My New Book “Like A Rolling Stone” Is Available For FREE This Week (in German)

by Leave a Comment

I finally finished editing the German version. You can now get it on Amazon for free until Friday.

It’s the first book of a series that I want to expand with a new release each year until I kick the bucket. The genre: Action-Thriller with a mix of conspiracy.

You can get your copy here: Like A Rolling Stone (German Edition)

The next couple of days I’ll work on the English translation. The goal is to have it ready before Christmas and give it away for free too. Just follow my blog to not miss the release.

As always, if you enjoyed reading my stories, please leave me a review on the platform of Lauren Sanchez’ husband. Thanks.

Publish Everything That You’ve Finished Writing

by Leave a Comment

I was hesitant to publish my first book in 2023. In fact, I was so hesitant that I kept it on my computer for years, even though it was already finished. I felt the same hesitation with my second book in 2024—and my third in 2024 as well. I guess, that feeling of “It’s not good enough” never really goes away.

After publishing three books and nearly a dozen short stories, I’ve come to an important conclusion: if you aim for perfection, you will never publish anything. Of course you should try to produce your best work, but if you obsess over perfection, no sentence will ever feel good enough—and you’ll never release anything at all.

What’s better: publishing a book that is “good enough,” or never publishing a book because it isn’t perfect?

Another thing to keep in mind is that even if you did reach perfection, some readers would still disagree. There are people on Amazon who give The Lord of the Rings one-star reviews. There are people who downvote YouTube videos of babies playing with puppies. Some crazy people rate Christopher Nolan movies 1 out of 10.

The lesson here is: Your idea of perfection will never be everyone’s perfection.

Since universal perfection is impossible, why try to reach it? Aim for creating a book that is good—and then release it instead.

With all of this in mind, I’ve established my third iron rule of writing: If something is finished, publish it. If you don’t, you’ll get stuck in editing limbo, endlessly trying to “fix” something that can’t be fixed anyway.

To sum up the iron rules so far:

  1. Collect all ideas.
  2. Work on one idea until you have a first draft.
  3. Publish everything that is finished.

The Main Difference Between a Personal and a Corporate Blog

by Leave a Comment

More than ten years ago, I ran a freelancing service that included writing SEO articles for German websites. I wrote about crypto, fitness, event hotels, gardening, and many other topics. The goal was always the same for every client: write as many articles as possible to cover the three or four main keywords from every possible angle.

In fitness, for example, that meant keywords like:

  • Lose weight
  • Build muscle
  • …

So I was asked to write article after article from that perspective, such as:

  • How to lose weight with strength training
  • How to lose weight with running
  • How to lose weight with low-carb
  • How to lose weight with intermittent fasting
  • How to lose weight…

You get the idea.

At some point, I had covered every topic I could think of. So the client simply wanted me to repeat myself, just with slightly different long-tail keywords:

  • How to lose weight with low-carb
  • Losing weight with low-carb
  • Is losing weight with low-carb possible?
  • What is the most efficient way to lose weight with low-carb?
  • …

Naturally, this led to articles that recycled the same old information. Eventually, I could just take the articles I had already written, rephrase them a bit, and change a few key sentences to include the new long-tail keywords.

It was boring. It was ridiculous. But it paid the bills.

Thanks to that experience, I’ve become very attentive when reading other people’s blogs. Whenever I see this repetitive structure, I know I’m not reading a genuine, authentic blogger who wants a space to share ideas. Instead, I’m looking at a corporate blog that exists solely to cover keywords for Google.

And the only thing I’ll get out of reading it is the same repetitive stuff I already learned from the first handful of posts on that site. So I’m out. Bye.

Personal blogs might be harder to rank on Google, but once you find them, you discover new ideas, new opinions, and new topics for as long as you follow them. That’s what I like. That’s what I’m interested in. And that’s what is easily identifiable by simple looking for blogs that don’t write this repetitive keyword shit.

I Don’t Believe Writer’s Block Exists

by Leave a Comment

This year, I set a goal to write at least one thousand words every day. So far, I’ve managed to stick to it. On most days, I wrote even more. Writing stories for my books and articles for this website give me a strong reason to keep going—and once you do it long enough, habit takes over.

I don’t even think about whether I should write today; I just do it, because I’ve done it long enough that it has become a natural part of my daily routine.

So, does writer’s block exist? I don’t think so. At least I’ve never experienced it.

If I look at writing from the perspective of quantity, the only times I get stuck are when I start thinking too much about quality. Not every article I write and not every page of a book is perfect. Sometimes I even write complete trash.

But writing trash can still lead to quality. Here’s why: if you can’t produce something good today and you stop writing, you certainly won’t create anything of value tomorrow. But if you keep writing—even if it’s garbage—quantity will lead to quality almost automatically because you keep putting words on paper.

If you try writing 1K a day for an entire year, you will learn something about writing. Even if you only learn it subconsciously. And this will improve your quality afterwards. So just writing more and more will make you better. You only have to stick with it and never give up.

