the fight against the raptors. But Thresha is very stubborn and has a strong urge for initiative. She won't be kept down. She will be fighting not only for herself but her whole tribe. At the beginning of the novel she starts to do exactly that, even against the wishes of her tribe's Elder, and as a result, Thresha is exiled. She has freedom then, but no security with her tribe any more, and the world is much, much bigger than she thought.

I love this book simply because it's such an adventure. It's really fast-paced with a view out of Thresha's own mind and it is still able to slow down at some point to include Thresha's core values as a character - what she loves and what she hates. All in all it's the one YA-like book I always wanted to read but no one wrote. There is no romance (because who isn't tired these days of all YA books having a romance? I wouldn't have read that as a girl) but great focus is put on meeting new people and navigating their worlds. Friendship is made the central theme of the story instead of romance. (Think about the first Pacific Rim film! I loved it simply BECAUSE it had no stupid romance but focused entirely on Raleigh's protectiveness and friendship-love for x)

Do you think WARLIKE might be something for you? I'd (obviously) love for you to read it!

As a second piece of news: I got my second review for Catching Fireflies! I love it!

This piece of news: In a few days my books will be on goodreads! This means you can review them there as well and add them to your lists! A post about that should follow soon!

WriteBot off!

Why you should read Elegy of the Stars

Hi folks!

It's evening now and I've not gotten over my treatment by the mouth hygienist yet. I had my teeth cleaned and it still faintly hurts (but that might be psychological). Anyway in the spirit of EVENING I want to tell you exactly why my novel Elegy of the Stars is so great!

Elegy of the Stars is a novel about a street urchin trying to survive on a (to us) strange planet. This is in a future when humanity has conquered the stars and almost forgotten its origins. The planet where the street girl, Oria, lives is called Glast.

Glast is a very harsh planet. It has no light. The only light in this world comes from a double star system called the Seirios (or Sirius if you're so inclined). The planet is also very small (think continent-sized) and the Seirios only lights up a single city called Oblivion through light-pipes.

In this setting Oria is an orphan reliant on what food she can steal. The rich people of Glast are the farmers with access to the light pipes. They create all the food on the planet so they have a monopoly on it. The poor people are the scientists who created the Seirios stars. After all, you can't eat starlight, and even the invention of the stars that allowed Glast to be settled doesn't give a scientist everlasting glory. The other poor people are the Cultists of the Seirios. Those who think the Seirios system has some divine powers and that their world is doomed because it was created. They are half-mad and crazed. They are also searching for their Harbinger of destruction.

Then there are the asteroid miners. They're just visitors on Glast but almost as unpleasant as the stuck-up farmers. And there's the cold. The everlasting cold that the Seirios starlight cannot disperse even during day and never mind at night.

These are the dangers Oria has to navigate. Doesn't that just send shivers down your spine? It's such a mystery! It's such a harsh world. And the question remains to the end. Will Oria survive? Will her friends survive? What will she do if she does survive?

Elegy of the Stars is a story about survival, but also, much more deeply than survival, about friendship, and love, and hope.

It's a beautiful story, but at the same time, it's unforgiving and at times brought me to tears when I wrote it. I took me all in all four years to finish it, simply because I could not always work on it. It is a profound story, and one of the most memorable I've written thus far.

You probably think I'm just saying this to get you to check out the story, and part of that might be true, but in all honesty, writing this blog post was a joy for myself. Through this short description of the setup I also understand the story better myself. And this in turn helps me appreciate it even more.

Do you want to check it out? I'd love you to. I'd love someone to discuss it with. If you're interested, please do! You can find it on Amazon: Elegy of the Stars

Anyway! It's Christmas soon and this story is perfect for anyone who doesn't just want to feel good but deeply think about their life/the lives of others this season of the year. It's also a good story to read while listening to someone play the violin!

WriteBot out.

Progress!

Hey everyone!

It's Saturday so here's another post!

I just completed the second-to-last short story edit on my to-do list. Here we go:

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies.
• editing Of One Mind
• editing Immortal (yes, this is a new item!)
• editing Eye in the Sky 

Ok, ok, there's still Eye in the Sky, but that is really short so it doesn't count. I can do it in less than an hour (I think? Hope? I'm not sure...).

Over the last two days this means I've done a lot! I've edited three short stories in the range of 2.5k - 7k words (Out of the Depths, Immortal, Of One Mind). I still feel almost as new! Good to go! I can't wait for tomorrow when I'm going to do Catching Fireflies and (if possible) Eye in the Sky.

I also can't wait to publish my Anthologies. The first one will likely be Worlds of Magic (It has a title! Yey! This is the book of magical stories I had on my 10X list!) and it's really great. It's an amazing adventure (I'm biased) and you should all read it!

On the other side of the coin that is World of Magic, which is pleasant and magical, there is Of One Mind. This actually took me a while because it's so... disturbing really. It's almost up there with Lovecraft (although it's human-made and not cosmic horror) and it will really give you the creeps when you read it. I love it, and I'm disturbed by it, and it draws upon all these lovely emotions I wanted to pull in readers. In one word, it's creepy!

If you like creepy experiments in abandoned biolabs, this is for you!

All right. It's time to actually go outside (haven't done that in two days) and face the world!

WriteBot out. I'll update you once Worlds of Magic is out! (And earlier with more posts on theme and goal-setting, of course!)

