Both my writing course, How To Think Sideways, and my revision course, How To Revise Your Novel, are tough.  They’re geared to the student who wants to write at a professional level, whether you actually want to make a living from your writing, or whether you’re just hoping to get a few stories into magazine…or whether you want to write for your self, but you want to do it better.

These are not read-the-book-and-magically-write-better courses.  They’ll both require work on your part.  If you want to get good, they’ll require a lot of it.

I won’t blow sunshine up your skirt—writing is a tough business.  Even with the advent of GOOD self-publishing, getting noticed and growing a readership can be as tough as making a living at as professional sports, though you’ll get fewer broken bones, and you’ll still be at the top of your form when you’re forty, fifty, sixty, and beyond.  Try that as a hockey player.

I wrote “with intent to publish” for seven years, and have been selling regularly since 1991.  In more than 30 published novels, and counting, I’ve only had one book come together without significant pre-planning or a major revison…and that one book was written under circumstances so horrific I hope I’ll never have another.  All the rest, written in better times, were much tougher to write.

And yet…

Writing fiction is the best damn job on the planet—how many folks do you know who still wake up in the middle of the night excited that they get to go to work the next day?

But writing is work.  You have to want to write, you have to love words, and you have to be willing to write badly until you start understanding how you can make your writing better.  I can teach you everything I’ve learned about that last part—but if you don’t love to sit down in a quiet room with only your thoughts for company, you don’t want to be a writer.  Because the job description for writer is: you and your thoughts and nothing else for hours at a time.

If this sounds like fun to you, though, you’re a perfect match for my courses.  Take a look around, then join us.

Cheerfully,

Holly Lisle