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2h •
Thursday...Genre is not a label
Still can't come up with a pithy title so make some suggestions... Genre is not a label — it's the thing keeping your story on the rails Here's a thing that happens to almost everyone, and almost nobody talks about. You're at chapter fourteen. The writing is going fine — the sentences are good, the scene works, you like your people. And then somewhere around the middle of a paragraph you get a cold little feeling, and the feeling says: I don't think this is the book I started. The romance has quietly become a mystery with a love subplot. The cozy has grown teeth. The thriller stopped to look at some scenery three chapters ago and never really got going again. That drift is rarely a talent problem. It's almost always a compass problem. Nothing in the process was holding the book to what it promised on page one, so a hundred small local decisions — each of them individually reasonable — walked it somewhere else. Genre is the compass. Not the label you type into KDP when you're done. The compass you set before you start. What genre actually is Genre is a contract. A reader picks up a cozy mystery and, without articulating any of it, expects: a body but no gore, an amateur sleuth, a community they'd like to live in, a puzzle that plays fair, and order restored at the end. They expect this the way you expect a chair to hold you. They don't think about it until it fails. Break the contract and you don't get "an interesting subversion." You get a one-star review that says "not what I expected" — which is the most honest review in the world, and the most expensive. Every genre has its own version of this: - Romance promises two people, an emotional arc, and an ending that's happy or at least hopeful. That last one isn't a convention, it's the definition. Break it and you didn't write a romance. - Mystery promises a puzzle you could theoretically solve, and a solution that was available all along. - Horror promises dread — sustained, escalating, not relieved too early. - Thriller promises momentum and a clock. -
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2d •
Workflow Wednesday
My File System Was a Disaster. Here's the One I'm Building to Replace It. I want to be upfront about something before I get into this: what follows is not a finished system I've been running for years and am now generously revealing to you. It's the system I'm actively building right now, because the old one finally broke under its own weight. Here's what broke it. I went looking for a cover concept file from an earlier book. It wasn't in the book folder. It was in a "Graphics" folder from eight months ago that also had three other books' covers in it, none labeled clearly enough to tell them apart at a glance. The marketing copy for that same book was in a completely different folder tree, because I'd started using a new tool partway through and never went back to reconcile the old stuff. Fifteen minutes of searching for one file I knew existed. That's the tax you pay for not deciding on a structure up front, and I'd been paying it quietly for a long time. So I sat down and asked the obvious question: what's actually going in these folders, and what's the smallest set of rules that keeps it findable six months from now when I've forgotten the details? The core idea: Projects is the top, then everything nests by type Books aren't the only thing I'm keeping track of. There are coding projects, there's a growing pile of AI prompts and skill files, there are short stories that don't need the full novel treatment, and there's a permanent junk drawer of half-formed ideas that aren't committed to anything yet. Trying to organize all of that around "books" was the first mistake, because a lot of my actual work isn't a book. So the true top level is just **Projects**, full stop. Not around the tool that made something, not around the date, not around whether it's "writing stuff" or "marketing stuff." Whatever kind of thing it is, fiction or code or a stray idea, it lives inside its own project folder, not scattered across whatever pile happened to be open when I made it.
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Mar 22 •
Welcome to the Ai Pro Writers Studio. Home of Wordcrafter Pro!
I'm Michael. I built the Professional Writing System and WordCrafter Pro after spending years trying to wrangle AI tools into something that actually helps writers write better stories — not just faster ones. The Professional Writing System is a set of Claude skills to help you as authors get the words out and get published. Each skill has a group of personas who are experts in their field that let you discuss your book not order the AI to do your bidding. They help you work out ideas, build the story Bible & outline, design believable characters, write your story (with help not write for you), and edit the work afterwards. The Merch and Marketing skills step in to help you build products around your story and sell it (the most important part) WordCrafter Pro is the latest in AI Writing Aids that has the entire PWS System baked in. Here in a scrivener styled interface you can organize all of your pieces together, control your context windows, get help when needed and get the stories published! With this system you never have to write alone again. You can even talk to the persona's individually ***** What you've walked into is the community hub for everything PWS: the skill files, the app we're building, the classes, the challenges, and most importantly, the other writers doing this work alongside you. Here's what to do right now: 1. Introduce yourself in the Introductions category. Tell us your name, what you write, and your biggest creative challenge right now. 2. Grab the free PWS Quick-Start Guide at [this link] It explains the four-phase system and shows you exactly where to start. 3. Browse the Start Here posts. The PWS Overview explains all four phases. The Community Rules are short and worth reading. This community is free and always will be. A paid Inner Circle tier is coming for writers who want deeper access, but everything you need to use the system lives here at no cost. the skills themselves and the PWS Studio App I'm developing will have a cost, but if you are reading this there will be a huge discount.
2h •
I'm noodling on a change to Skool and need some input
TL;dr: Thinking of changing the Tiers in Skool to match the tiers in WorCrafter.Pro that will go in effect next month and tie the two together for extra value and better algorithm visibility on Skool. Payments to be made through Skool instead of WCP. This is not a done deal. ****** Skool just added Reviews, but only paying users can leave reviews under the About button, And Discovery is based on an algorithm that includes income from the skool (which a primarily free skool doesn't make). The recommendation from several other Skool owners that do make good money from their channels is to change at least a minimal rate for everyone to have access. $2-$5 a month. This does a couple good things and a couple bad in my mind. The Good: Adds value to the site, makes us higher in the algorithm and Discovery will give us more free advertising. And we lose lurkers that have forgotten they are even here 8) The Bad: This is intended as free support for the software. And we lose our lurkers that are getting some value. And wil be a gateway for some new folks and I'll lose some folks here that just don't want another monthly fee And I truly want to help folks. So no. The free tier remains and will remain. But the upper two tiers.... So my Idea. At the end of the month I intend to tier the price of Wordcrafter.pro so different plugins will be available to users at the different levels. At the basic level you will get everything you need to write a book with a few extras. The PWS Skillroooms, custom prompting, basic graphics The pro level will give access to advanced graphics, the layout tools and the basic marketing reports. The Studio level is everything else, Audiobooks, path crafter, Merchandising, advancedmarketing and everything as it gets released. Founders will all be at the studio level. Everyone using it at the time will be set to the Studio level and have all access to all of the plugins and the new ones as they get released, as long as they stay members. I'll start sending out warning emails in advance, so if you have been thinking of giving it a try now is the time. First two weeks are free to check everything out. the advanced imaging and hopefully marketing tools will be released within the next week.
3d •
Destroy your world in One Click
Yes it can be done. Instead of deleting a single video in a youtube playlist I deleted the entire playlist. All 3600+ videos I had squirreled for a rainy day. Research, ideas, a couple of years worth of unsorted. Gone. Poof! The only way to somewhat "recover" is to scroll back through my history, but most of those I just saved for later and do not have an inkling what they were. So i'm in emotional and mental upheaval right now trying to take the high road and think, well if i don't know what they were I can't miss them right? Nope Nope Nope. My data pits: Youtube, Recall, Notes, Notion, Raindrop, etc.. are my first searches for things I know I know but cannot remember. Lesson in loss here I suppose. Or.....a notebooklm style rag database of all of my data pits to find.... nope nope nope. not going there either. time for a cry and then get back to life again
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Write & finish your novel fast with AI author personas for story, prose & marketing. Claude-powered skills for indie authors. Never write alone.
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