Ryan Lanz's Blog, page 19

Procrastination: How to Stay Motivated in Your Writing Task

Procrastination is a common problem in any area. Many of us have to fight hard to find ways of motivating ourselves to finish what we start. It can be a tough task, right? You may feel frustrated every time you hear, “Well, you love it. If it is your dream, why don’t you do it?” […]

New Service! Beta Reading Services

We have a new service available: beta reading services. As writers and authors know, feedback is crucial, and having more of it is always a good thing, but finding people to beta read for you can be a challenge. For those who struggle to find beta readers to read and offer feedback on their work, […]

Giving Yourself an Authorly Performance Review

If you’ve ever worked for a large organization, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with annual performance reviews. Where I last worked there were five possible scores. If you received a “one” you were out the door. A “two” meant you were also out the door but the company wanted to create the illusion of […]

Story Stuff: L is For Likable vs Livable

Sometimes I hear gripes from critique partners or beta readers that one of my characters isn’t likable (I won’t say which characters because I don’t want to poison the well, in case any of you want to read my stuff). After making sure I haven’t created an unnecessary asshole, I ask myself this question – […]

How Putting Together a Picture Book is Like Managing a Baseball Team

When I was a kid, I was passionate about two things: baseball and reading. There were summers where I barely missed a Phillies game on the radio. I either watched or listened to the All-Star game, the World Series, the playoffs, and was not above catching the odd spring training game or two. I even […]

How to Make an Old Plot New

Plots have been recycled ever since stories have been told, reusing themes like sacrificial death, the poor becoming rich, the ugly becoming beautiful, and other archetypes. Even great works like those of Shakespeare or Jane Austen can be traced to other influences, ideas, and concepts, but how do you make an old plot new? How […]

Why You Need Realistic Writing Expectations

As you gear up for a new year of writing, it’s important to set expectations and goals. Just “hoping to write a novel this year” probably won’t result in a lot of work, so how will you approach it? A certain number of pages a day? A goal of a chapter a week? A month? […]

“Random Writes” and Why I Love Them

In a world where time is hard to divide and hours of pure concentration take much energy and effort, random writes have come to save me. Random writes are defined as followed: A short, 500 – 2,000 word, non-edited dabble in whatever the author wants to write about. I have also heard these referred to […]

Start From the Middle: How One Single Idea Changed Everything

I didn’t write ONE sentence of my current book project this week. Not a single word. But man did I make some progress! I told y’all how I like to outline the entire story in multiple levels of detail before I really get to writing a manuscript [Planning: The Importance of Outlining (for me, anyway)], so you […]

Write Like You’re Seven Years Old Again

“When I begin my work with a period of play … I tend to like the result.” – Monica Guzman, columnist (Hustle Economy, p. 93)   When you first started writing, you weren’t really writing. You were playing. You don’t remember this well: you were a child then. But it happened. Yes, technically, you were […]