If you’re waiting for inspiration before you write, you’ve already lost.

My talk at Escape the Plot Forest 2025 was super fun! You can access it here: forest.plotsummit.com/?sc=jQ…

5 Things Every Story Must Have youtube.com/watch?utm_campai…

Readers don’t care about your worldbuilding until they care about your characters. Dump your lore later. Hook them first.

What movie adaptation was the WORST and the BEST?

If you believe that once you: - Get an agent - Sign a book deal - Hit a bestseller list - Get glowing industry/peer reviews That you will finally feel: - Successful - Worthy - Like you belong Let me tell you... After a career working with top-level authors... None of that will fix the way you currently feel. The imposter voice doesn’t disappear with accolades. The doubt doesn’t go away once you “make it.” If you want peace, if you want confidence… You have to build it yourself.

Over-description is the death of pacing. If your scene reads like a furniture catalog, don’t be surprised when the reader bails.

Don’t waste another year 'figuring it out.' If your writing keeps falling flat, you need training, not another craft book.

Even NYT bestselling authors wake up the next morning still facing the blank page. The prestige doesn’t last a week.

🔮 If I could go back and tell 25-year-old wannabe writer Tim one thing… I’d tell him to stop trying to prove he was a writer by producing words. I thought “read a lot, write a lot” was the path. So I did. Hundreds of thousands of words. Countless drafts. But it didn’t make me better. Just tired. Frustrated. Lost.

Want natural dialogue? Make your characters lie, deflect, or avoid the point. No one just says exactly what they feel.

What’s the book you read that made you want to be a writer? Mine is Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton when I was 9 years old.

Sometimes the scene you don’t want to write is the one that cracks the whole story open.

I used to believe that too—until I proved myself wrong. Back in 2015, I launched the Story Grid Podcast and started reading my fiction on-air. It was awful. Cringeworthy. Unreadable. But I kept showing up. I studied structure. I rewrote. I got expert feedback. I trained. Now I’m a very good writer—with the novels, readership, and reviews to back that up. Saying “good writers are born” isn’t just wrong—it’s a dangerous kind of elitism. It creates a false binary: either you have it or you don’t. That mindset keeps people stuck. It justifies laziness. And worst of all, it robs talented, hardworking writers of the belief that they can improve. Great writing isn’t magic. It’s craft. And craft can be taught. I’m living proof.

'Said' is like punctuation. Stop worshiping it. Stop avoiding it. Just use it right and don’t make it weird.

There’s no market for short stories. Lit mags pay pennies, and collections don’t sell. BUT—writing short stories is essential practice. If you can’t write a short story readers love, there’s no way you’ll pull it off in a novel.

Stop trying to be original before you’re competent. You don’t need voice—you need skills.