Over the years, I have traveled extensively and kept journals, with the idea that one day all of those places would become locations in books. Notebooks filled with odd characters, people and incidents observed, and whole tracts of stories written when the on the spot inspiration has been a driving force.
All of this is the basis of the first three novels, Sunday In New York, set, of course, in New York, probably my favorite city in the world, “Echoes From The Past’ equally set in New York, Brooklyn Heights and Philadelphia. The third, The Devil You Don’t, travels through Europe, starting in Geneva, moving to Rome, then Sorrento, and then to Venice.
Now, my passion to write is fuelled by travel and fine dining. When I take a break from these, I get to torment my three wonderful grandchildren whom I actively encourage to read as much as they can, and more recently to also write.
As for almost every other writer, I would not be able to do any of this without my wife who has put up with my moodiness, the times when I'm locked away in a room trying to push out another 2,000 words, and yet despite everything still puts up with me.
I wish I could say the same for our cat. Alas, I am still trying to work out how to be his friend!
Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is located in the northern Andes Mountains, nestled in a valley on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano, about 25 miles south of the equator, making it one of the world’s highest capital cities at roughly 9,350 feet in elevation.
Region: Sierra (Highlands) of Ecuador, part of the Andes mountain range.
Equator: Very close to the Equator, with a monument marking the line just outside the city.
Beyond Quito’s major landmarks, there are many unique, local experiences and attractions to explore. These include visiting bohemian neighbourhoods, a renowned pre-Columbian art museum, and local food markets.
Alternative Cultural Experiences
Explore La Floresta: This bohemian neighbourhood is known for its vibrant street art, independent galleries, and hip cafes and restaurants. A popular spot is the indie cinema, Ocho y Medio, which screens avant-garde and foreign films.
Wander through La Ronda: This charming, narrow cobblestone street in the historic centre truly comes alive at sunset with local art galleries, artisan workshops (like coppersmiths and traditional hat makers), cafes, and live music.
Visit Museo Casa del Alabado: Located in the Old Town, this private museum houses an impressive and well-curated collection of pre-Columbian art and archaeological pieces, providing deep insight into Ecuador’s ancestral heritage.
Check out the street art: The La Floresta and La Mariscal neighbourhoods feature an evolving outdoor gallery of murals and graffiti that reflect contemporary social and political themes.
Experience local markets: For an authentic slice of daily life, visit the Mercado Central or Mercado Artesanal La Mariscal. The Central Market offers inexpensive, traditional Ecuadorian food (try the locro de papa or horno) and fresh juices, while the Artisan Market is perfect for shopping for handicrafts, textiles, and jewellery.
There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well, not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end of it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum: find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father, who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
Study the Competition So You Can Beat Them: The Ultimate Guide to Competitive Intelligence
In the world of business, going in blind is a recipe for failure. Whether you are launching a startup, running an established e-commerce store, or creating content, you cannot operate in a vacuum.
If your goal is to grow your market share, increase conversions, and ultimately win, you need to know who you are up against. As the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
In modern business, we call this competitive intelligence.
Studying your competition isn’t about copying what they do—in fact, that’s a surefire way to blend in instead of stand out. Instead, it’s about analyzing their strengths, exploiting their weaknesses, and finding the gaps in the market that they are leaving wide open.
Here is a step-by-step masterclass on how to study your competition so you can beat them at their own game.
Step 1: Identify Who Your Real Competitors Are
Before you can study your rivals, you need to know who they actually are. Many business owners make the mistake of only looking at direct competitors. To get a true edge, you need to look at three distinct categories:
Direct Competitors: These are businesses offering the same product or service to the same target audience. (e.g., Coca-Cola and Pepsi).
Indirect Competitors: These offer different products or services, but they solve the same customer problem. (e.g., If you sell movie tickets, your indirect competitor might be a streaming service like Netflix).
Aspirational/Future Competitors: These are the industry leaders or disruptors who might not be targeting you today, but whose business models you want to emulate or eventually overtake.
