Author Ryan Schneider's Blog

This is a quick, completely informal survey about which service you use/prefer for your online author presence. Blogger? Wordpress? Wix? Squarespace? Weebly? Or do you retain the services of a third-party company or webmaster/hosting service? I've been using Blogger for about 7 years and for the most part am pleased with it. The reason I chose it was because of the interface. I monkeyed around with Wordpress but couldn't immediately figure out how to build and configure and customize my new site. Whereas with Blogger, I had the thing up and running in about 30 minutes. It's SO easy to use. Getting my own domain name and pointing it at the blogger site turned out to be a total pain in the ass, but it was taken care of eventually. I'm also experimenting with Wix for a new project, but it's pissing me off. I'm thinking about going back to Blogger. So, I'm curious, in 2017, what everyone is using. What do you recommend? Please let me know! ...

THAT is when you absolutely positively MUST remember that you write for yourself first. That's why first drafts are so much fun. One time at UCLA one of my screenwriting professors said, When you write yourself into a corner, change corners. So when you're struggling to find inspiration, and it happens to all of us, try to find a way back.  Try thinking about all of us fellow writers out there... banging away at our keyboards. Try reading the first few pages of one of your favorite books. Try watching a beloved movie, perhaps one about writers. Try this writing exercise: set the timer on your phone for 10 minutes. Grab any book at random. Close your eyes. Open the book to any page and put your finger down. Open your eyes. Read the sentence your finger is on. That is your opening sentence. Open a new document. Type that sentence. Start your timer and WRITE AS FAST AS YOU CAN WITHOUT STOPPING. Whatever comes through is what was supposed to come through. Because you're ...