Jade Varden Official Blog

Look around at the world and notice not what is there…but who is missing. No longer will you see a man on stilts at twilight, meticulously lighting gas lamps up and down the street. You won't find a friendly milkman making deliveries. And the men wearing the long beaks who scooped up plague-ridden bodies were out of work in the 1400s. Innovation and technology always usher in new changes. But when something new begins, something else ends. And when it comes to ChatGPT, is this the end of human writing as we know it? The Ultimate Ghostwriter So what is ChatGPT? Depending on who is answering, this is a fascinating new innovation full of possibilities...or a demon invention summoned from the blackest pits of Hell. ChatGPT is actually an AI writing tool that can, for all intents and purposes, write anything. Articles, screenplays, entire novels even. You plug in some basic elements of what you want and the darn thing generates humanlike writing that can be difficult to tell from actual...

Though not as flashy as Shakespeare or as strange as Lewis Carroll, Geoffrey Chaucer contributed much more to the English language as a writer than both of them put together. He is called the Father of English literature and is single-handedly responsible for creating nearly 2,000 words that we use today. He was the very first person to be interred at Westminster in the famed Poet’s Corner and his stories were so good, Heath Ledger and the future Vision actor starred in an adaptation of his work about 600 years after he wrote it. What’s ironic is that the author best known for the Canterbury Tales never made a single cent off his writing. The Merchant of London Geoffrey Chaucer was born into the merchant class into rather fortunate circumstances. His father was a successful vintner, winemaker, and he worked for the crown for most of his career -- even when the crown changed heads a few times during the tumultuous Hundred Years’ War. Remembered today as one of the great writers and stud...

With everything going on in the world today, it's pretty hard to think about writing a story. How do you write about happiness, love, good health and other positive factors when it seems like the world is totally falling apart? It's hard to put aside the fear and the worry. It's hard to ignore those terrible headlines and the numbers of deaths that just keep getting bigger and bigger.  So don't ignore it. Use it. If you're finding it difficult to work on your writing projects, put them aside for a little bit and start channeling all your feelings about coronavirus into a brand-new story. Writers find inspiration even in the worst scenarios and turn them into entertainment. After all...doesn't everyone deserve some entertainment right now? Get Inspired I once said that a writer's task is not to live life. It's to observe it happening to others. Right now is the absolute perfect time to write. You can't go anywhere. You can't see anyone...

Unless you're one of them, it's hard to know what the life of a really big-time author is like. Imagine having 20 bestsellers on your bookshelf and tons of fans tweeting you all day long. Now imagine that you've got all that...and you still can't really write what you want. One famous author had to keep trying, for 20 years, to create the one project he felt passionate about. His name was Michael Crichton, and his project was a little TV series called "ER." This author knew the art of being stubborn. He Knew He Could You know Michael Crichton. He's the guy who wrote "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "The Andromeda Strain" and like several other books that were made into bigtime feature films. But he's also the guy that's ultimately behind "ER," a project that he tried to get going for about 20 years.

Even if you haven't read "Walden Pond," you've probably heard of Henry David Thoreau. He's well-known for going out into nature and writing about it, doing firsthand research to create his very famous book. What you may not know is that he self-published a book, and didn't do well with it at all. Unsuccessful at Self-Publishing Henry David Thoreau published two full-length books, but no one much cared. Neither book sold well, and that includes "Walden Pond," even though Thoreau gained some notoriety as an essayist. His sales were so bad, in fact, that he had to self-published his third novel himself.

Some authors become so famous for writing books in a certain genre, they get stuck in it. You’ll always think of Stephen King as a horror author, and we all know that Agatha Christie was the Queen of mystery. But it’s okay to be unfaithful to your genre. Shel Silverstein, one of the most famous kids’ authors of all time, was completely unfaithful -- wickedly so. At some point, someone probably read to you from Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree," one of the most well-known children's stories of all time. His poems and drawings have delighted generations of children. But Shel Silverstein had another job you probably didn't know about: Playboy .