Action Item: Make a list of your top 5 direct competitors and top 3 indirect competitors. These will be the focus of your analysis.
Step 2: Reverse-Engineer Their Digital Presence
Once you know who you are tracking, it’s time to put on your detective hat. The internet makes it easier than ever to audit your competitors’ strategies. Here is where you should look:
1. Analyze Their Website and User Experience (UX)
Go through your competitor’s website as if you were a customer.
How easy is it to navigate?
What is their value proposition? (What do they claim makes them special right on their homepage?)
What does their checkout or conversion funnel look like? Where do they friction points exist?
2. Audit Their SEO and Content Strategy
Organic traffic is gold. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to see what your competitors are doing right in search engines:
What keywords are they ranking for?
Which of their blog posts or landing pages get the most organic traffic?
Where are they getting their backlinks from?
3. Monitor Their Social Media and Paid Ads
Look at how they communicate with their audience.
Organic Social: Which platforms are they most active on? What kind of content gets the most engagement (videos, carousels, memes, case studies)?
Paid Ads: Use tools like the Meta Ad Library and the Google Ads Transparency Center to see what ads your competitors are currently running. What offers are they promoting? What angles are they using in their ad copy?
Step 3: Read Their Customer Reviews (The Goldmine)
This is perhaps the most powerful—and underutilized—tactic in competitive intelligence. Your competitors’ customer reviews are a roadmap to their weaknesses.
Go to platforms like Trustpilot, G2, Amazon, Google Business Profile, and Yelp, and look specifically at the 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star reviews of your competitors.
Ask yourself:
What are customers constantly complaining about? (e.g., “Poor customer service,” “Shipping takes too long,” “The software is too buggy”).
What did they wish the product did that it currently doesn’t?
How to use this to win: Take the exact complaints your competitors’ customers have and make them your core selling propositions. If your competitor’s customers hate their slow support, build your brand around 24/7, lightning-fast customer service.
Step 4: Conduct a SWOT Analysis
Now that you’ve gathered data on your competitors’ products, marketing, and customer feedback, it’s time to synthesize it. Create a SWOT Analysis for your top competitors, mapping out their:
Strengths: What are they exceptionally good at? (e.g., massive budget, strong brand recognition).
Weaknesses: Where do they fall short? (e.g., poor mobile UX, lack of personalization).
Opportunities: What market trends are they ignoring that you can capitalize on?
Threats: What external factors could hurt them (and potentially affect you)?
By comparing their SWOT analysis to your own, you will clearly see your “Unique Value Proposition” (UVP)—the exact reason why a customer should choose you over them.
Step 5: Innovate, Don’t Imitate
The biggest trap in studying your competition is falling into the copycat syndrome.
If you simply mimic what your competitors are doing, you will always be one step behind. They set the rules of the game, and you are just following them.
Instead, use competitive intelligence to differentiate.
If everyone in your industry uses a formal, corporate tone, try being conversational, witty, and human.
If your competitors sell complex, bloated software, build a solution that is hyper-minimalist and user-friendly.
If they focus solely on features, focus on the transformation and emotional outcome your customer experiences.
Final Thoughts: Competitive Intelligence is a Continuous Process
Studying your competition is not a one-time task you check off your to-do list. Markets shift, algorithms change, and new startups emerge every single day.
Make competitive analysis a habit. Set aside an hour every month to check in on your top rivals, review their new ad campaigns, and see how their customer sentiment is shifting.
When you truly understand the battlefield, you stop reacting to what your competitors do—and start forcing them to react to you.
Known only to a few, there is a legend that a ship named the ‘Flying Dutchman’ left Nazi Germany in the last weeks of the war and set sail for America, escorted by U-boats, under a different name. Aboard was a trove of treasure and gold worth a ‘king’s ransom’.
It was said that it had been sent to a group of American Nazis to create the Fourth Reich at an appropriate time. Over the years, many expeditions off the coast had searched, but found no trace of the vessel or the treasure.
