Lowrywrites.com

5000 word tip for your 50,000 word novel As far as writing your first novel goes, a lot of people are concerned about length.  Let's admit it's mostly men.  A lot of men are very obsessed with length.  Maybe it's a competitive holdover from caveman days when Grog would glance over to Og and grunt, "My novel is bigger than yours."  Ugh. So let's get it straight.  Length does not matter in indie publishing. It's all about the story man.  Be fun, be fast and be interesting. That's the way to get it done. Make your first page a page turner, build little story arc's into each chapter, add some cliffhanger situations so folks will want to keep reading and you've hit upon the golden formula.  Oh yeah, your hero needs to be redeemed, and learn something and be kinda likable, and your bad guy needs to have more than one dimension.   Unless your bad guy is the kind of villain where only one dimension is needed.  Pinky and the Brain onl

How often do you ask for help? One of the biggest problems I have is asking for help for anything.  I remember when my ex-wife and I decided to move back from California after my first daughter was born.  I flew her and the baby back to her parents house in Arkansas, then flew back to California, rented a 27 foot truck and proceeded to load an entire 3 bedroom duplex into the back of the truck by myself.  After a day of loading, I climbed in the truck and started the 2000 mile cross country trek alone.  And when we arrived, I would have unloaded by myself until a back spasm hit and knocked me to the ground.  Even then I still limped around picking up lighter boxes and smaller things all the while favoring my right side. It's crazy and I wish I knew where it came from. It's a fear, I know, almost a phobia.  Maybe I'm afriad people will see me as weak.  Maybe I'm afraid that by asking for help, I'll owe something.  I've spent some time meditating on it but h

I'm after what we're all after, which is to make a decent living writing.  Yes, I've read/heard and even lived the statistics.  It's tough work, very tough work, and you may have to adjust your definition of "decent living" to accommodate.  But hope springs eternal and all of that... I've been in marketing and sales for years, and I know some of the tips and techniques.  Promotion for Kindle ebooks and Kindle Unlimited is sometimes a different beast.  I won't lament the level of shite on the electronic bookshelves, hell, I've even read some of it and enjoyed. But no F#cking wonder it's so hard for any writer to get noticed. Which is why you should find someone, like JA KONRATH , and study what they do, then use their business model and career as your business model. I made a little money in Sept: and Oct is starting off with the same trend.  But as I mentioned before I want to be like you and make a decent living as an indie author-pr

On April 30, I was let go from my corporate job.  It was a pretty sweet director's position, one I had created especially for me through years of hard work and dedication.  In fact, the team I led was so successful, the company used our practices and business model for the majority of segments in the remainder of 2015 and planning for 2016.  It was all about growth. I think it was Spider Man's uncle who said, with great growth comes great accountability.  Or something like that.  It's kind of hard to hear an old man gurgling out his last words when he's bleeding out in an alley.  RIP Ben Parker.  Now pour your 40 on the ground. Back to my growth.  The bosses higher up wanted someone in charge of my segment to oversee all the growing we were planning.  So in Sept 2014, they brought in a guy who instantly decided I had to go.  There's something inherently wrong about companies that allow this sort of culling to go on.  You have a perfectly mediocre manager who d