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2017-12-31 - 7:24 a.m. Over the past year, I've sold a decent number of books and earned more money writing fiction than I've done in years... BUT I also think I got sidetracked with a lot of bad advice. The gurus have all these wacky ways of "analyzing" Amazon rank and deciding which market is "underserved" and they're all using the same software and the same silly techniques to evaluate these markets and, as expected, "underserved" goes to "overserved" in weeks... Everybody's teaching the same class about how quality doesn't matter, what matters is shoveling it out as fast as you can while the keyword is still hot. Uh huh. Good luck with that... Since there's so much noise lately in the author authority space, I've recently looked elsewhere for inspiration. I watched Nick Cave's movie 20,000 Days on Earth. He puts a huge premium on editing. He spends an incredible amount of time and thought on crafting his lyrics. He is shameless about taking the time it takes to make something perfect. Then I saw David Lynch's The Art Life. He says he thought the art life was painting, drinking coffee, and smoking a lot of cigarettes. So that's what he did. Forget school, forget anything that got in the way. Total focus on creation. I also ordered Professor Green's biography, Lucky. This one's a book, not a movie, but it does have an app where you can see little associated photos and videos with it. Anyway, same story as the two films... He didn't let anything get in his way of making the music and learning the craft. When he had to either get a second job or sell drugs to make money, he went with selling drugs. It was the only way to leave any time free for the music. I can't advocate that, especially not in America with our crazy laws-- he lives in the UK-- but you have to admire the focus.
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