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Fantastic Fridays: No Inspiration? No Motivation? No Problem.
How often do you fall into the trap of believing that you have to be inspired or motivated in order to write? Sure, inspiration and motivation can make writing FEEL easier but you don’t NEED to be inspired or motivated in order to write. In fact, once you learn to write without them, you will get a lot more writing done, a lot faster, because you aren’t waiting for them to show up. And, oddly enough, once you have started writing, you will find yourself both inspired and motivated to continue. The trick is in getting started. To help you figure out how to start, let’s think a little bit…
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Fantastic Fridays: Three Encouraging Reminders
For today’s post, I’m going to keep things simple and offer you three encouraging reminders of the freedom you have in your writing. You can choose what to write about I understand that there’s a lot of pressure out in the world to write about specific things because they’re marketable. Or maybe you’ve been told that your topic is old-fashioned or boring. Only you get to decide what you’re going to write about. If a project is interesting or exciting to you and it lets you express something you want to express, then it’s a worthwhile project. When you are first writing you don’t need to concern yourself with whether something…
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Fantastic Fridays: Friendly July Check-In
There’s just one more writing day in July and it’s the perfect time to look back at your efforts and see how things worked out. How did your writing go this month? Could you write when you intended to? Did you write the things that you intended to? What obstacles did you encounter? Did you overcome them or are you still working on that? What can you celebrate about this month’s writing? (Remember, your effort ALWAYS counts here.) What lessons can you take from July and bring into August’s writing session? Once you have gathered all of your information about this past month, it’s time to think about how you…
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Fantastic Fridays: Playing with Writing Prompts
You might think of writing prompts as a great way to do some writing practice or as a great way to start a new story. But how often have you used them to move an existing story along or to kickstart a stalled work-in-progress? A writing prompt can really help, as long as you are willing to play with it a little to find how it will work for your story. Go on a Tangent Using a prompt to start a story gives you a fresh perspective and helps you pull out unexpected ideas. It can do the same thing for your longer work in progress, if you’re willing to…
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Fantastic Fridays: Collect Encouragement
Today, I’m inviting you to foster your writing habits by collecting encouragement. What does that mean? Well, when it comes to discouraging comments and thoughts, we all seem to have perfect recall. We can remember the smallest insult, the most minuscule disparaging remark. We hold those in our minds as if they were somehow a pure truth. Yet, the comments from people who enjoyed our work? Those we dismiss as biased or we convince ourselves that the commenters didn’t do a thorough reading. Negativity Bias We’re not to blame for this mental habit. It’s part of what’s known as a negativity bias – which is a natural tendency for negative…
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Fantastic Fridays: Friendly June Check-In
It’s the last Friday in the month, so as usual, I’m inviting you to reflect on the past month. What strategies worked for you in June? Which plans did you have to revise? What victories can you celebrate? If you are in the mood for even more reflection, feel free to revisit the full list of questions from this post. Now that you have a clear understanding of how things went in June, let’s look ahead to July! July Writing Plans Personally, I will be revising my novel so most of my new writing will be related to that but I will also do blog posts and some writing prompts…
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Fantastic Fridays: Trust Your Process
One of the most important things you can do as a writer is learn to trust your process. After all, no matter how many writer friends you have, or how many groups you belong to, writing is basically a solitary activity. Sure, you can have company while you write, or you can consult on ideas or plot holes, but sooner or later it is going to be just you and the page. There are hundreds of people out there advising you about writing but the truth is that only YOU know how you write best. You might have to take some time to observe your patterns but the information is…
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Fantastic Fridays: Make a Summer Plan
Does your approach to your writing change with the seasons? Here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is turning into summer. For many of us, that means a more relaxed schedule and an opportunity to change when and how we write. But, while writing is enjoyable, we also want to take advantage of the sunny days and longer evenings to relax and take things slowly. That’s why it’s important to make some decisions in advance and plan a summer that lets you strike a balance. When you have a plan for your summer, you can distinguish between work time and play time and that will add up to more fun and…
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Fantastic Fridays: Friendly May Check-in
Bring a little of your fantasy writing life into your real life by identifying what you really want from your writing ideals.
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Fantastic Fridays: Change Your Plan
If you are unable to follow your writing plans, don't be hard on yourself, change your plans!
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Fantastic Fridays: 3 Writerly Traps To Avoid
Sometimes writerly challenges require complex solutions. Other times, our challenges with writing arise from some very basic issues stemming from how we are approaching our early drafts. It’s not that we’re choosing a wrong path, it’s that we’ve fallen into some subconscious patterns that are making things more difficult than they need to be. Since the first step in changing those patterns is to become aware of them, I thought I would share a few reminders of common first draft traps that writers fall into. Trap #1: Trying to write the whole thing at the same time Note: This trap isn’t about trying to complete your story in one marathon…
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Fantastic Fridays: Clear Your Head
Do your writing plans and projects tend to get jumbled in your brain? Even when I have a clear list of projects and tasks, I can end up taking on a bit too much and getting overwhelmed. My brain fills up with tasks and ideas and projects and I feel like I have no idea where or how to start. Luckily, I now recognize that feeling as part of the challenge of writing and I have a plan to help clear my head. If you end up with the same sort of jumble, maybe my process will help. Feel free to adjust anything that doesn’t work for you! Note: If…
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Fantastic Fridays: Friendly March Check-in
Being self-compassionate is a realistic way to look at yourself and your writing, and it will help you plan more effectively.
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Fantastic Fridays: What’s Your Next Step?
In this Fantastic Fridays post, Christine has some advice for inching forward with new projects.