My New Guru

If you don't already follow Kristen Lamb's amazing blog, you should. I've read her blog posts sporadically the last couple of years, but at the start of this fresh, sparkly new year I read her book "Are you there Blog?" and it quite literally revolutionised my writing life.

Kristen's blog often covers the same stuff as her books, but in bite size chunks. Though with her witty, and sometimes irreverent take on things, the books make for quick, fun reading too.

As a guru of social media, Kristen obviously has a great deal of good advice on promotion for authors, but she also has great writing, business and even personal advice for us. Perhaps the most important thing I took from "Are you there Blog? It's me Writer" and its prequel, "We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media" is that we need to treat our writing careers professionally from the very get go, even if we still have day jobs and can only spare an hour a day to this fledgling new career.

Are we serious about being authors?
Then we can't afford to make excuses. We must be prepared to make sacrifices. We need to take ourselves and our writing craft seriously, and we need to make time for this new career.

Kristen says it like it is, gives real advice and practical tips, and we're all better off for listening.
Don't believe me? Start with these hard-hitting posts:
Don't Eat The Butt: Lies that can poison our writing career
The Why Behind the Buy

So now that you're in no doubt who my new guru is, do you have any gurus in your writing or personal lives? Anyone whose words have changed your life? If so, please share them here. I'm always looking for new inspiration.

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And a marvellous post script to today's post: Congratulations Suzanne Minx on a request. Your patience has certainly been rewarded!