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Quote of the day:
This day, I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply – in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF.
~KAMAL RAVIKANT, author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
WRITING
- The key to writing 3-dimensional characters, Write on sisters | Tweet
The most common advice I’ve heard for writing three-dimensional characters is to delve into their backstory, develop their personality profiles, and get to know them as if they are alive and kicking right beside you. Common wisdom seems to support that if the author knows their characters inside and out, then said characters will be three-dimensional on the page.
→Writing Three Dimensional Characters (Writing Books that Count Book 1)
- Fishing out your manuscript hook, Writers in the storm | Tweet
Congratulations, you did it! You typed “The End”. Finite. Have a glass of wi
ne, heck have a bottle. Now, polish it up, send it out to agents, maybe editors. Maybe you get a few rejections, no problem. Maybe a few more. Maybe they sort of hinge around one thing: It didn’t grab me like I’d hoped. You scratch your head, what does that even mean? You’re missing your hook.
→The Hook: Keeping Readers Captivated (Wisdom in Writing Series)
- Romance your seven senses by Eliza Redgold, Romance University | Tweet
One of the first pieces of fiction writing advice I received was to ‘use my senses’. To be honest, I had no idea how. As an academic of the absent-minded professor variety (as my university students will attest) I often didn’t notice what was around me, wandering around campus lost in thought. So, one by one, I decided to ‘romance my senses’ in my own backyard, by exploring the region where I live and writing about each sense. What an adventure!
→Increase Your Word Power: Using Your Senses to Improve Your Vocabulary
Confusion about viewpoint stems from the very words we use to describe it: 
close third person, limited third person, middle third person … what do they mean? “Third person” doesn’t say anything about viewpoint. It only says you’re using he and she instead of I.
SCREENWRITING
- 30 Things about screenwriting: Don’t think…feel, Go Into The Story | Tweet
“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads ‘Don’t think!’ You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.” — Ray Bradbury
→Feel These Words: Writing in the Lives of Urban Youth
- SELLING YOUR SCREENPLAY: Relationship building for screenwriters, Script Mag | Tweet
In this episode of the podcast I talk with screenwriter, director, producer, and lawyer, David 
Garrett about the importance of relationship building for screenwriters. David talks about how he sold numerous projects without the benefit of an agent and how these sales could be directly linked to a relationship that he built up over the course of 5 or even 10 years.
→Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter’s Guide to Hollywood
SELF-PUBLISHING
- Offering free ebooks to subscribers, Elizabeth Spann | Tweet
Many writers offer free ebook incentives for signing up for their newsletter. I liked the idea of the giveaway, but I knew one thing: it had to be automated. I don’t have the time to email ebooks to readers in their preferred format.
→Building an E-mail list: A complete guide to building an e-mail list from scratch
- Targeting genre with the KDSPY Kindle app, Live Write Thrive | Tweet
So regardless of the reason, you might want to achieve some success with your book sales. And targeting genre is a great way to do it.
→WriteCraft: Choosing A Genre – Decide Which Genre To Use For Your Story
MOTIVATION
- An alternative to believing in yourself, Seth’s Blog | Tweet
Of course, self-belief is more than just common advice. It’s at the heart of selling, of creating, of shipping, of leadership…
→Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
- How to attract good luck: 4 secrets backed by research, Barking up the wrong tree | Tweet
Ever had a run of bad luck? It feels like the world is actively conspiring against you. Ever wonder if you can improve your luck? And I don’t mean with voodoo or magic crystals. Turns out somebody has done scientific research on luck. So I gave him a call.
HAPPINESS
High suicide rates are often cited as evidence of social failure. Despite this, some countries an
d regions that do very well in terms of happiness have among the highest suicide rates. This column explores this paradox using global data on suicide and self-reported life satisfaction. Although the paradox is confirmed for Eastern European and wealthy countries, inconsistent patterns emerge when other demographic factors are taken into account. This might reflect the empirical difficulty of explaining suicide, but might also be indicative of the unreliability of self-reports of happiness.
→Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
NUTRITION
- Consumers should seek a variety of fiber sources to get the maximum health benefits, Science Daily | Tweet
Consumers who get fiber from many sources — both naturally occurring and added in manufacturing — may benefit more than people who limit their intake to a single type.
→The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook: More Than 200 Fibers, from Animal to Spun Yarn
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
- The 6 types of entrepreneur, Black Enterprise | Tweet
Are you a world-changer? An innovator? An opportunist or a jack-of-all-trades? Maybe you’re a serial entrepreneur — or are you actually a ‘wantrepreneur?’ These are the six major types of entrepreneurs out there, and you likely fall into one of these categories.