In other words, it was just a legend created to boost tourism.
…
Fast forward to 2024. Our intrepid private detective, Harry Walthenson, overhears a conversation at Grand Central Station. It was the oddness of the message that caught his attention. An investigation turned up nothing out of the ordinary, and he thinks no more about it.
Then Harry is kidnapped, interrogated, and asked questions over and over about a date and a place, why he went there, and when he could not give satisfactory answers, he was beaten half to death and left for dead on a rubbish heap. He was lucky that it was a living space for homeless men; otherwise, he would have died.
In the aftermath, he once again gives it no more thought.
…
After resolving his first case successfully, there’s no rest. Harry’s angry mother comes to his office and demands that he find out where his father has gone. She believes he has run off with a mistress, not for the first time.
Perhaps it was not the wisest decision she has made, because Harry promises to investigate, and adds that she might not like what he finds.
He soon discovered he does not like what he finds, that his father’s friends, a cabal formed at University, have two who are his mother’s current lovers, and another, a criminal blackmailing his father.
Felicity, now his partner, working on a different case, and trying to get answers, uncovers a crime family involved in guarding a disused warehouse on the docks, where she believes Harry had been taken for interrogation, and subsequently dumped nearby to die.
Why are they up to? What is so important that the empty warehouse needs guarding? Who is employing them?
Harry, following up on the death of the blackmailer, traces his death back to an enforcer employed by his grandfather. His mother’s grandfather was a pre-war industrialist who made his fortune in war munitions and shipbuilding.
He was also a member of the American Nazi party.
When Harry also discovers a logbook belonging to a so-called wartime Liberty ship the “Paul Revere” in brackets ‘Freiheitskämpfer’, hidden by his father, and written in a code that is not readily identifiable.
It is no longer a matter of a father who has run off with his mistress; it is a very frightened man in fear of his life, running from a group who will stop at nothing to get the logbook back. And when Harry discovers a family connection to the group, it becomes a race against time to decode the log and find his father before his grandfather does.
…
Coming soon: Harry Walthenson’s new adventure – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
An interrogation and a revelation.
Debriefings were like interrogations, only friendlier. We were trained to withstand interrogation, so it would be interesting to see how I reacted. I had no doubt what some of the questions would be.
While I had a few minutes to myself, sitting down behind a bare metal table on a hard plastic and uncomfortable chair, with a warm cup of station house coffee, to consider the briefing.
Target, male, 6 foot 3 inches, 200 pounds, Caucasian, thought to be from either Russia or Bulgaria, but nothing to define his as such. I had wondered, at the time, what that meant. When I saw him in the alley I knew, then, what was meant, he looked the same as you or me.
No explanation for why he was under surveillance, but we did get a warning that he might be dangerous if he suspected he was being observed. Right about that, given team casualties.
Main objective, who he met, talked to, and where he went, every place, every detail to be noted. The unpredictable explosion threw the whole operation into chaos.
The door opened and a woman, middle-aged, conservatively dressed, walked in, closing it behind her. She sat in the other chair opposite me. She brought a file, thin, and put it in front of her on the table.
“Your name is Sam Jackson?”
“Yes.”
No introductions, nothing, just a start on the questions. No nonsense, but I could see she was very, very angry. With me, or those who had run a failed operation?
“How long have you been with us?”
“Eight months.”
She opened the file and glanced at the piece of paper on top. A minute passed before she closed the file again. “Closer to nine,” she said.
I said nothing. I wasn’t counting the days.
“How many operations have you been on?”
“Six, including this one.”
“Who assigned you to this specific operation?”
“Couldn’t say. I got the usual request via text message to attend a briefing at the midtown office.”
“What was the designated operation name?”
“Chancellery.”
For a brief second, there was a quizzical expression on her face, then it was gone.
“Who was running this operation?”
“Director Severin.”
