James Carran

All of writerly wisdom is contained in this short post. No really. Read on... To almost quote something from one of my favourite books: Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all writerly wisdom is contained in these three words ‘Write and hope.’ Write and hope. Despite what anyone tells you out there in guru land, there are no "sure bets". There are no "psychological hacks" that guarantee a viral tweet. There are no certain best-sellers. Write and hope. There are ways to increase your chances, ways to boost things in your favour, like learn to write faster so you increase your chances, but you never know for certain until you publish. There are two responses to this. One is to give up. After all you never know what's going to happen when you publish. You might pour your soul and heart into a part of your work and you hit publish and... ...Nobody cares. The other approach is simple. Write and hope. You might throw it out there into the wild and it succeeds beyond your wildest dreams. I wrote my kids book hoping my daughter would read it and enjoy it one day. To date? Nearly eight thousand copies sold last I heard, which was six months ago. It hit the top fifteen percent levels of ALL PUBLISHED BOOKS for its first year. And I was starting from straight zero. No audience, no name, no marketing skills. On the sillier end of the spectrum I once sent a tweet out and got replied to by Elon Musk. Sorry, did I say once? Thrice now. Write and hope. Two things happen when you write and hope. One, individual pieces pop more than you thought they ever would. Two, you build a body of work that slowly, piece by piece, word by word, failure by failure, success by success, sentence by sentence, book by book, song by song, makes your name known as someone who creates. Who produces. Who Writes. Throwing my thoughts into the swirling void has connected me to phenomenal writers, copywriting legends, email marketers extraordinaire, theological powerhouses. I'm gonna name-drop because why the heck not. Ben Settle. John Bejakovic. David Deutsch. David Garfinkel. Joshua Lisec. Kieran Drew. Jim Clair. Thomas J. Bevan. Sinclair B. Ferguson. Kevin DeYoung. Michael Foster. Scott James. Eddy Quan. Harrison Schenk (of Save Your Sons and Sherwood fame). Many more as well. All people who I've learned from, connected to (even if it's only a few messages back and forth) and would never have known nothing about me if I didn't put my words out into the world. I've made a ton of friends (some on the list above, others who I won't name in case I forget someone). All because one day I decided I was gonna stop waiting for certainty and start to... Write and hope. You might think it's a waste of time to write because you don't have an audience, don't have a voice, don't have a list. Gurus will encourage that feeling so they can sell you audience-building programs. I call bullshido on that. You attract an audience when you start to write. Sure, you can boost it by audience-building alongside it. And you should. But the most important thing is to write and hope. Write and hope. Not in a vague, fluffy, way that says "Oh, I hope this does well..." But in a sure, settled way that says: I will write until I make it, come hell or high water, because until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all of my wisdom is contained in these three words: Write and hope. And until that day, may your pipe burn bright and your words burn brighter and your hope burn brightest of all. Write and hope. And also sign up for my email list which will help you both to write and to hope. Link's in my bio. Yours, James Carran

Look, I'm not sure about this guys. First chapter and our narrator is off to stay with a Count called Dracula? Ominous. Like going on a boating trip with a guy called Odysseus. Hasn't he read the stories?!

Unpopular opinion: You don't have to niche down. Just write about what you enjoy. Be yourself. Find people who will follow YOU and not a collection of tips with no personality.

That's it, I'm selling everything else and buying SPCX...

The reason you find writing hard is that you give up writing because writing is hard. If you never push through the struggle, you will never grow.

Free Speech online is 4 years old today. Here's to another 400.

Never take life advice from people who say your college years are the best years of your life.

If you hate the journey, you're on the wrong path.

Look if you want to be a writer: Learn to love writing. People will tell you it's finding ideas that matter but if that was true you could just hire someone. Learn to love words for their own sake, and you'll get good. It's the only way.