Simple Question: Do YOU want to write for a living? "LESSON DESCRIPTION: Discover how to avoid—-or fix—-the procrastination, writer's block, perfectionism, and excuses that keep most people from writing successfully." In the first lesson of this course, you will: Discover the four very common thinking patterns that prevent most people who want to write from ever succeeding—-and you will identify which patterns plague you, and why. Clear out the deadwood in your thinking and you'll be thrilled with the power of everything that deadwood has been choking and stifling. Learn and use the fix for each of the four problem thought patterns—-and watch your writing take off.Discover one technique for connecting your conscious and subconscious minds and teaching them to work together to give you the best stories you've ever come up with—-this is where you start building a career based on stories that matter to you.Learn how to find and identify the writing opportunities you've been tripping over and missing until now—-you'll be floored by how fun this is, and blown away by how quickly you start getting results.The public version of the course consists of these 29 individual lessons, and downloadable, printable worksheets included in the purchase price, and available from simple-to-type links at the back of each lesson. Each lesson is taught in sequence, and builds on techniques taught in previous lessons. ""TO AVOID CONFUSION AND FRUSTRATION, DO THE LESSONS IN ORDER."" STUDENTS SAY: "Fantasy writer and teacher extraordinaire Holly Lisle (no relation!) earns my undying thanks for her online courses on writing and editing, without which this book might still be languishing in revision Hell." —From the Acknowledgements in "THE ALCHEMIST OF SOULS", by Anne Lyle "My newest novel (revised with some of the methods I learned in this course) got contracted by the very best Fantasy-agent in Germany." — Katharina Gerlach, Germany "I've been a professional journalist for 20 years... I was hoping to silence the editor. (And) I realized I'd written 5,000 words without going back to check spelling, etc." — Max Howard "It is by far more detailed than I could have ever hoped. It's not just a collection of tips and tricks; it's a complex, complete system for getting that damn book done and done right. It's changed my whole approach to writing but in a way that feels natural, like, 'why didn't I think of doing it this way before?'" — K.T. Appleby Each of the 29 lessons teaches one or more essential sideways-thinking skills that will allow you to write better fiction, find markets for your work, revise intelligently (and just once per book), sell what you write, and make every book you write better than the last. It includes both commercial publishing and self-publishing tracks: I have many years of experience in both. HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS: Career Survival School for Writers is not "how to write a book." It is "How to write books you love for the rest of your life in ANY genres you wish to pursue, get paid for doing it, hit deadlines, crush writer's block, NEVER run out of ideas, and build a career telling stories you're proud of to people who love what you do." The course is written exclusively for people who want to learn how to make a living from their writing, and my system is built around learning how to THINK sideways, and how to apply sideways-thinking skills to your writing—-and while you will write, revise, and submit (or publish) a novel or novella as your course project, if you are unwilling to learn new ways of thinking, you will not benefit from the course. —-Holly Lisle
Author
Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won her the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She has just published WARPAINT, the second stand-alone novel in her Cadence Drake series. Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows: “So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived. “My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks. “It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.” “Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next. ” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’ “The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down. “We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget. “I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.” You can find Holly on her personal site: Hollylisle.com You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site: CadenceDrake.com You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here: The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.
