An Expert's Advice on How To Beat Writers' Block Instantly

I was recently listening to an interview with one of the Titans of Copywriting, Gary Bencivenga. And in case you've been living in a cave and have never heard of him, he is known as the best copywriter in the world and began working in direct response copywriting in the 1960s. Sadly, he no longer works in the industry, but he and inspired taught thousands of marketers during his long career.

Anyway, in this interview he was talking about what to do when you don't have any ideas about what to write. He said that copywriters often have this problem because their work begins with getting ideas of what to write about before they can promote a product.

Anyway, what he said was that whenever you don't know what to write or are stuck with writers' block, all you need to do is start researching and that is guaranteed to get you started. He said that research is the answer to writers' block as well as helping find all the information he ever needed.

But then I got to thinking about where to start researching?

Well, the obvious choice is to do a general search on the topic that you want to write about. Just go to one of the search engines and type in a question or a keyword and see what comes up in the results. Sometimes, the search engines prompt for subjects that are already searched for often.

Another way to do it is to go to an online book store (or magazine site) and look to see what other writers are writing about on your topic. You can easily browse the TOC (Table of Contents) of a book to see the subjects of the chapters they are including in their writing.

And then there are also forums and social media which often show up what is trending or what is popular. They can also show you exactly what questions people are asking about right now.

So if you're feeling stuck and don't know what to write, start doing a bit of online research and before you know it, you'll have so much information and you'll feel motivated to write.

Goodbye Writers' Block
How to Be a Creative Genius and 
Have an Abundance of Ideas 
Plus the Inspiration and Motivation to Write
https://ruthiswriting.com/books/WB.html 

Unusual Writing Competition For a Short Story

Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon #3

This is a free-to-enter short story competition with a difference.

All the publisher is looking for is a short story consisting of exactly 50 paragraphs. Each paragraph has to be a minimum of 40 words, but there is no maximum word count for the story overall.

Not only that, but you are already provided with the first and twentieth paragraphs and you have to write all the others yourself.

This writing competition is open to writers from all over the world, but entries must be in English. And you can write in any genre.

The 3 top entries will win the first prize of $3,000, second prize of $2,000 plus the third prize of $1,000.

And the top 24 entries will also be included in an anthology.

The closing date for entries is 30th September 2019.

Find out more and how to enter at the website, https://www.owlcanyonpress.com/hackathon.

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What If... Short Story Competition

This is another free-to-enter short story competition.

It's run by Cook Publishing who are looking for submissions of short stories from 3,000 to 10,000 words.

The theme of the story must be "What If...?" and it's open to your own interpretation.

The overall winner will receive $250 and finalists each receive $50. 

All winning entries will be published on the company's website.

https://www.cookpubs.com/what-if

Debunking the Myths of Writing Fast or Slow

I've just finished reading (and making copious notes) from the book written by Steven Manning called "How to Write a Book on Anything In 14 Days or Less." I'd like to give you a link to this book so that you can read it for yourself, but it seems to be out of print.

Anyway, it got me thinking about fast writing compared to slow writing and how some authors seem to think that writing a book slowly and taking maybe a year or two to write it, means that their book will be better than someone else who wrote their book in a couple of days or even weeks.

Reading Steven Mannings book showed that writing quickly AND writing well is possible because it has 5-minute writing exercises in it. And when I did the exercises, I was surprised at how well I can write with so little time to write and practically no time to think. Yet my brain kicked into gear each time and I was really pleased with how well I did.

I then looked up what author Dean Wesley Smith had to say about it because he is currently one of the MOST prolific writers I know. He knocks out a novel every single month plus several short stories, copious blog posts, holds writing workshops and runs his own publishing company. He is a rock star when it comes to writing and publishing.

And according to Dean, he says that he is not a fast writer and the only reason his writing output is so high is because he spends a lot of time writing every day.

He even broke down his writing speed like this:

He can easily write 250 words in 15 minutes. So that means that if he only wrote for 15 minutes a day, he could write a 90,000-word novel in a year.

So if he wrote for 30 minutes a day he could write 2 novels a year and if he wrote for an hour, 4 novels a year... and so forth.

As it is, he writes 12 novels a year and does all his other writing besides. Most months he writes over 100,000 words including his short stories, blog posts, and emails.

Which means that with his speed of 1,000 words an hour, he must be writing over 3,300 words a day which is around 3 hours a day.

And he says (and I totally agree) that writing fast doesn't mean writing badly and writing slowly doesn't mean writing well.

This is because every writer is different and we each have different amounts of time each day when we can sit and write. Plus every project is different. Sometimes it's possible to knock out a book in just a week or two and other times it can take months.

There is also state-of-mind to consider. Sometimes, if I'm tired or ill and I don't feel like writing, I tend to think that my writing will be suffering. But later, when I'm feeling better, I'll check my work and find out that it didn't make any difference. The only difference was that it probably took me longer than usual to write, but the quality of my work is still the same.

Dean Wesley Smith also says, and he is completely correct, that writing too slowly can hurt your writing because that is when the critical part of the brain takes over and tries to stop you from writing. Writing quickly with only the creative brain is better than slowing down and letting your inner critic in.

And because there is no need to wait for a traditional publisher to publish your book, it frees you up to write as many books as you want to in a year and publish them all.

Read more about this at Dean Wesley Smith's 'Writing In Public' series.
https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/killing-the-top-ten-sacred-cows-of-publishing-2/

Learn how to write any book in 28 days or less.
https://ruthiswriting.com/links/writequickly.html

How Much Money Do Bloggers Make?

People always want to know how much money can be made from blogging.

We hear it all the time about someone who starts a blog and suddenly - WHAM! They're making a fortune. Or so it seems.

But we all know that these type of people are the exception to the rule rather than the norm. So, for the average person, the question is, how much money can you earn from a blog?

Well, you might be disappointed to hear that the answer to that is that there is no answer. That's because there are too many variables like

• how well the blogger can write
• what their blog is about
• what ways they make money from their blog
• how popular their blog topic is
• how useful the information is that they write about
• who their audience is
• how well they market their blog
• whether or not they know how to reach their targeted audience.

And there are other factors as well that can make or break blogging income, so no one can accurately predict how much or how little someone will make from their blog. Even people who open brick and mortar businesses, never really know if it's going to be successful or not, and again, it all depends on too many different factors.

The good thing about starting a blog is that unlike opening a physical business, there are very little or no upfront costs. So if it doesn't work out, you haven't lost much.

I've been working online for almost 20 years now and I've always earned money. I used to have quite a few websites and blogs that I'd regularly write for and I've also written many books. Over the years I've cut back on how many websites I have, but I still earn money from the ones I do have.

I believe that anyone can earn money online from just their laptop computer and an internet connection. You don't even need to have anything to sell. You just need to know what to do and how to do it. Then you need to take action to make it work.

And as I've said, everyone is different and every blog is different, so I can't guarantee you'll be rich overnight, but I can tell you that it is possible to make money online. I know because I've been doing it for years.

And in my newly updated book, Living the Laptop Lifestyle, I show you how easy it is, even if you don't know where to start and you don't have any money.

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/LLS.html