10 Steps to Songwriting Success I always had this mindset growing up that if you played an instrument, you wrote songs. Probably because I was surrounded by so many songwriters in high school. But as I grew up, I learned that many talented musicians struggled to write songs. How could this be? [...]
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Fall has arrived. My absolute favorite season here in good old New Jersey. It's like candy for the eyes with all the leaves changing beautiful colors. And with fall comes so much change. A time that always has me reflecting on what was, what is, and what's to come. [...]
8 Steps to Prevent Story Overwhelm I came up with a saying: The larger your manuscript file size grows, the more overwhelmed you become. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed about the size of your story, preventing you from moving forward, here are a few tips I found helpful: 1. Take [...]
Book Coaching Spotlight The Downside of Writing Too Much I know what you’re thinking: How can writing too much be an issue? Many writers struggle enough to fill an entire book of 40,000 words. That’s what holds most people back from even starting a book in the first place. It’s scary trying [...]
The Music Spotlight Check out my latest song on SoundCloud called That Summer With You. Ohhhh man am I proud of this song. The chorus just fills me with so much angst and energy and feels when I sing it. And that level of feeling I search for is the reason why I keep [...]
This august we had a special visitor. This is my dad's second cousin on our Johns side of the family. He's British, living in Sweden, and put in a lot of work of creating a family tree of the Johns family that dates back to the 1600s. This was his first time in [...]
Book Coaching Spotlight Genre Research and Why It's Important When you walk in a bookstore you see different shelves with different genres: fantasy, romance, mystery, non-fiction, etc. These genres exist on these shelves because this is where the demand is. Same thing with categories on Amazon. These categories exist because there [...]
Summer has finally arrived here in Anacortes, Washington, bringing about weekend trips to the San Juan Islands and still trying to perfect the pumptrack at the skatepark. Raspberries grow this time of the year in this part of Washington. You can pluck them right off and eat them on your hike. And wow [...]
The Music Spotlight I had a super fun time putting together a concert on Instagram Live to celebrate the release of my latest poetry book. I serenaded my fans with songs that were featured in this book, songs I wrote all the way from 2011 to 2024 and it was such a cool [...]
Book Coaching Spotlight 8 Things I Learned Putting Together a Launch Team After finishing the launch for my latest poetry book, I can finally take a second to breathe and comprehend everything that I went through to put this monster of a launch together. It was the first time I focused [...]
If you missed the big news, I just released my third poetry book Stages of a Healing Heart last month! Check it out here. It's spring over here in Washington state and the pollen has been destroying me. But! The nature here fails to disappoint. I've only seen 2 hummingbirds in my life before this. [...]
Anacortes, Washington You Are What Your Surroundings Are After moving to Anacortes, Washington last month, I've seen a total of 10+ bald eagles, a seal, a hummingbird, weird alien-like arm length dolphin-type worms, mushrooms that can be worn as a hat, and trees that seem to be on steroids. The nature is out of this [...]
The Big Move to Washington I did it! At the end of February I finally moved out of the parent's house in New Jersey and ventured out to Washington STATE (Not DC). My old roommate from college invited me out to live with him in the very cute town of Anacortes. And wow is it [...]
Book Coaching Spotlight Make Connections This past month my amazing Life Coach gave me an assignment for the month of February to reach out to as many people as possible in the book coaching world, author community, and corporate settings to network, learn, and make valuable connections. After talking to a bunch of coaches, authors, [...]
The Music Spotlight My latest tune, The Dancing Man, is out NOW on Spotify. I wrote this song back in my EDM days in 2012. I really wish I could go back and see how I wrote it, because whenever I listen to it now I am always in wonder on how the heck [...]
Book Coaching Spotlight Lower Your Scope As many of you know I've been stuck on book 3s. Everyone loves to think that writing books gets easier with each one. To some extent this is definitely true, but as a wise man once said, "With great power comes great responsibility." And I think this relates [...]