Whether you call it stretching the truth or creative promotion, lying to the readers isn’t a good idea -- even if it’s all done in the name of embellishment. Find out why it’ll never work to fudge on your credentials, make more out of your achievements or just downright fib about your books.   There Are No White Lies Sure, it sounds more impressive to say that your book is a bestseller, or that you have a degree in this or that, or maybe that you have all five-star reviews. But if those things aren’t really, really true, it’s better not to say them at all. Even if you’re just fudging a little or exaggerating a lot, there’s one thing you can never lie to get: credibility. You don’t want to lose that, trust me. 

You could make an argument that all fiction authors are really professional liars who spin wild stories out of thin air...but they are honest about one thing: the fact that they’re lying. But there are other authors, those who claim to write non-fiction stories that actually aren’t. This is the story of a lying author who spun a wild tale -- and couldn’t live with what he did. This is a story about integrity, and the writers who don’t have it. Not-So-Sweet Little Lies Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance was born Sylvester Clark Long before he changed his name. He used his changed name to publish his autobiography, "Redman Echoes," in 1928. An adventurous tale of a young boy who was the son of a Blackfoot Native American Chief, the story was thrilling. It was also a huge hit. Almost overnight, Chief Buffalo Child became a celebrity and his book became a must-read. Literary critics, anthropologists and fans heaped praise upon him. Soon, the Chief was being invited to fancy N...

Are you afraid of your own writing? If you’ve ever stared too long at a blank page, or re-read the same paragraph four times because you just weren’t sure about it, or put off finishing that chapter for another day, you may be spending too much of your time being afraid. Lots of writers all secretly have the same fear, but I’m about to expose it once and for all: bad writing. Have you found yourself being afraid of writing badly, too?  Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia Fear of long words is a real phobia, but fear of writing is something that possibly strikes only authors. Writing a book encourages you to second-guess every sentence you put down. Bloggers like me get on the Internet and scream about editing, editing, editing. You get told to choose just the right words and avoid the wrong ones, to double-check dialogue and keep your narrative voice strong. And when you’ve got to think about all that, it’s absolutely natural to start being afraid of just totally wri...

Even if you weren't forced to read it in school like most people, you've heard of "Moby Dick." It's one of the most famous stories ever written. And when it was published, it completely tanked. Author Herman Melville was so disillusioned with his novel, he wrote a whole new novel about how bad he felt about it. Thar She Blows How bad did "Moby Dick" do in 1851 when it was published? It didn't even sell the entire first printing order...which was only 3,000 books. That's not many copies for a book that's passed out in schools every single year. Herman Melville was bitterly disappointed by this failure. In fact, he wrote mostly poetry and short stories after his novel about the whale, because he was so sad that so few people purchased it.

Someone asked me, the other day, if I have any hobbies. I was surprised when I didn’t have a ready answer. A few years ago, I would have said “writing,” of course. But now, writing is my job. And when anything becomes a job, it’s easy to lose passion for that thing.  Losing My Religion Everyone’s passionate about their hobbies. It’s what they do in their free time, what they want to do once all the chores and working is done. So when you write for a living and write for a hobby, it’s easy to start feeling as though you work all the time . That really just leaves one question: how do you fix it?

Every Monday, I write about a different famous author. I like to dredge up some little-known information about them, expose their flaws, dig around in their secrets -- or maybe just talk about how they died. But there’s one author I’m never going to write about, and I’m about to tell you why. Anonymous I’ve written about authors that no one read until after their deaths, authors who were anonymous until they kicked the bucket, authors who died broke and even authors who killed themselves. There’s one author you’ll never see me write about: the one who gave up .

I always wanted to be an author, growing up, so I always answered with that when people asked me. They would then invariably try to give me advice about how to do it. Write what you know, they would always say. That’s confusing advice. You can’t always know what it’s like to swim in the ocean or climb a tree, but you can still write about these things. But authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Mark Twain understood the idiom, and they used it in their books. You probably have something in common with these two greats, too.  It’s Not What You Know… I found out that “write what you know” can apply to just about anything. You can write about going to the Grand Canyon after visiting it. You can write about shopping because you’ve done it. But many of the greatest authors used it to create their characters. Two of the greatest character-creators ever were Chaucer and Twain...and they did it by writing not what they knew, but who they knew.

