If you thank someone by name in the acknowledgments section of your book, you don’t need permission because it’s probably a positive or neutral mention. If you want to talk about how your stepdad ruined your life, you’ll need permission because that’s negative. Seems pretty easy, but when in doubt, always ask permission. I’ll mostly be talking about negative mentions in this blog post.

For authors, especially for self-publishers, writing well and writing fast are our bread and butter. If we cannot produce books, we don't make any money. And if we don't make any money, then writing is just a hobby.

For some people, that is just fine. Writing can be a hobby, and a very fulfilling one at that.

However, for the rest of us, if we want to make a living at writing books, we have to learn to write efficiently.

In this article, I will cover a few tips on how to do this.

Writing exercises are a good way to practice without too much commitment to a story. The point is to write, as most of the time, the pressure is on how to start. Exercises like this can make you feel less overwhelmed and help you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

It’s very rare that someone intentionally goes out to exclude someone through their writing, and most people don’t mean to throw in sexist stereotypes when they’re writing a book. And yet it happens every day. . . . Why is this? And more importantly, what can we do about it?