People Forms Habits, Habits Form Futures

    That title is not my own. I ‘borrowed’ it from motivational guru, Mike Litman who said it years ago. And it’s still true.

The reason that we create habits is to make our lives easier. When something we do becomes habitual, we no longer have to think about it. Take walking for example. When you were a baby, learning to walk took a lot of mental and physical effort. But as soon as it became a habit, you could do it without thinking, and you still do.

It’s the same when we learn to drive. At first it seems hard to have to cope with thinking about so many different things at once while trying to be safe on the roads. But once you get your license and start driving more, it becomes a habit and you can get behind the wheel and drive without even thinking about it.

We acquire many habits during our lifetime like daily showering, brushing our teeth, and even walking the dog. These are things that we do without even thinking about them.

I find it’s the same with household chores. I do them several times a week and always at the same time, and I do them without even thinking. People often ask me how I can be bothered, but I tell them that, first, I don't have a lot of furniture (I’m quite the minimalist) and second, I’ve been doing chores for so long that it never bothers me. I’m so used to doing them without thinking that I call it ‘busy hands empty mind’ time so I usually listen to audios while I work because I don’t have to think about what I’m doing.

But you’re probably wondering what this has to do with writing.

Well, you can use habitual routines to get your writing done every day.

If you don’t usually sit and write every day, then doing so takes a lot of thought because you have to remember to do it and you probably have to stop doing other things.

But once you make yourself sit in your writing chair at the same time every day, it quickly becomes a habit, and before you know it, you’re sitting down without even thinking about it.

Most mornings, I do my usual morning routine and do whatever chores I usually do each day and then I go straight to my writing chair. 

When I first started writing professionally, sitting down to write every day was a chore in itself at first, but once it became a habit, it was easy, and now I look forward to it. I like to get other things done first every day so that I can sit down and write, knowing that other things have already been taken care of.

It’s a writing habit that I’ll take with me long into the future because people form habits and habits form futures.

Stop Procrastinating

And Take Back Control Of Your Life

https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/sp.html 

Don't Let Your Books Be Stolen to Train AI

We all know that many thousands of books have already been stolen to train AI software. Not just literary classics and best sellers, but self-published books too. It seems no books are exempt from being plagiarised by AI software companies. I did a check and found they're using my books too. 

But what can you do? And more importantly, how can you find out if your books have been stolen?

To help, here’s a link to check if your books have been used in this way. Just search for your author name.

Here's another link for an easy way to complain, and hopefully to get it stopped. Complain loud and long if your books have been used in this way.

No doubt AI is going to be the scourge of authors and writers until laws are put in place to stop our work from being stolen to train AI bots. The best way to help is to buy more books to help real authors and writers.

I’ve seen a few things online lately that are said to be written by AI. I can believe it because what I’ve seen so far is awful, especially fiction written by bots. It seems soulless. I know that AI software can help with some aspects of writing, but it cannot do the writing for us, or at least it can’t do it well.

And, if you want to know more about what’s happening and what you can do about stolen books, there’s an article from The Society of Authors that’s helpful.

Stay safe and keep writing.

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com

When is a Problem Not a Problem?

How many times have you heard someone say that they want to be a writer, but they just don’t have the time?

If you’re like me (and every other professional writer) the answer is always because they have a job or a family, or they don’t know what to write, yet they swear they have a novel inside them just bursting to be written. But things are always in their way.

All these these are excuses. They are not insurmountable problems. A problem is something to be fixed. If you don’t want to fix it, it’s not a problem.

When I first began writing, I did a writing course, a web design course, a copywriting course, I learned how to self-publish, I read many books about writing and working online, and I talked to others who were already doing what I wanted to do. And I did it all while having a job and a family to look after.

I tell others this and they’ll say, “Yeah, but you’re so energetic and have much more time than me.”

Well, I hate to disappoint them, but I have 24 hours a day just like them.

If you think that you’re not writing because something about your life is holding you back, then you don’t have a problem because you don’t want to fix it.

Just look at Stephen Hawking. He spent most of his life in a wheelchair unable to move, but he didn’t let it stop him from writing. And problems don’t come any bigger than that.

My advice to anyone who thinks they have problems that hold them back from writing, is to start writing.

It really is that simple. 

No problem at all.

 

Mission Critical For Life

Discover the 10 timeless life-changing lessons in this one little book and follow your own writing mission.

The Controversial Decent of NaNoWriMo

 

I’ve always loved the idea of National Novel Writing Month, which occurs in November every year. During this month, millions of writers worldwide write a fifty-thousand-word novel and upload it to NaNoWriMo to earn a certificate of achievement. In its early days, I signed up for two years running to write a novel. 

I finished my first novel (Playing For Real) in the 30-day window, but sadly, the second one I only half finished and cheated by copying and pasting it all back in so that I reached the required 50K word count. But I did finish it after that.

So it’s sad that after more than 20 years, NaNoWriMo is closing down and that the whole thing is shrouded in controversy. 

They began in 1999 and in 2006 became a non-profit. The closure is said to be for  “financial” reasons, according to the interim executive director, Kilby Blades.

In November 2023 complaints from members were made that a NaNo forum moderator was grooming children on a different website. The moderator was eventually removed a few weeks later for what was said to be an unrelated code of conduct violation. But the whole thing left a bad taste with many writers who questioned NaNo’s capability of keeping children safe on their site.

Then in 2024, when that year’s November novel writing month was announced, NaNo said that they would accept entries from novels written using AI. They were immediately criticised for it but they didn’t back down and stated that “condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones.”

At the time, fantasy writer, C L Polk responded that “NaNo is basically asserting that disabled people don’t have what it takes to create art when they trot out the lie that scorning AI is ableist.”

The AI controversy received wide press coverage with NaNo standing their ground. Two authors stepped down from the NaNo board while many other writers spoke out against using bots in novel writing.

NaNo’s continual endorsement of AI in writing led to one of the world’s biggest backlashes against a non-profit.

Writers swiftly began to distance themselves from NaNo en-mass. Author Daniel José Older released a statement on his website stating that NaNo’s “position on AI is vile, craven, and unconscionable.”

Writers took to social media in droves, expressing their disgust at NaNo for endorsing AI software that is well-known for plagiarising authors’ work for training purposes, and that AI also spreads misinformation.

Many writers then began closing their accounts with NaNo to the point that the non-profit could no longer sustain itself and announced that it would close its website once all writers have had a chance to remove their work. To date, NaNo has not announced exactly when the closure will be.

The whole thing is sad because millions of writers have been able to get their novels written every November thanks to NaNoWriMo.

But that doesn’t have to stop. Any month can be the month that you get your book written. Just begin at midnight on the first of the month, and complete your first draft by midnight on the 30th.

And if you need help getting started, download The One Month Author and write your novel in a month, writing for just one hour a day.

https://www.cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS4.html