Newsletter 101: Why writers puff up prose, and why it never works. Plus, an open letter to publishers, AI-generated books that never appear, three people to follow and three books to read. The superlative trap Hey, everyone! I’m the greatest, most talented, most super-accomplished writer that you’ve ever encountered. 🥳🎉🥳🎉 Admit it. You read that…
If you hire me as an editor and your work has problems, I’m going to tell you. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, either. These are the kinds of comments I frequently make: I sometimes wonder why people don’t fire me, but so far, with more than 100 clients, no one has told me…
Your ghostwriter is going to do a lot more for you than you originally thought. They’re going to critically assess your idea, then work with you until it’s strong enough to live in the world. They’re going to calm you down and boost your spirits. They’re going to untangle your twisted logic and make it…
Writing a book is a lot of work. The hard parts aren’t worth doing unless you enjoy the fun parts. Which parts are fun? Here’s a list of my favorite parts. Of course it may be different for you. It’s not just about your fun, you know Books written in tedium are tedious to read….
Writing is never finished. Only abandoned. While there’s controversy about who said that first, it’s absolutely true. Books go to the publisher at the deadline, and always with authors regretting they don’t have more time to work on them. The key to ensuring that what you turn in is the best it can be is…
Newsletter 100: A smarter way to go on holiday. Plus, Anthropic’s training on books rules “transformative,” defamation by blurbs, three people to follow and three books to read. How to go away Everyone needs time off. And people tend to disagree on how to do it. There’s the “disconnect entirely” camp. They don’t check email,…
People working with me sometimes experience sticker shock. It’s the same story with many accomplished ghostwriters and editors. Here are some of my typical price points for nonfiction books: The price can vary based on a lot of factors, but that’s a pretty good idea of the ballpark. I’ve written in the past why I’m…
Last week I woke up at 4:00 am with a brilliant idea of what to write for the opening of a book proposal for a client. Every sentence was clear in my mind — at least to the extent that one can have clarity of mind at four in the morning. Was it worth getting…
After I solved the New York Times Connections puzzle today, the “Connections Bot” told me that my solution was unique among the last million players. The same thing happened yesterday. How can I repeatedly be getting one-in-a-million solutions? The answer reveals a little about our mistaken intuition about probability. The 10 trillion ways to attempt…