Finished reading The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield. It’s an excellent book, one I’ll be re-reading. Also read Donald Maass’ The Career Novelist, which I’ve read before but I think that was right around when I first sold a novel. Definitely a different perspective now. It’s a very useful book for serious career thinking.

Reading books on craft, on business, on personal growth is all part of the same package; being better. You can’t be a better writer without being a better person, a better thinker, better at understanding business. If I want my books to grow, I have to grow. I can’t stay where I am, or I have nothing more to offer. I think it was Dorothea Brande who said the author’s character is revealed in writing, and that’s where you truly succeed or fail. My view of human nature, of relationships, of the world around me is going to be in everything I write, and if I want people to come away from a book feeling better about those things, then the job has to start with me.

I don’t want to be the same writer today that I was four years ago, and four years from now, I want to look back and see how far I’ve come. How my work has deepened and improved. Not just craft and technique, but the heart of the story. So I try to be better. And that means reading books like Canfield’s and Maass’ and really working to implement what I’ve learned. It means taking care of myself so I’m up to the work. I’ve made lots of changes this year to be better, and more are ahead. If I just keep doing the same things, I won’t get better.