A full three minutes of silence passed. I thought she was looking at me, the sort of stare that would break a lesser man, but in the end, I think she was looking right through me. I could not read her thoughts, but if I was to guess, they would be rather dark right now.
Then she spoke.
“You should know that there was no Chancellery on the books, and we certainly do not have a Director named Severin.”
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, I came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level that she, the youngest of the group, would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing her down for the last three months, and if she noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one; no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact that she had to entertain more, and frankly, I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then that she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it was something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked who, where, and when.
A world-class newspaper in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember just shrugging and asking if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost the intimacy we used to have, where she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker, but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior was instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position, he had not taken advantage of the situation like some might. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use-by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me; you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. At the beginning, it’s a slow, easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships; they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, followed by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come out of the final turn, and we were braking so that it would stop at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in the new job, the last thing she’d want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends, new life.
We packed her bags, threw out everything she didn’t want, a free trip to the op shop with stuff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming; that moment, the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning, there had been 6 different types of planes departing, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just to see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
…
The Ormiston’s from the papers
…
The Ormiston story and that of the thousand or so acres between the sea and the mountains are now known as Patterson’s reach, but once called The Grove, began in 1865 when the original Henrich Ormiston arrived from Germany.
Originally intending to go to Australia to grow grapes in South Australia, instead, his fate turned West to the Americas, and, eventually, this part of Florida. He started out with the intention of growing grapes, but when that failed to materialize, he moved on to Oranges, hence the name, The Grove.
He had married before leaving Germany and had two children, Marta and Gunter before leaving, and Friedrich after he arrived in 1866. That Friedrich died, according to the gravestone, in 1924. Neither Marta nor Gunter stayed, leaving Friedrich to carry on the business, have an only child which he named after his father, Heinrich, born in 1899 and who died in 1976. He in turn had a single son, which he named Friedrich, the infamous person with who Boggs father had a tempestuous business relationship.
Friedrich was born in 1932, during the depression, and it was about that time that the notion there might be buried treasure, somewhere along that coastal area of Florida, floated by a university professor, Emil Stravinsky, who specialized in old pirates. He had published a book that basically speculated where treasure might be found, and one of those areas was right smack bang in the middle of The Grove.
This information was plucked from the paper’s births, death, and marriages column around the specified dates, the death notices giving some light on the respective Ormiston’s life and toils on their land.
Heinrich, Friedrich’s father, fell for the story hook line and sinker, and with a promise to share the proceeds of an estimated multimillion-dollar trove, invested a fair chunk of the savings he’d amassed over the years in the first of many treasure hunts. The name Stravinsky rang a bell in my head.
A quick look forward to the most recent editions showed it was the man who had died on Rico’s boat, who was, in fact, a third-generation relative of the original professor, an archaeologist in his own right, and digging a bit further into the story, the paper had published a dozen or so extracts from the professor’s book, hinting their subject matter had been derived from a particular pirate’s log, and from notes made over the years of research by the professor. It sounded like there was a diary.
I was going to have to find a copy of the professor’s book, which, if it had been published nearly 90 years ago, would now be out of print.
When the father, Heinrich had failed to locate the treasure, the son Friedrich continued the search, only he put more time and effort into more meticulous research rather than take the professor’s word of its whereabouts.
This was about the time Boggs’s father came into the picture.
He had lived and worked in the Caribbean and discovered quite by chance when a storm had blown his boat way off course on a weekend sailing run, the ruins of an encampment and hidden inlet on an uninhabited island where he believed the pirate had operated from.
While waiting to be rescued, the storm had damaged his boat, he took the time to explore, and although he hadn’t told anyone at the time of his rescue, he had discovered a box buried near where a building had once stood containing a map, several coins, a sextant, and a flag. The news of those discoveries came some years later when it was revealed he’s struck a deal with Ormiston to renew the search for the treasure.
