In the last 60 days, I've helped 253 people build an online writing habit.

Here are 10 lessons they've taught me in behavior change, human psychology, and writing online.

THREAD...👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

In January 2020, I started writing online.

What followed was 9 months of lonely, frustrating, and painfully slow growth.

So if you're a beginner, let me save you hundreds of hours and plenty of headache.

If I was starting over again, here's the exact playbook I would follow:

Here's the playbook breakdown:

• Where you should be writing
• How often you should be writing
• 1 thing you shouldn't waste time on
• The single most important thing you should do during your first 9 months (that I completely ignored)

Let's get into it:

First, where you should be writing.

When just starting out, I followed the conventional playbook.

I spent (wasted) hours creating a fancy website to host my fancy new blog.

And that's where I published.

I had to own my platform, right?

Except, there was 1 big problem:

No one knew my blog existed!

I was publishing into the void, spending hours every Sunday morning slaving over a hot keyboard & nitpicking every word.

Then, I would hit publish, waiting for the rush of attention.

Except... crickets.

The internet's crickets of indifference.

And because no one knew my blog existed, there was no feedback loop.

I had *no clue* whether what I was writing was interesting, helpful, or valuable to the reader.

Instead, I was *assuming* I was on the right track.

Newsflash: I wasn't.

What is 1 YouTube video you think every person on Earth should watch?

Building an audience, simplified.

• Share a ton of ideas.
• Find the ones that resonate.
• Find a way to repeat those in 100 different ways.

5 dead-simple steps to build a daily writing habit (that you can actually stick to):

By the end of this thread you will have:

1. Found time to write
2. Generated 12 months of ideas
2. Set a daily publishing cadence
4. Overcome your procrastination
5. Built a bulletproof accountability system

Just in time for the new year.

Let's go:

Step 1. Design your writing routine in a single sentence.

This is immediately where most people go wrong.

They set a vague goal to "start writing."

Instead, you want to define:

• When you're writing
• Where you're writing
• For how long you're writing

Here's an example:

Bad way to build a writing habit:

→ "I want to start writing."

Good way to build a writing habit:

→ "Every morning at 8 AM, I will sit down at my desk with a cup of coffee and write for 20 minutes."

Clearly defined when, where, and how long.

But how do you decide these?

Enter: Sacred Hours

To find your Sacred Hours, ask yourself 2 questions:

1. What time of day am I most productive?
2. What time of day can I be least reachable?

The overlap of these times are your Sacred Hours.

During that time, start small and commit to just 20 minutes.

𝑭𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒚 𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝑾𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒔
𝑁𝑎𝑘𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑟𝑎 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑

Most of the fairy tales are ancient folklores & it's hard to trace back to it's original creators. Still I wanted to see which nakshatra natives has contributed to this field.
* all charts calculated using cosmic insight app & lahiri ayanamsa

Jacob Grimm

Purva Asadha ☀️
Chitra 🌙
Magha ketu

Wilhelm Grimm

Shatabhisa ☀️
Purva Asadha 🌙
Pushya ketu

These German scholars are perhaps the most famous fairy tale collectors of all time. This collection was actually done as a part of their academic work.

Many popular tales reached a wider audience through their collection, including:

⭐Little Red Riding Hood
⭐Hansel and Gretel
⭐Snow White
⭐Sleeping Beauty
⭐The Frog Prince
⭐Rapunzel

Gonna talk "pitching story" for a moment, because that's how I get most of my screenwriting work and it's hard to find practical information about the art of it online and in books. This is just my experience and approach, but in the age of zoom, some of this may be helpful...

My primary goal when I pitch is TO ENGAGE THE AUDIENCE EMOTIONALLY. Yes, I'm telling the story, but for me storytelling is a vehicle that delivers emotion to an audience. I structure my pitch around emotion.

I learned this from my TV boss, Greg Walker.

How do I do it?

Two things I make sure I have in my pitch.

1. An early moment, usually in the first 30-60 seconds of speaking that creates a VIVID, EMOTIONALLY PROVOCATIVE IMAGE in the mind of the listener. We're pitching movies and TV. Those are VISUAL MEDIUMS. I drop that image early.

Sometimes, even though I can't draw, I'll sketch it out just to make *sure* it works. It'll usually revolve around a plot point, but the main goal is to get the audience to stop listening and start SEEING what I'm saying.

Then it's like storytelling at a campfire.

Having that image EARLY in your pitch can let the audience know that THIS IS INDEED A MOVIE. Once they can see the movie, then they're a little more with you. It still may not be the movie they want, but it's a movie. That's a win. The second thing I do is --

I can feel it in my bones: NaNoWriMo starts soon. If you meant to do some novel planning this month but never quite got around to the planning part, here are a few questions to help you think through your story arc.

These questions are based on Hollywood screenplays, the hero’s journey, and the work of writers who are much smarter than I am—looking at you @RachaelHerron and @LaniDianeRich and @darynda. I didn’t invent any of this.

And, it's totally okay to do no outlining and just wing the whole dang thing! Or do your planning in a wildly different way. But I've found these questions useful. So.

To start, you’ll need a main character. Let’s assume your main character is an orphaned boy whose horrible extended family has forced him to live in a cupboard beneath the stairs. Question #1: What’s missing from your main character’s life?

All of us are missing something. Maybe it’s a feeling of danger or true love or a sense of higher purpose. Maybe it’s a large animatronic penguin that can dispense boba tea through its nostrils. For our orphaned boy, it’s a sense of belonging.

Hello, writers! How about a thread on LITERARY AGENTS? How to get one, how to talk to one, how to keep one happy. Spoiler alert: I am 100% pro agent and can't imagine not having one on my side. 1/

Why would you want a literary agent?
* you want to be traditionally published
* you want someone experienced to help guide your career
* you want to learn how to edit like a pro
* you want to sell foreign and movie rights
* you want answers to your newbie questions 2/

Why you might *NOT* want a literary agent:
* you want to self publish
* you're not willing to compromise on your edits
* you don't think their expertise is worth 15% of your advance
I... can't think this way. Literary agents have been crucial to my career. 3/

So, how do you get a literary agent?
1. Have a finished, revised, edited, polished manuscript.
2. Write a query letter for your book
3. Send your query to agents who rep your genre and are open to submissions
4. Repeat steps 1-4 until you're offered representation. 4/

So, let's go through those four steps. First of all, you must have a finished, revised, edited, polished book, and it must be sellable. That is, you can't sell a 600k picture book or a 40k adult Fantasy, etc. You must read extensively in the genre you're writing. 5/