Let's face it - online promotion of your books could easily become a full-time career if you're not careful. But if you're not writing regularly, then it won't be long before there's nothing to promote.
I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.
I pretty much started out writing full time. I was an at-home mom and when my youngest entered kindergarten, I started writing. I was 35, and before that I really hadn't written at all. Which means, I guess, that a) it's never too late to start a writing career (or any career you really want) and b) it's OK to get to your mid-30s and still not know what you want to be when you grow up.
Be Careful Of Books. Be Careful With Books. Be Careful Or One Can Become A Weapon-Wielder. Be Careful Or One Can Become The Victim.
The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground.
I was writing blogs before work, then I was writing at work, and then I started writing books on the weekend because you just have that sort of energy in your 20s; it's wonderful.
I'm up at 8:30 every morning, and I write from about 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. - with some breaks, of course. I really try to see writing as a career that I turn off when my husband comes home from work. Otherwise, writing could very easily become all-consuming.
I was in two successive European finals early in my career, so initially, you think that sort of thing is going to happen regularly. Then suddenly, it dries up, and before you know it, 13 years have passed before you get your next chance.
The thing you start noticing as books go by, is that you become aware not only of a shape of a career, but of your themes and interests. You don't want writing tricks where you make the same joke every time, but you do start to notice what consumes your mind, or what drives you.
I am through generalizing about ideas apart from men who generate them. I am through writing books about the dead, or writing books about the living to the unborn (tucked away as Literature) or writing books about the unborn to the living (whiffed away as prophecy). I put up my life on advertising the living to the living, on making men of genius known to the people and interpreted to their time, that the time in which I live, may live face to face with its men of vision and that they may live face to face with one another.
No, nothing,' said Dumbledore, and a great sadness filled his face. 'The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom... I wish I could.
The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing.
I've yet to use a cellphone, and I've never tweeted or entered Facebook. I try not to go online till my day's writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event.
My father said, 'How many days can I promote your film? You need to get your own recognition and your own identity. I can't be there always. So do it yourself.' So now I work on promotion, and he steps in to help just before the release.
As writers, you spend so long trying to build your cred as a writer, and then everything comes together at the same time: your artist career happens when your songwriter career is, too.
There's plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.
I could easily say that, for quite a long time before I became mayor, I had obeyed all laws.