When the result of that expedition came to nothing, each of the partners blamed the other for the lack of success, with Ormiston all but telling anyone who would listen that Boggs had created the map himself for the purpose of extorting money under false pretenses.
Boggs then had to produce the map, where it was authenticated as a map that had been created at the time of the pirate’s reign, but no one could say whether it was just an invention of someone at the time, or it was real. The fact nothing was found suggested the latter, and it marked to start of the feud between Boggs and Ormiston.
The question in my mind was whether Boggs had that particular map, and had he shown it briefly to me? Certainly, one of the maps he had was quite old, but there were so many variations, and they all looked equally as old, it was hard to tell.
One point I was quite certain on, none of the maps I’d seen showed the treasure’s final resting place as being in a cave, and I got the impression just before when I’d run into Boggs, that it was exactly where he was going.
Had that been the clue his father had referred to? Even with the so-called original map, if it showed the treasure hidden in a cave why did Boggs need Ormiston’s help?
Had Ormiston known that might be the final resting place of the treasure?
I would soon find out. My next stop was the library.
Who could imagine that one visit to the local hospital could fuel a medical nightmare?
Aside from the original suspicion I was having heart problems, doctors started lining up appointments for an endoscopy and colonoscopy, though I suspect these were for a different malady, and the main event, an angiogram.
I didn’t have heart problems though it was possible I had angina, the reason for the angiogram, but I did have acute kidney failure which was interesting, to say the least, and possibly attributed to ipBrufen, though it was impossible to say if the medication for psoriatic arthritis, a venomous little pill called methotrexate, was or was not a contributing factor.
But is was great to learn that my psioratic arthritis could lead to heart attack, and lung issues, a few problems my original arthritis consultant conveniently forgot to tell me about.
No sooner than I was released from the hospital after this first set of maladies, I was back three or four days later with hospital-acquired pneumonia, a devil of a problem that requires some very invasive searches for the type of bug so it could be treated properly.
It led to five days of antibiotics, a considerable inability to breathe without help from an oxygen mask, and several CT scans with and without dye to get a better look at the problem.
If only that was all that was wrong with me.
The CT scan showed up a lump or lesion on my right thyroid which led to further investigation, an ultrasound, a biopsy, and a visit to the surgeon to be told it had to come out.
But that’s not all. No, I didn’t get a set of steak knives for being one the first ten this week to be diagnosed with anything, I was told my PSA reading was twice the average for my age, a clear indication I might have prostate cancer.
Wow. Just to sort of news you need to hear before the weekend. Worse perhaps than a rainstorm when camping in a floorless tent. I had to now wait for the results of a new blood test.
Ok. I get it that things are bound to go wrong when you get older, but what I object to is everything going wrong at once.
Perhaps when we stop the aging process a lot of these issues will go away, but I fear not. The human body is surprisingly robust for quite a long time despite our attempts to test it to the limits of endurance.
It is advice too late for me to make sure my misspent youth is not wasted on being stupid or believing I’m indestructible. The plain truth is, we are not, and I didn’t get the memo.
Now, I guess, it is time to actually do everything, or as much as I can, before I start to deteriorating further and not be able to do anything. I have a few good years before arthritis sets in and makes life more difficult than it already is.
The “Practice Makes Perfect” Myth (and Why It Still Works—for Writing)
“If you do anything seriously long enough, you’ll get better.”
That sentence feels like an old‑school mantra you might have heard from a coach, a music teacher, or a parent. It’s comforting, almost inevitable—just keep at it and the results will follow.
But does the rule hold true for writers? And what does it mean when we say “good writing is contagious”?
In this post I’ll unpack the science behind long‑term practice, show why writing is a uniquely contagious skill, and give you a toolbox of concrete, battle‑tested tips to turn “doing it longer” into real, measurable improvement.
1. The Core Truth: Time + Deliberate Practice = Skill Growth
Fact
What It Means for Writers
Neuroplasticity – The brain rewires itself with repeated activity.
The more you write, the stronger the neural pathways that support storytelling, grammar, and voice.
