No Dikkering Around

The online world keeps changing, but one thing has remained constant for the last decade. You have to find your fans and own them. Growing your following on social media alone isn’t the answer. People who follow you there are fickle. At best, they have a passing interest. If you try to sell them something, you’ll be lucky if 1% of them buy it. You need to give away something substantial: a new comedy special, a full book, a movie—something worth $5-10 is good.

Welcome to the Sunday night / Monday morning post where I report back how I’ve tortured myself all week. I’m in a particularly insane stretch at the moment, where I’m churning out a lot more writing than usual as I try to meet the external deadline I set for my ripped-from-today’s-headlines political satire novel about the second U.S. civil war, Nothing Civil About It. What I did was buy an expensive book promotion with Online Book Club for October 27.

An Insider Term Explained Tracking A good, professional piece of writing tracks. A short story might only have one sequence of actions that tracks. A professionally produced 30-minute TV show will have an A story, B story, sometimes a C story, and sometimes a “runner” (a short vignette that repeats in a kind of echo). They all track. Mainstream movies, traditionally published novels, and equity stage plays usually have a main plot and one or more subplots. They all track.

Pursue an idea you’re passionate about (come up with 10 a day to find “the one”). • Join a community of motivated people (a single accountability buddy can bail on you—a group will always be there). • Take a class and do the assignments.

For Monday, October 5, 2026 This is the weekly post where we become accountability buddies and encourage each other to get stuff done. I’ll go first. Please share your week’s update in the comments. I respond to everybody. Pitch in to support others—they’ll appreciate it. My Week One word describes my week: insane.

There are two methods to motivate us to write, get on stage, or get any kind of work done. If you lack the discipline it takes to be more productive, use both. This week, method 1: Social media is designed to force your brain to produce dopamine. Posting on social media is important work that grows your audience and builds your platform. But when you log on to do the work, it’s easy to get sucked into doomscrolling.

Over 10,000 books are published every day. All those people are passing you by. Don’t let them. Focus on the pride you’ll feel for writing a book, and just follow the step below. First of all, I don’t believe you can write a good book in a month. However, you can write a good book every month. A lot of indie authors are doing it and making a good full-tim…

This is the weekly post where we show up with the work we did in the last week. My week was a bust. One of those weeks when life intervened, and I got next to nothing done. Without getting into too many details, we had a tragic and unexpected pet death in the family. Pictured is the surviving pig (nicknamed “Peep”) with her grief counselor and cuddle surrogate. So, it’s no-good hard times around here.

When you’re trying to write the best novel you can, beta readers are the best tool in the author toolbox. Here’s how you get them: Write a book and give it away for free in exchange for people’s email. Put an opt-in form on your author website. The above may sound like a lot of work. It’s not, really. It just takes patience. If you don’t have a website or targeted readers who’ve opted into emails from you because they’re interested in your books, you can ask other writers you know.

What did you get done this week? Let everyone know in the comments. I had big plans for my novel and other tasks, like working on my business, but none of it happened. I also had plans to go up north for a couple of unplugged days in the Boundary Waters, but it didn’t happen. What happened was a pneumonia epidemic among Dandelion’s pigs. We spent all week at the ICU and I hardly got anything done.