Writers are not supposed to use clichés but Time Flies When You're Having Fun fits my life. I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for two decades and I have the best job in the world!

My writing journey began in the early 2000s when I penned an 80,000-word novel. But no one would touch it as I had no writing credibility; I hadn’t written for my high school newspaper or even taken a writing class in university. I certainly hadn't published anything. So I set out to amass writing credits. I started by writing newspaper articles. When one of my pieces appeared in the National Post, I knew it was time to expand.

I turned my focus to writing articles for magazines, a more lucrative and expansive market. My work has appeared in WestWord, Journeys West, Opulence, Hockey News: Fully Loaded, REM - The Real Estate Magazine, Acreage Life, The Cottager, Cottage, Cottage Life, Alberta Parent Quarterly, Luxury Lifestyle Living Magazine, City Probe, Celtic Heritage, and Living Safety, among others. I also published hundreds of articles and pieces online.

Along the way I developed a niche doing travel writing, an adventure that has taken me around the globe. I’ve stayed in fabulous places, locations that would typically only be a dream on a writer’s salary. I developed another niche editing fellow writer’s manuscripts, something I still enjoy and do regularly.

While I continue to pen magazine articles, writing e-books has become my new writing love. Even after 39 e-books, the thrill of publishing a book that becomes available to the world less than 24 hours later is addictive. A few of my favourite e-books are shown below.

I love to hear from my fans and from other writers. Feel free to contact me with any questions or thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best to you,
Toby   





All e-books are available for purchase at Amazon and Smashwords.  

 

Finding Your Writing Vo...

November 22nd, 2020
                           Joe Bunting, the author of the #1 Amazon Bestseller Let’s Write a Short Story!, had the following to say about finding your writing voice in a blog post on The Write Practice, “I asked Ted Dekker how long it takes for an author to find their voice. “It takes four to five novels,” he said. So if the average novel is about 80,000 words, then you have to write 320,000 to 400,000 words before you find your voice. That’s about 1,000 blog posts. Or 400 newspaper columns. Or 80 short stories. And how many have you written? At first, you have to listen to the feedback, he told me. People tell you what they like and what they hate, and you incorporate their feedback into your style. When you have found your voice, though, you don’t listen to the feedback much. You don’t need to. You know who you are and what you’re doing. Until then, you write. You listen. You ask for feedback and you learn to take it graciously.”Finding your voice takes time but it's worth the journey to get there. Not censoring yourself while writing is what helped me. Put aside the worrying about what others will think about what you are writing. Just focus on being authentic to what you really want to say and leave the rest behind. Happy writi...Click here to read more detail about 'Finding Your Writing Vo...'