Deliberate Practice – Not just “doing the thing,” but practicing with feedback and specific goals.
Writing a 500‑word blog post isn’t enough; you must target weak spots (e.g., pacing, dialogue) and refine them deliberately.
Deliberate Practice – Not just “doing the thing,” but practising with feedback and specific goals.
10,000 hours of mindless typing won’t help. Ten hours of focused revision, critique, and study can trump 100 hours of “just writing.”
Plateaus Are Normal – Skill acquisition follows a sigmoid curve: rapid early gains, a plateau, then a second surge after a breakthrough.
Expect periods where progress feels stagnant. Use them to experiment, read, or rest—don’t quit.
Bottom line: Time alone isn’t enough. You need deliberate, feedback‑rich practice to convert hours into mastery.
2. Good Writing Is Contagious – Why It Spreads
Social Proof: Readers (and fellow writers) gravitate toward high‑quality prose. When a piece shines, it sets a new benchmark in its community.
Mirror Neurons: We neurologically mimic the style and tone we consume, especially when we admire the source. Reading great sentences trains our own “inner ear.”
Collective Learning: Writing groups, workshops, and online forums create a feedback loop where one person’s improvement lifts the entire cohort.
Cultural Momentum: Think of the “New Journalism” wave of the ’60s or the rise of flash fiction on Twitter—once a few voices cracked the code, the style proliferated.
In short, exposure to excellent writing accelerates your own growth—if you allow it to.
3. The Pitfalls of “Just Writing More”
Common Misconception
Why It Fails
How to Fix It
“I write 2,000 words a day, so I’m improving.”
Quantity without reflection reinforces bad habits.
After each session, flag 1–2 things you’d change (e.g., redundancy, weak verb).
“I’ll get better after I finish my novel.”
Long‑term projects can hide small‑scale weaknesses.
Break the novel into bite‑size “skill drills” (e.g., one chapter focused on dialogue).
“Feedback is optional; I trust my gut.”
Our internal editor is notoriously biased.
Schedule regular external reviews—beta readers, editors, or a critique partner.
“I’ll read only what I like.”
Comfort zones limit exposure to new structures, vocab, and perspectives.
Add a “genre‑stretch” reading slot each week (e.g., poetry if you write nonfiction).
4. Actionable Blueprint: Turn Hours Into Better Writing
Below is a step‑by‑step system you can adopt today. It’s modular—pick what fits your schedule and skill level, then iterate.
A. Build a Structured Writing Routine
Component
Frequency
Tip
Micro‑Write (10–15 min)
Daily, first thing in the morning
Write a single sentence, a vivid description, or a quick dialogue exchange. No editing, just raw output.
Focused Session (45–90 min)
3–4× per week
Choose a skill goal (e.g., “show, don’t tell”). Work on a specific piece that targets that goal.
Review & Revise (30 min)
Immediately after each focused session
Highlight 2–3 improvement points; rewrite the same passage with those in mind.
Reading Sprint (30 min)
Daily or every other day
Read a passage from a writer you admire and take notes on what makes it work (sentence rhythm, word choice, structure).
Feedback Loop (1 hr)
Weekly
Send your work to a critique partner or post in a writing forum. Write a response to each piece of feedback, outlining what you’ll try next.
Why it works: The routine mixes production, analysis, and external input—the three pillars of deliberate practice.
B. “Contagion” Tactics – Let Good Writing Infect You
Curated Reading Lists
Classic craft: “The Elements of Style,” “On Writing” (King).
Genre deep‑dive: 5 seminal works from each genre you write.
Modern bite‑size: Follow Twitter accounts that tweet micro‑essays or haiku.
Imitation Exercises
Pick a paragraph you love. Rewrite it in your own voice while preserving the structure and rhythm.
Swap the genre (turn a news article into a short story).
Community Immersion
Join a weekly critique circle (online or local).
Participate in writing challenges (NaNoWriMo, 30‑day flash fiction).