It was the second of July in the year 1961, and Ernest Hemingway was famous. He was a well-loved, bestselling American novelist and one of the world's most celebrated storytellers. This is why so many people cannot fathom why Hemingway woke from his bed that morning at 7, walked to his storage room and took out a shotgun. He placed the barrel of the gun against his forehead, and fired. It was a tragic ending to the story of an adored author. The Hemingway Curse At first, his wife claimed the gunshot was accidental. He'd been cleaning the weapon, she said. Finally, she admitted that she believed he had intentionally killed himself. It didn't make any sense. Hemingway was larger than life. He was a world traveler, a bullfighter, a hunter of big game, a man's man and an amazing writer. Why would such a man end it all when he was so successful and so admired by the world?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like to delve into the background of famous authors. I want to know when they started writing, how they got published, if they did anything weird in their spare time, even how much money they had when they died. But that’s a bad use of my time, because I inevitably start comparing myself to those other authors. Do you ever catch yourself doing the same thing? Stacking Up For a little while there, I was totally obsessed with author origin stories . One author in an interview talked about how she started writing a short story. Then, she said, the next thing she knew she had a 200,000-word book. Yeah, right. Reading stories like this used to make me feel bad, because I sweat to put 200 words on the page most days. So I stopped comparing myself to them. And now, I feel better.

Lots of authors don’t find fame and fortune during their own lifetimes, even some of the biggest names you’ve never read. It’s hard to believe, but all of these famous authors died broke. It’s Not About the Money (Because You Won’t Make Any) Book writing is not a money-making game by any stretch of the imagination, unless you’re J.K. Rowling (but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read this blog, so I think we’re safe there). Most authors, even the ones who manage to achieve a lasting legacy of fame and readership, actually pass from the world in relative obscurity without much money in their pockets. All of these famous names did, though you have certainly read at least one -- if not all -- of their books.

If you've ever seen "Becoming Jane," you've been exposed to a few lies about the author's life. The truth is, no one really knew or cared about Jane Austen when she died at age 41 -- other than her immediate family and friends, of course. She'd published four novels then...all of them anonymously. Austen didn't achieve fame until many years after her death, in fact. So you can always hope for that, if things don't work out while you live. This, and Other Dark Thoughts If you have a bit of a dark streak, like I do, then that should serve as a sort of weirdly comforting thought. Jane Austen 's books were written by "A Lady" as far as the reading public is concerned. Her brother Henry revealed her name only after she died, when he published "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey."

Writing books is a stressful and overwhelming experience, but at the end of the project it fills you with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Writing books can even be fun...until you write the book that breaks your heart. Maybe it doesn’t happen to all authors, but it did happen to me. Maybe it’ll happen to you, too. Just Me and My Shadow In looking back through the blog, you will find that I actually mention this book a lot. I'm being honest when I say I can't get over it; I still think about it all the time. I wrote it some years ago and loved it too well. There's much more to the story, but the point of it is that this book gave me writer's block for an inordinately long amount of time. I put it away and tried to forget it. I got it back out and re-read it. I thought that would help me get it out of my system. It didn't. I’ve read it since. I still feel the heartbreak when that book, somehow, gets brought into the conversation.

If you've watched the movie version of "Little Women," you know that Jo wrote stories of murder, revenge, passion and crime. So did Louisa May Alcott as a young writer. That's what she always wanted to write about. But when her family fell on hard time, she had to write something that would sell. That's how she got into the YA literature game...and that's the stuff that she didn't like writing. Choices Louisa May Alcott was around 35 when her editor told her to try writing a book for girls, rather than the crime-laden tales she preferred to pen. Alcott wouldn't have followed his advice, but her family was in dire financial straits. Her father had squandered most of the family's wealth, and they were suffering.

I’ve been vocal in my belief that writing is a skill that can be learned with practice, patience and hard work. It is hard work, though many envision something far different when they first pursue the writing dream. It takes a lot of research, editing and rewriting to come up with something decent, let alone great. But here’s the secret about writing: hard work doesn’t always pay off. Blood, Sweat and Tears Many authors will agree that often, luck and good connections play a part in success. If you are obsessed with learning about the backstories of authors , as I am, you will see this is a thread that’s repeated often. Many authors either a) got lucky or b) knew the right people. Of course, they were also talented and hard-working writers. But it’s also true that sometimes, hard work alone just isn’t enough.