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How to Pick a Title for Your Novel

March 4, 2018

As a fiction author, perhaps finding a title for your novel isn’t very difficult. After all, quite often writers begin with the title as a first thing. Of course it might later change, but rarely does a writer work for long on something called “untitled”. However, picking just any title and picking the right title can be two crucially different things. There are several aspects that affect your choice of a book title, and today we’ll talk precisely about that. In this article, I’ll show you how to pick a title for your novel.

First we’ll see what makes a title good or bad, and what “good” means in this context. Then I’ll give you some concrete tips on finding the perfect title for your book. There are basically good news and bad news: The good news is that only you can know whether a title for your book is the right one. You will just know it, once you think of it. The bad news, maddeningly enough, is that… only you can know whether a title for your book is the right one. I will show you the how’s and why’s on how to pick a title for your novel, but the choice can only be yours.

How to Pick a Title for Your Novel
Finding a title for your book can be difficult. Recommendations can assist, but nobody but you knows when the right title quasi-magically has arrived
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Continuity of Experience in Dreams

March 2, 2018

Dreams and Waking Life

Here’s a question for you: Which are the major differences between your dream consciousness and your waking life consciousness? Pondering on this, you would perhaps come up with some of the following answers: a) you can’t (really) control your dreams; b) limitations don’t exist in dreams; c) dreams aren’t real. This latter possible answer I consider controversial, but let’s leave that aside for another day. Let’s instead focus on another major difference between dreams and waking life: the continuity of experience.

continuity of experience
How would it be, if there was continuity of experience in dreams?

You see, when you wake up in the morning, you still remember what you did the day before. You remember your plans for the present day. And if you left a book in the middle before going to bed, you can pick up from it remembering the plot that far.

The same almost never applies for dreams. With extremely rare exceptions, when you dream you don’t just continue doing what you were doing in a previous dream. There is no continuity of experience in dreams, unlike waking life.

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How to Review a Book Fairly

February 28, 2018

As a reader, a writer, and a former academic, I have encountered countless reviews, from various perspectives. I have written reviews for other authors, I have received reviews for my own books, and I have also read many reviews in general. And let me tell you this: most people don’t know how to review a book.

That is, they don’t know how to review a book fairly.

A fair review is useful to the author and other readers alike. Conversely, an unfair review isn’t useful to anyone – and it shouldn’t affect an author (though realistically it often does). In today’s post we’ll take a closer look at what it means to review a novel fairly, and how one can learn to do it. Sneak preview: Leave your personal preferences out of it.

how to review a book fairly
A fair and honest book review cannot be predicated on whether you liked the novel or not
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