Comment thoughtfully on other writers’ blogs—explaining what you liked forces you to articulate good writing principles.
Mentor‑Mode Writing
Write as if you’re teaching a class. Draft a short guide on a writing technique; the act of explaining refines your own understanding.
C. Metric‑Based Progress Tracking
Metric
Tool
How to Interpret
Word‑per‑hour output
Timer + word count
Aim for a stable range; spikes may indicate “flow” days, drops may signal fatigue.
Revision Ratio (original words ÷ final words)
Drafts in Google Docs
A decreasing ratio (e.g., 1.3 → 1.1) often signals tighter prose.
Feedback Score (e.g., 1‑5 rating from beta readers)
Survey Form
Trend upward? If flat, examine recurring criticism.
Reading Diversity Index (genres read per month)
Spreadsheet
Higher diversity correlates with more varied sentence structures.
Review these numbers every month and adjust your routine accordingly.
5. Real‑World Case Study: From “Stuck” to “Spitting Fire”
Writer: Maya, 34, freelance tech copywriter.
Problem
Intervention
Result (3 months)
Drafts flooded with jargon; readers complained of “dry” tone.
Daily 10‑min “show, don’t tell” micro‑write. Weekly 30‑min reading of narrative non‑fiction (e.g., The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). Joined a local critique group focused on voice.
• Reduced average sentence length by 15 %. • Client satisfaction score rose from 3.2 → 4.6/5. • Secured a new contract for a storytelling‑heavy whitepaper series.
Maya’s story illustrates that structured, feedback‑rich practice beats sheer volume—and that reading narrative work made her own prose “contagiously” richer.
6. Quick‑Start Checklist (Print & Pin)
Write a 10‑minute “seed” piece every morning (no edits).
Pick one skill goal per week (e.g., stronger verbs).
Read a 5‑minute passage from a master writer daily and annotate.
Submit a draft for critique at least once a week.
Imitate a favourite paragraph once a month, then rewrite it in a new genre.
Log your metrics (output, revision ratio, feedback rating) every Friday.
7. The Bottom Line
Yes—if you do something seriously long enough, you will improve. But the quality of that “serious” effort is what determines how much you improve.
Good writing spreads like a good meme: you absorb it through reading, imitation, and community, and you amplify it by giving feedback and teaching.
By marrying deliberate practice with contagious exposure, you turn the simple mantra “write more” into a powerful, measurable growth engine.
Your next step? Choose one of the tactics above, commit to it for the next 30 days, and watch your prose evolve from “just getting longer” to “getting better.”
Happy writing—and may the contagion be ever in your favour!
If you found this post helpful, share it with fellow writers, and let us know which of the strategies you tried in the comments.
Building the Invisible Architecture: Why Every Novelist Must First Create a World They Believe In
“Every novelist must begin by creating himself a world, great or little, in which he can honestly believe.” — Joseph Conrad
When we open a novel, we aren’t just looking for a sequence of events. We are looking for a portal. We want to step out of the mundane architecture of our daily lives and inhabit somewhere else—whether that somewhere else is the misty decks of a 19th-century trading ship, the neon-lit alleys of a cyberpunk dystopia, or the quiet, devastating emotional landscape of a suburban kitchen.
But before a reader can ever step foot into that fictional realm, the author must build it, brick by invisible brick. And as Joseph Conrad famously noted, that process begins with belief.
If the writer doesn’t buy the reality of the world they are constructing, why should the reader?
Let’s explore what Conrad’s timeless wisdom means for modern novelists, world-building, and the psychological heavy lifting required to write fiction that resonates.
The Anatomy of Belief: What Does It Mean to “Believe” in Your World?
Belief in writing is not about magic systems, historical accuracy, or encyclopedic lore (though those things can help). It is about internal coherence and emotional truth.
When Conrad spoke of creating a world “great or little,” he wasn’t just talking about epic fantasy maps. A “little” world might be a single boarding house in Dublin, a courtroom during a three-day trial, or the strained silence across a breakfast table.