Have a good evening! Bleep-Bloop!

How and why to cut words

Hi folks!

This will be a post about how and why you should cut words. I have the perfect example because it happened to me only two days ago.

Let's see.

I've been working on this story the last two weeks. The story's goal/theme was 'character treated poorly by his surroundings wants to be free'. I wrote about 10k words. Then more themes crept in. Why did he want to be free? What did that mean for the rest of his people? What would happen then? How could he solve this? Does he need to free his whole community or only himself? What if he only frees himself?

The story got BIGGER. I did the thing you're not supposed to (always IGNORE 'supposed to' when someone says it to you! Even when you 'supposed-to' yourself!) and started incorporating MORE and BIGGER/BETTER themes into my story. I got to 40k words.

This adding themes is one of the best decisions you can make. Don't stick with a story that's too small. Keep trying to make it bigger. Make it better. Because if you think it's too small (read: boring) when you're writing it (symptoms include boredom and not knowing what to write - also called 'block') it will be sheer agony to finish it (and if you're like me and don't like excruciating pain you won't finish it anyway). At the same time, if it already bores you after 10-20k words, why would anyone else want to read it? And if it bores you after 50k words the same applies.

And if you do add themes and set your sights higher then your story will become better for it. It will surpass your initial 'manageable' goal and grow on its own. It will grow into an amazing story like a rosebud grows into a rose.

Back to my WIP. I am also no longer writing on this document. Why? Because the story outgrew its initial beginnings so much that editing it would NEVER truly work out. The time I would have to invest into editing it is enormous. In truth the whole story would have to be rewritten.

So I had to think about it. It took me two days. There was never a question in my mind about not finishing it. HOWEVER. In order to finish it I have to cut a lot. I have to cut 40k words. The first 40k words. Is that hard? Yes, yes, we've talked about this already, it's hard. But at the same time, it's worth it. I needed to write 40k words to figure out what I wanted my story to be and what I wanted to talk about in it. (Other people by the way call this 'planning'.)


This is the how and why to cut words. There's also a whole post about WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TAKE BREAKS to follow this up. That will be out tomorrow.

Let me say for now: CUT your words even if it cuts your heart. It's the ONLY way you can find your story's soul and make it what it needs to be for you to be satisfied with it.

WriteBot shall return!

Cut words to make your story the best

Good evening everyone!

Let me start off by telling you about my day. It was busy. It was terrible. I went to college and the dentist. The dentist was the more fun of the two (seriously my dentist is a cool dude).

In addition to this I've been so busy I barely had any time to write this week. This doesn't help my depression. But I've committed to writing a post for you guys every day so here it goes. This post will be about CUTTING words to make the BEST story.

Let's say you slaved away the whole last year on a story. You like the story. But it's not finished yet.

You need to cut.

And what do you cut?

EVERYTHING that does not fit in with your THEME.

In the same way that animals (who are not prone to having philosophical debates) know how to communicate with each other and sometimes humans (and other species) about what they need (strictly what they need) the same should be true for stories. They should communicate only what they need to.

Does this mean you will have to cut your 200k words draft to make it more meaningful? Yes it does. All the fluff you put in (and we all do) needs to go out. And I'm not merely talking about killing your darlings. I'm talking about cutting 500k words down into their essence. The fewer words you can make it the better. The fewer words = the tighter the story becomes = the better the story will read.

Don't believe me? Think about all these scenes you wrote where something romantic happens that you love (and secretly want to happen to you in real life). Then think about them again. Do they really need to happen? Or are you just trying to put in the fluffy scene because you wanted to read it? Or because you wrote a little too much fan-fiction in your early years and man your two main characters (who are both guys) WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT COUPLE!

(I'm guilty of this... Don't judge.)

Anyway. Back to cutting.

In order to cut the RIGHT words/scenes/walls of text you might want to write a synopsis first. A synopsis (written after the first draft) lets you see immediately what you need and where you went wrong with the story. It'll work even better if you take AT LEAST a month off in between the first draft and synopsis. Yes. That's a long time. But: a) you will not SUDDENLY FORGET what your book was about to the point that you can NEVER retrieve it and b) it will help your story SO MUCH in terms of cohesion.

A synopsis will further give you solutions and highlight your theme. You will instantly and instinctively know that THIS PART DOES NOT BELONG IN HERE. And then you will ask yourself: BUT WHAT DOES? If I cut this then my whole story is ruined.

Hint: It's not. It just needs to rest a while again after you've made the synopsis and cut out everything you no longer need (which can sometimes be as much as HALF or more of the first draft).

Is this hard? Is it painful? You bet! Every single cut destroys me! It goes into my flesh like a barbed arrowhead. It makes my heart bleed and cry at the same time.

BUT! Out of that pain will come something greater. Something better. The story will be CLEAR to you (not directly after cutting, mind you, because that would just be like putting weight on your leg after you had shinbone surgery). The story will make sense.

And in the end you might even tell yourself: Wow, this story is actually GOOD (GREAT)!

So is it worth it? Is it worth the pain of cutting out your darlings and more? You be the judge! I don't want you to trust me blindly (although I do). I want you to try it out for yourself. So get back to your WIP and stop browsing blogs. Writing advice only goes so far until you have to go and learn for yourself.

Have a good evening! Bleep-blooop WriteBot wants to sleep (it's 17:30 PM).