Cara Brookins's Blog, page 5

What Stops You From Making Money With Your Book Ideas

Why is it so hard to get started? Why did you want to write a book for so many years but you never just wrote? And if you started, you never finished, or never sold it and wrote the next idea. What held you back? Fear holds us back from reaching our biggest (often secret) goals. But writing a book, blog, or short story is not the same as leaping

Trailblazer Studios: Lights, Camera, Laughter

Life at Inkwell Manor is never dull. If the chaos slows to a low rumble we heap seven or eight more projects on the pile. In addition to writing and a variety of business plans, we started the new year chatting with Trailblazer Studios about Network television shows. I’ll share the sizzle reel and anything that comes of it along the way. Here’s a peek of us setting up for

Writing Sellable Dialog

Dialog is an enormous part of our lives from the moment we’re born. We study it, practice it in front of mirrors, and in our cars. So why is it so difficult to write natural sounding dialog in our novels? For two reasons. First, because speaking in real life involves more senses than speaking in a novel. You and your best friend can hear the train approaching, smell the bag

Write A Sellable Book

Writing a novel is more than a hobby. It’s more than a project. It’s a career. But investing weeks, months, even years in a book without understanding the elements that make it a marketable product will turn it into the most frustrating endeavor of your life. I wasted a lot of time writing novels that were missing… something. Maybe the plot was great but the characters weren’t well developed. Or the dialog

Write Sellable Characters

Whether your novel idea started with a character or a plot, you won’t get very far without developing a believable, likable, 3-dimensional character. Take time to daydream a little. A job with dreaming on the to-do list is pretty awesome, right? (If only you could go back and tell your third grade teacher this is possible after all.) Imagine what your character looks like, what they sound like, what they would

Seven Right Reasons To Write A Book

Everyone has their own personal history and should walk their own path. Do your thing, and do it for your own reasons. But you should leap in with a full knowledge of the sharks and fuzzy ducklings in the pond. (Saltwater pond. Obviously.) So dig deep and evaluate the real reasons you’re writing a book. – Stop writing. Seriously. Writing is a tough lifestyle and if you can stop I highly

Seven Wrong Reasons To Write A Book

I’m not sure there really are strictly wrong reasons to do anything in life, because there are always unexpected scenarios that turn otherwise crazy reasons perfectly sane. That said, people often leap into a thing without enough information. While the reasons you’re writing a book are no doubt complex, make sure the following are not your primary inspiration. – Aunt Mabel said I should. Humans have a long history of trying

Two Simple Ingredients For A Marketable Book

Committing to write a 300 page novel is a scary endeavor. And if you’ve read books about writing and attended conferences, you have about a zillion novel ingredients zipping around in your brain–skip one and you’re doomed. Your novel will never sell, or worse, you’ll never finish it. No pressure, right? Forget all that stuff… well don’t actually forget it, but move it to the back of your head for

To Make Money Writing, You Have To Write

Every single day someone tells me they’ve always wanted to write a book. In checkout lines, city hall, at the bank, beach or hairdresser—which means I spend at least a few minutes a day talking about my passion for writing. Men and women of every age want to write a book about plumbing, or quilting, or model train collecting (if that’s called something specific, I apologize to train people). Everyone has

5 1/2 Pages Every Author Website Needs

If your website setup or redesign has you huddling in a corner hoping the WIFI goes down so you can escape the madness, start with the basics and you can add to it later. Fonts, colors, layouts, buttons, newsletters, blogs, galleries, affiliate links. OH. MY. It’s okay, you can come out now. If you aren’t inclined to select perfectly coordinating color swatches on your own, you’ll be happy to know