Writing Course – What I Learned

 

Take a chance on yourself and your writing!

Holly Lisle has limited registration on her writing-career-survival course, HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS. The course will only be taking new students until Thursday, March 5th, at 11:59PM USA Eastern Time. After that, no new students will be able to join for a year.

How To Thinkl Sideways - using both sides of your brain while writing!
How To Think Sideways – using both sides of your brain while writing!

I stared writing my first novel in 2009. After a year, it was finished — and as long as two-thirds of Lord of the Rings! I revised for a year and shaved a few thousand words off it, then decided to take Holly Lisle’s novel revision course. Her methodology was great, and helped me to knock about 60,000 further words off my novel.

But while I was on her forums I heard students discussing her HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS course, and raving about it. Knowing Holly was a teacher with remarkable insight, and because I’d enjoyed her other course so much, I was keen to see how she developed her novels.

I joined How To Think Sideways in 2012.

This writing course wasn’t what I expected. I thought I’d just learn how to plot better and create a cohesive story.  Instead, I used art, diagrams, visualisation, sweet-spot-maps and many other right-brained techniques to develop the themes in my new work before I even started plotting.

I also learned how to query and submit my work to publishers, and how to set up a platform as an author or indie publisher – with step-by-step guides to help me through all the aspects of platform building.

My left-brain was also challenged to analyse many aspects of writing that hadn’t occurred to me. And then there was my favourite type of activity – setting off Muse Bombs – sure sources of inspiration that gave oomph to my writing.

Holly was great at explaining her procedures and giving me new tools to work with. She provides worksheets, videos and chat sessions and continues to add to her courses as she develops new resources. (Once I bought the writing course, more material was added, which has been great.) And Holly has been great at cheering for my successes!

I’m Holly’s affiliate because this course helped me in ways I didn’t expect — as well as providing the basic building blocks of crafting an interesting novel, it provided tools to analyse myself psychologically and determine the most effective way to move my work forward.

While doing one of her ‘quick ten-minute’ exercises,  I came up with a new idea for a novel — I’ve since written that novel! Of course Holly also discusses good story beginnings, building characters, dealing with soft middles and how to create endings that sell your next novel. There’s so much content in this course, and Holly outlines it all here.

How To Think Sideways is worth your time. But if you don’t agree, Holly has a GREAT money-back guarantee — you’re not risking anything by taking the course.

Look-HTTS-HollyLisleGo take a look. You’ll be glad you did.

But hurry. If you miss this, it’s a long wait until next time.

(Remember the course closes on Thursday, March 5th, at 11:59PM USA Eastern Time. After that, you’ll have to wait a year to join.)

Eileen Mueller featured on Holly Lisle’s How To Think Sideways Blog

My story Dad’s Wisdom was mentioned in a review on in the Baby Teeth anthology recently on The Horror Fiction Review. About my story, the reviewer said, “Other very good stories include “Dad’s Wisdom” by Eileen Miller about a boy taking advice from his dad on what to feed a dragon under his bed;”  Short and sweet! Yeah, Miller/Mueller, I get all sorts of spellings! (They got Eileen right, which is  a bonus!)

HTTS-Boot-Camp-Header2-940x72I wrote to Holly Lisle recently, who has been an amazing writing mentor for me. She has published my letter on her How To Think Sideways blog, and you can read it here.

Holly Lisle runs a novel writing school called ‘How To Think Sideways’, which includes a number of free writing courses, as well as larger clinics, workshops and career courses. I’ve done many of them. Her courses are great, she’s a straight-shooter, right to the point, who provides great frameworks for writers, and goes into more depth than I ever thought possible. On her free marketing forum board, UGLY BABY (the name is a long story), Holly offered a free bonus clinic to anyone who got paid over $50 USD for their fiction work. I did. So I qualify for her really cool upcoming Create a World Clinic (my choice.) For the next $250 I earn above and beyond that, I qualify for a free workshop too. Holly gets such a kick out of seeing writers flourish. It’s one of her aims in life to leave a legacy of writers she has taught.

Click here to do her free flash fiction course.  Or sign up to Holly Lisle’s UGLY BABY fiction marketing group who brainstorm together about selling their fiction. Click on this link to the post about me and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page.