Tips from my week.
I’ve had a very productive week with my fantasy series—and I’m here to share my takeaways. I aim for these to be tips to help you write faster and more of what you actually like.
Chose what you want to work on and work on that. It’s okay to let your other hobbies drop out of the way. Keep the fundamentals and chose what you want to do. I’ve been very active as an artist, lately, but I’ve realized that art will aways be there, so I’ll just let it sit for a while and work on my books.
Do something new. Introduce a new concept. I did this this week and I found with delight that it was just the missing part. If your concept has been running for a long time on low (like my fantasy books), it may be time to fuel up with new ideas. You don’t need to have a new idea really—just put in something unusual.
Stop trying to stop rewriting the same story. They say each preacher has one sermon that he’ll give all his life. Your story may sound the same no matter how you dress up the characters again. But guess what? It’s just getting better each time you do.
Don’t feel like you have to change keys. I’ve been playing way too much in E on the guitar (at least, I think?) and I’ve been had to settle down on the fact that if I ever produce an album from this time of my life, it’s going to all have the same feel. I can’t break out of what I sound like at this time—but neither do I need to.
Get mood lighting. I cannot overstate this. I’ve now got a string of lights (thanks to someone you don’t know—unless you do) hanging over the one side of my room and my life is literally changed forever. A lamp in the corner, a string of colored lights, or a fire in the fireplace (please!) can change the world of your story.
Copilot is actually quite cool. It, of course, can write nothing near as good as I can (take that!), but Word now has it integrated into every document and you can ask questions. I asked it if I’d named a certain character and it searched the entire book and told me that I’d never given “the queen” a name. It’s pretty cool :) I asked it “What should I tell my Substack audience about my book?” and this is part of what it gave me:
I made some cool “in theory” covers for my fantasy epic and I found that really encouraging. The books sometimes feel very far away from being real, but having something to picture as the cover is really fun. It’s also really cool to see it for books I’ve not gotten to write yet.
That’s everything helpful and encouraging I have from my week 😊 I hope you enjoyed!
-Noah Ballard