Learning from the masters

I hit the turbo button on my imagination a few days ago, and I'm holding it down, despite Dr. Lazarus's advice to the contrary.

What got me fired up? I'm glad I asked. I'll tell you all about it.

I'm sure you've seen those ads for Master Class courses floating around. You know, the ones where you pay a nominal fee and get access video courses by a celebrity in some field. As you probably also know, there's one where James Patterson teaches writing. Yep, the James Patterson who's sold more copies than the bible. Well, not really, but he's up there.

I'd been suffering a motivation slump for a few months, and work on book three of the Gateway Series had all but stalled. Then I decided to part with a little hard-earned cash and take the JP course.

Best thing I could have done.

Just watching the intro video sent my motivation and imagination into overdrive, and not just on my current book. For the course, you come up with some new book ideas, and it being a JP course, you're encouraged to work up a mystery or thriller concept.

Like a good little student, I did just that. I never thought I'd write mystery or thriller books, but a couple of the ideas I worked up got me so fired up, I not only started fleshing those out, but I also decided to go back and rework the outline for Children of Destiny.

Best possible outcome.

What does all this mean? Well, it means Children of Destiny is back on track thanks to a new schedule that has me writing every day around my full-time gig. And it means that some day in the not too distant future, I'll be pitching some more mainstream fiction to agents publishers.

Who knows? Maybe I'll even earn a spot at Richard Castle's poker table some day. A kid can dream.

If you haven't already picked up on my feelings about the course, let me say outright that I highly recommend it. In the JP writing course, you won't learn anything you haven't already heard if you've studied creative writing. But instead of hearing a litany of concepts and methods that should work, you'll hear exactly what does work for the world's top selling author. To me that's priceless.