This was the highlight of my November, going into New York City to visit a friend and walking around Central Park. The temperature was perfect. T-shirt weather. After walking a total of 7 miles and admiring all the changing leaves, I stopped to watch a sunset over the city skyline. A perfect way to [...]
THE PALMS OF LIGHT PROLOGUE! Author Pat's back and falling deep into a writing routine again. Oh does it feel good to have the fingers a-tapping and the mind a-flowing with creativity. All it took was waking up a tad earlier than usual to get a solid hour of writing in before the stresses [...]
NEW BOOK COVER! HERE IT IS! The new and improved cover of Junkland, the first book in The Hoarding series. Some may ask, well, why did you change the cover in the first place? The first cover was already beautiful to begin with. But the first cover was NOT to genre.The original cover screamed Dystopian: And since Junkland is [...]
I've decided to go monthly with my newsletters, combining both my fantasy fans and my poetry fans to bring everyone together in one happy place to keep everyone up to date on future projects, writing progress, book promos, author highlights, life updates, and more! So let's get right into this month's updates...FantasyFor those of you [...]
After I wrote a big chunk of the first draft of The Palms of Light, the projected final book in The Hoarding series, in NaNoWriMo of 2021 I felt a major decrease of productivity with my writing. The current situation in Spain at the time was filling up all my brainpower with anxiety. I started dabbling in Bryan [...]
Four years ago I experienced culture shocks when I first arrived to Spain, from the crazy fiestas, to the relaxed life style, to how much Spaniards talked. Now that I moved back home to the US I've experienced reverse culture shocks that I wanted to share. Here are my top reverse culture shocks from [...]
I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by the awesome IT bookworm Camelle on her Home of a Book Lover blog. Home of a Book Lover is a book blog hosted by Camelle! Camelle is an IT nerd from Philippines. However, reading and blogging relaxes her from her job which can be insanely busy. [...]
This week in my newsletter I reveal my lastest publication Stages of a Breakup, a poetry collection focusing on themes of denial, anger, and depression during a heartbreak. Available now on Amazon! To sign up for my poetry newsletter and to receive the FREE poetry chapbook, click here: https://www.subscribepage.com/poetrynewsletter You can order my poetry books [...]
This week in my newsletter I announce a big change in my life and the final countdown of my upcoming poetry book, Stages of a Breakup, that I'll be releasing on August 4th. To sign up for my poetry newsletter and to receive the FREE poetry chapbook, click here: https://www.subscribepage.com/poetrynewsletter You can order my poetry [...]
As my final week in Spain lingers ever so near, I begin to ponder everything I'll miss about this beautiful country. Here's a small list of all the things that will forever have a place in my heart as I move back home to the United States after living four years in Spain. 1. Cafes [...]
Traveling this year in Spain has been close to non-existent for me due to lack of money and scarred from making travel plans. But my surfer, German friend Emily made me go outside my comfort zone by urging me on a road trip with her this holiday during Letras Gallegas, the long weekend off when [...]
I just finished watching Seinfeld from start to finish, and it was quite the experience. I used to watch Seinfeld reruns growing up every single night so I was ecstatic when Netflix announced they were going to put my favorite series on their platform in October 2021. Rewatching all 180 episodes and 9 seasons as [...]
What is the Disney Animation Challenge? Since 1937, Walt Disney Animation Studios has produced a grand total of 60 films. Beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and ending with Encanto, the Disney Animation Challenge is to watch all 60 films, commenting and ranking each one. Why am I doing the challenge? I'm glad [...]
This week in my newsletter I announce a very special poetry project I've been working on. To sign up for my poetry newsletter and to receive the FREE poetry chapbook, click here: https://www.subscribepage.com/poetrynewsletter You can order my poetry books here: http://patrickjohnswrites.com/a-poetry-collection-of-growing-up/ Order The Hoarding series here: http://patrickjohnswrites.com/the-hoarding-series/ You can also follow me on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickjohnswrites/ [...]