Author: Ozzy
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Your Day Job is a Stepping Stone
If you’re a writer with a day job, it’s easy to feel trapped. Every hour you give to someone else can feel like an hour stolen from your own words. You clock out tired, stare at the page, and wonder if you’re ever going to have enough time or energy left to make this writing…
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Mood Boards for Writers
Mood boards aren’t just for artists or designers. They help you make consistent choices in your writing. The way you describe a street, the colour of the light in a scene, the kind of clothes your characters wear—it all flows better when you’ve set the mood for yourself first.
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You Don’t Find Your Voice, You Build It
Writers talk a lot about “finding your voice,” like it’s some lost object waiting under the couch cushions. As if one day you’ll stumble across it fully formed—Ah, there it is! My voice!—and from then on, the words will flow perfectly. It doesn’t work like that. Your voice isn’t something you find. It’s something you build.
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No One Will Love Your Book Like You Do
Readers can care deeply about your story. They can love it, be moved by it, recommend it to friends, reread it a dozen times. But their relationship will always be different from yours. For them, it’s a story. For you, it’s part of your life.
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How Do I… (You Do The Work)
A lot of writers get stuck waiting for someone to give them the right tip, the perfect answer that will fix their story instantly. That doesn’t exist.
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Your Work Should Stand By Itself
If you need to explain your story after people read it, something’s not right. There’s work still to be done. That’s a harsh truth, but it’s one worth facing.
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Your Two Whys
Everything in your story has two Whys: Why does this happen in the story? Why did you, the writer, add it to the story?
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Don’t Expose Your Ideas Too Early
Ideas are fragile when they’re new—small, tender things just starting to put down roots. Pull them out into the light too soon, and they stop growing.