Here are a few guidelines I use to continue writing daily:

  • When I write fiction, I follow one rule only: just write, without editing. Editing is only allowed after the writing part is finished.
  • When I get an idea for a story, I write it down, no matter whether it seems good or not. When I finish a story, I review my swipe file and choose the next idea that’s promising enough for a book or a blog post.
  • When I write non-fiction, I always create a simple outline before I start which are basically just sub-headlines. Writing then becomes a matter of connecting the headlines I planned in advance.
  • I keep a swipe file for non-fiction as well, so I never run out of blog post ideas. It already contains more concepts than I could possibly turn into articles in my lifetime.
  • Use ChatGPT for feedback: You can’t type in “write me a book” and expect good results. But you can use ChatGPT as a Beta reader who is always available and delivers quick and targeted feedback.

These guidelines have helped me avoid writer’s block entirely. I can confidently say I haven’t experienced it once this year. And I’m convinced you won’t either if you follow these four simple rules.

Author in Progress Report – November 2025

by Leave a Comment

Last month things improved again, but I’m still not sure whether I’ve reached the point where steady growth is guaranteed as long as I keep doing what I’m doing. I’d describe the current state as a kind of internet limbo.

Website

I kept my daily blogging streak going for another full month. It did lead to an increase in traffic, but I’m not convinced it’s real traffic. Lately, I’ve been getting spam comments, so maybe my URL just ended up in some scammer database, causing an influx of bot traffic.

Numbers for November:

  • Pageviews: 468 (+37%)
  • Total users: 239 (+11%)

On some days, there’s a nice spike in traffic. Today, though, it dropped. I hope that daily blogging will help and bring consistent growth every 30 days, but again: it’s hard to interpret the data when I don’t get many real comments.

Maybe once the scammers move on—since I delete all their comments—traffic will drop again. We’ll see.

Newsletter

This is why I’m not convinced the traffic increase is real: I didn’t get a single new newsletter subscriber in November. I checked the signup form with different browsers and systems—it should be set up correctly.

But if everything works and the traffic increase is genuine, why aren’t any new subscribers signing up?

If you’re reading this, please consider joining the newsletter here: Endless by Michael Brig. You’ll get a free book and an email whenever I give something away for free on Amazon.

Free Books

I published another short story collection last week called Killtime (US – DE).

It turned out to be my biggest success so far in the STORY52 project, where I give away short story books for free on Amazon to attract new readers.

I had 45 German and 8 English downloads. Nothing spectacular, but hopefully some of those 50 readers will check out my website or YouTube at some point.

This makes it 9 out of 52 stories already published.

Writing

Total, massive, unadulterated success. I finished writing my STORY52 project, which means I can focus on full-length novels next year. So far, I’ve published 9 of the 52 short story books; the rest will come out whenever I find the time to edit, translate, and design covers for them. But the first drafts are done and I can guarantee more releases regularly now to have all 52 stories published in 2026 (maybe 2027).

With this project wrapped up, I might attempt to write 12 novels in 12 months next year. That’s an average of only 2,000 words per day—something I might be able to manage, as I already wrote that much in sum (novels + short stories).

Project Updates 2025

  • Forever – Released in July (US / DE)
  • Endless – Free book for newsletter subscribers; released in September (get it here)
  • 17 Series – Editing of Part 1 is 95% done; translation and cover design are next | target release: Christmas 2025
  • Therapy – Written; planned release early 2026
  • Crowley – Written; planned release summer 2026
  • Influencer – Still outlining; goal to finish writing early 2026
  • Smash the Patriarchy – New novel I’ll write in December; goal: 2K words per day to see if I can complete it from idea to first draft in one month

While I jumped ship on my Influencer book for a bit, I also had an epiphany about writing. I’m currently defining iron writing rules for myself—rules I must follow no matter what. One of them will be: never start a new project until the previous one is finished.

Publishing Part 1 of the 17 Series this December is still my main focus for the next 31 days.

X/Twitter

I share my links and write movie reviews whenever I feel like it. But I avoid everything else because of the heavy censorship in Germany. Last month, the police actually raided someone for calling government workers “parasites.” No joke—that really happened in the land of the not-so-free Germans.

Still, I use Twitter daily to read and stay informed. You can follow me here: @michael_brig

Instagram

No real changes—I’m still just posting book covers for now.
Follow me here: Michael Brig IG

YouTube

My tutorial channel is running smoothly. Things look promising for 2026.

The other channels, though… I get almost no views due to shadowbanning. It’s really demotivating, and I think I’ll simply do less on YouTube next year, as there’s currently no real potential for growth within the system.

Conclusion

Overall, things are improving, but when it comes to finding readers for my books, I still feel like I haven’t made much progress. Sure, 2025 was meant to be a year of testing and experimenting, but I secretly hoped to at least find a handful of readers who would follow my work regularly—and I don’t think I’ve achieved that yet.

One more month to go in 2025, and then my first full year of trying to become a real author begins in January 2026.

I hope you’ll stay with me on this journey.