Saturday Morning Coffee ☕ Edition #7

How long is too long?

Canva image.

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☕ Good morning, friends!

I hope you’ve had a fantastic week and you’ve got one hand wrapped around a warm mug brimming with liquid caffeine right now.

I’ve just finished reading The Woman in Black (scary biscuits!) and it got me thinking about novel length. This one was less than 42,000 words long and I breezed through it fairly quickly.

In comparison, my first horror novel The Substitute is 139,000 words long. Getting it published will be next on the agenda once my YA fantasy The Soulburn Talisman’s out there in the big bad world.

Which brings me to this week’s poll:

If you’re not sure about your latest read’s word count, just fire it into Google. That’s what I did. And if you have a second, leave a comment below and tell everyone what you’re reading right now.

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Some interesting thoughts from others

• The key ingredient of any author-agent relationship by

  Alyssa Matesic

• The First and Best Writing Advice I Ever Received by

  Lincoln Michel

• 6 Ways to Avoid the Substack Rut by

  Substack Writers at Work

• I Ditched Medium For 30 Days — Then This Happened by

  Igor Jovanovic

• Why Your Articles Fail On Medium and How to Make Them Succeed by

  Walter Rhein

• Creative Approaches #1 - Start a 'blog' on Substack by

  Claire Venus

• Lesson 2: Why Are You Submitting to Lit Mags In the First Place? by

  Benjamin Davis

• On Writing and Creativity by

  Jen Hitze

• Things That Make Authors Cry by

  Brooke Warner

• How to Survive Substack | Part One by

  Tamzin

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Something to watch

Hey, did you know I’m also on YouTube (sort of)?

It’s been ages since I posted anything there, but I hope to gradually slide back into it again soon enough.

Here’s a little video I made back in September with some tips for anyone interested in writing on Medium (ignore the bit at the end about my old newsletter, which no longer exists).

Feel free to subscribe when you’re there, too!

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What to expect next week

• On Tuesday,

  Ian Pierre Botes
  shares about how to systemize and monetise your personality when writing - it’s a really interesting read!

• On Thursday, I’ll be talking to paid subscribers about how to fortify your mindset against rejection as a writer. Super important.

• And of course, at the weekend you can settle down with Saturday Morning Coffee Edition #8 (almost into double-figures now!). ☕

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A little something extra

• The Worst Night of my Life

• I Took a 10-Day Break From Medium — Here’s What Happened

• I Analysed All Of My Medium Headlines — These 3 Topics Consistently Got The Most Views

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Thanks for joining me once again, folks!

Don’t forget to tell everyone what you’re reading right now in the comments below, and give this post a quick restack if you can.

Have a great Saturday! 😊

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How to Grow Within The Online Community That Grows Your Online Audience

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