To believe in your world, you must know its gravity. You must understand:
The sensory reality: What does it smell like after a heavy rain? What is the quality of the light at 4:00 PM?
The unspoken rules: What do the inhabitants take for granted? What are the cultural taboos, economic pressures, and quiet griefs that shape their daily choices?
The moral pulse: Even if the author is entirely objective, the world must operate on a set of internal cause-and-effect dynamics where actions have real, believable consequences.
If you are writing a scene and you feel a twinge of artificiality—a sense that you are moving characters around like chess pieces just to get to the next plot point—you have stopped believing in your world. And the moment the author stops believing, the reader’s suspension of disbelief shatters like cheap glass.
World-Building is Self-Discovery
Notice the phrasing in Conrad’s quote: “creating himself a world.”
Before a novelist creates a world for the reader, they must create it for themselves. Writing a novel is an act of self-interrogation. The world you build often becomes a mirror for your own obsessions, fears, questions, and philosophies.
Tolkien didn’t just invent Middle-earth for the sake of an adventure; he built it out of a profound love for lost mythologies and philology, creating languages that necessitated a world to speak them.
Austen mapped the rigid, polite, and deeply economic marriage market of 19th-century England because she was keenly interested in the intersection of female autonomy, social survival, and genuine affection.
When you sit down to write, your fictional world is your testing ground. It is the ecosystem where you explore what you actually believe about human nature, power, love, and betrayal. If your heart isn’t invested in the truths of that ecosystem, your prose will lack the pulse of life.
The Danger of the “Cardboard Set”
We have all read books that feel like movie sets made of painted cardboard. The dialogue is snappy, the plot moves fast, but the moment a character leans against a wall, you feel like the whole thing might tip over.
This happens when a writer focuses entirely on mechanics rather than immersion. They outline the plot beats, design the twists, but fail to inhabit the space.
To avoid the cardboard set trap, adopt Conrad’s mindset:
Dig deeper than the surface details. Don’t just invent a futuristic city; figure out where the garbage goes, who cleans the streets, and what people sing when they’re drunk.
Let the world talk back. A believable world has momentum. When your characters make a choice, the world should react in ways that aren’t always convenient for your outline.
Write for the senses, not just the intellect. Bring your scenes to life through texture, temperature, and tone.
How to Cultivate Radical Belief in Your Writing
If you are struggling to connect with your story-world, how do you bridge the gap? How do you reach that state of honest belief?
Write toward the unknown: Don’t plan every single square inch before you start. Leave room for discovery. Sometimes, believing in your world means exploring it alongside your characters, letting it surprise you.
Anchor the fantastical in the visceral: If you are writing high fantasy or hard sci-fi, ground the extraordinary in ordinary human experiences. A dragon rider still gets a sore back; a starship captain still worries about aging or estranged children.
Interrogate your own cynicism: If you find yourself rolling your eyes at your own plot developments, stop. Figure out why. Fix the underlying logic until you can nod to yourself and say, Yes, that is how this world works.
Final Thoughts: The Invitation to the Reader
Writing a novel is an act of supreme audacity. You are essentially asking a complete stranger to sit in a quiet room, look at a series of black symbols on a white page, and hallucinate an entire reality for several hours.
The only way that magic trick works is if your own conviction is absolute.
When you create a world—whether it spans galaxies or exists entirely within the confines of a single room—you must believe in it first. Pour your curiosity, your empathy, and your attention into its soil. Because when you honestly believe in the world you’ve made, the reader won’t just visit it—they will live in it.
Are you currently building a fictional world? What is the hardest part of making it feel real to you—the physical details, the emotional stakes, or the internal logic? Let us know in the comments below!
Daily 10‑min “show, don’t tell” micro‑write.
Weekly 30‑min reading of narrative non‑fiction (e.g., The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks).
Joined a local critique group focused on voice.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 