How to make a living as a professional fiction writer

I’ve recently discovered New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia‘s writing class ‘How to make a living as a professional fiction writer’ . The notes were blogged by David Harr over four blogposts, which you can read here, here, here, and here.

The best session is definitely Week 1, Part 2, which explains how Larry managed to rocket his self-published novel Monster Hunter International to stardom by clever marketing, including upping the “gun nuttery” to appeal to gun fans – a community in which he was already involved. There’s also some good advice on using short stories as a publicity tool.

Week 1, Part 1 and Week 2 cover the usual ‘how to write’ stuff – finding ideas, character, plot, how to outline, being prolific, blah… blah. Week 3 covers legal-type stuff like contracts.