M.L. Ronn - Be a Writing Machine

Let's skip the fluffy stuff for a minute and talk about the two simple things you're going to learn in this book.

First, you're going to learn how to write books faster. Way faster. This will be easy.

Second, you're going to learn how to write smarter. This will be hard. Crazy hard. But you will be better for it.

When you're done with this book, you'll have a step-by-step roadmap on how to become the prolific writer youve always wanted to be.

Youll be a writing machine.

What if you could develop a consistent daily writing habit and finish a new novel every few weeks? Every few days? What would that mean for your writing career?

We all know that writing more books means more readers and therefore more money. But for many of us, just writing the next chapter is a struggle.

Writing isn't easy. If it was, then everyone would be prolific.

There are tricks to make the words flow easier. Fortunately, it doesn't involve any extra intelligence or wisdom.

I have used the strategies in this book to write 6-8 books on average every year since 2014. I have written dozens of novels in the same amount of time it takes many authors to write a few. My novels range from 40,000 to 70,000 words. The techniques in this book will help you with any fiction genre.

Youre going to learn a simple system that you can adapt to suit your own lifestyle and career goals. It doesnt matter whether youre a part-time or a full-time author. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to try something new.

A Little About Me

Heres my story and why I'm qualified to write this book.

In July 2012, my wife rushed me to the emergency room. I was experiencing horrible stomach cramps, so bad I couldn't even see straight. Little did I know that the restaurant I'd visited the night before had served me tainted food, resulting in the worst food poisoning of my life.

I'll spare you the details of my hospital visit, but while I was there, I caught an infection.

I spent an entire month doped up on morphine, staring at a wall. I had a lot of time to think about my life.

Until then, I had been a sometime writer. I wrote whenever the muse moved me. I wasn't serious about it.

Something on that hospital bed made me change my mind.

I had a spiritual awakening. Among my many hallucinations, I visualized myself as a published author. It made me so happyI felt an incredible euphoria just thinking about it. (Okay, the euphoria probably came from the morphine, but hey, details)

I swore right then and there on that hospital bed that I would become a serious writer, no matter what.

Fortunately, I beat the infection and escaped from the hospital. The very week I came home, an article came out on the front page of USA Today about the particular strain of bacteria that I had, and how it was killing an alarming amount of people all over the United States.

Basically, I could have died.

That was life-changing for me.

The next week, I remember sitting down at my kitchen table and trying to write a short story. I didn't know how to start it, and I stared at a blank screen for hours.

I remember an intense wave of fear. My inner critic kicked in.

You'll never be able to write, it said. This story will fail. Give up now before you embarrass yourself.

I remember thinking, Why am I scared? I just spent a month in the hospital on my deathbed and wasn't scared of dying, so why the hell am I scared about writing this short story?

Something clicked.

Then I stopped being afraid of just about everything in my life.

Compared to what I had been through, fear, in the writers sense of the word, stopped scaring me. I learned how to fight my fear every time it tried to stop me.

And then, one morning, four years later, I woke up and realized I had written over 40 books, with no signs of slowing down.

I wrote those books while becoming a father for the first time.

I wrote those books while climbing the corporate ladder at a Fortune 100 insurance company in the United States, with management-level responsibility.

I wrote those books while attending law school in the evenings.

I wrote those books while being a friend, father, son, husband, and all the thousand other things my loved ones needed me to be.

I wrote those books while hosting a podcast, running a YouTube channel, mentoring other authors, and finding ways to give back to the indie author community as a liaison for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

If anyone should have a thousand excuses not to write, it should be me. If you look at my life, it's a miracle that I can even think about writing.

But that's enough about my credentials. I just wanted to get those out of the way to show you that I know the topic of writing fast and smart. And I know it well.

If I can do this, it's only right for me to share some of my secrets so that you can do it too.

Quick Overview of This Books Structure

• The Mindset chapter will teach you how you need to adapt your mindset in order to reach new levels of productivity. I can't promise I won't go hippie on you, but I can promise that you'll get a fresh perspective that you haven't seen before.
• The Tools chapter will show you what tools I use to hit crazy word counts every day.
• The Time Management chapter will teach you how to organize your limited time and make the most of it.
• The Write Smart chapter teaches you how to be smart about your novel writing. It will give you a prolific authors perspective on what you can do to produce high numbers of books year after year.
• The Writers Block chapter is the most important in the book. I will show you the root causes of writers block and my strategies on beating it every time. The latter part of this section is organized into quick hit strategies that you can refer to whenever you find yourself in a rough patch in your work in progress.

My goal for you is to pull back the curtain on how I do it and give you a different perspective on writing fast.

Remember, prolific isn't just about writing one book fast. It's about producing book after book after book, rain or shine, no matter what. It's about learning how to be systematic.

Proficient fiction writers will benefit the most from this book. If youve been through the novel writing process a few times, then the strategies in this book will make more sense to you. If you dont write fiction, you can still use the strategies here, but know that your mileage may vary.

If you're in this for the long haul and are ready to take your word counts to new, consistent heights, then read on.