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50 Cheap & Easy Ways To Improve Your Writing
Can’t afford to take a writing class? Never fear! All you really need is a library, internet access, Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter! YOU can improve your writing skills by doing these 50 things. I admit, some of these aren't exactly writing activities, but if you do them, and you practice observing with all five senses and spend at least 10 minutes writing about the experience, you will improve. YOU WILL!
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Nine Questions To Ask Yourself If You Have Writer’s Block
Sometimes the words aren't there. The ideas are weak and feeble. Your fingers grow numb waiting on a decent thought from your brain. There's a problem and you can't quite figure out what it is or why you're blocked.
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10 Things You Should Say That Will Make You More Successful
Good thoughts produce good habits. Good habits produce good patterns. Good patterns help us grow in discipline, which makes us more confident, which allows us to succeed.
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Take 5 Friday: Five Field Trips For Your Senses
We all have to do mundane and routine things to maintain our lives – errands, grocery shopping, yard work, and so on. But, what if, instead of just drifting along with our routines, we considered at least some of our errands as ‘field trips’ for our senses? We could use the sensory information we gather to enrich our scenes and our settings. And, in essence, we would be dedicating a little more time to our creative practice each week. I realize that you will not be able to do this for every errands you have to run every week. But even if you did it for a few errands every…
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Five More Things You Could Be Saying To Yourself That Will Guarantee Failure
I spent decades of my life saying negative things to myself. As a result, I was unhappy and unsuccessful in nearly everything I did. It wasn’t until I recognized what I was doing, started seeing a therapist, and made the conscious effort to speak to myself with kindness, that things changed for me.
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Nine Things You Could Say To Yourself That Could Change Everything
I can see that in this very subjective, heartbreaking world of writing and publishing, the attraction of negativity is often too strong to fight against. We writers are often sensitive souls and perhaps we all drink, smoke, wear black and talk to cats because we don’t know how to say positive things to ourselves.
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When Darkness Keeps You From Writing
My own core negative beliefs included: "My dreams aren't worth the trouble." "I'll probably never succeed, so why try?" "I'm not good enough." "I've failed before, so I'll probably fail again," and "shouldn't wifehood and motherhood be enough?"
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How To “Fill Up” For More Inspiration
Our stories come, whether we want to admit it or not, from the things that we know. Our subconscious is at work with each word we put together, collecting the images and memories and values into our artwork. Sometimes when we're in the zone we can see how beautifully all our inspiration works with us.
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How To Develop Your Writer Voice
I’d like to suggest beginning novelists tinker with influences. Show me a writer with a rich voice, and I'll show you someone who has read great books most of their life. A writer with strong voice studies voice either consciously or subconsciously, and this is reflected in the words they put down.
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Take 5 Friday: Five Questions To Ask Your Characters
Last week, I encouraged you to ask yourself a few questions about your writing so you could ensure that your practice still met your goals. This week’s questions are for your characters and while they probably won’t take as much soul-searching, they will require some imagination. I use questions like the ones below to round out my knowledge of my characters in my short stories, novels, short plays, and in the mystery games that I write. Sometimes I end up using the answers to “show” my characters to my audience. Sometimes, the answers just help me to figure out how my characters would behave or react in a given situation.…
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Take 5 Friday: Five Questions for Author Glenda Thompson
On the last Friday of each month, I like to share an interview with an author so we can get a glimpse into their writing approach and practice. This month, I’m thrilled to share Glenda Thompson’s wise words about writing. You can find her answers below and you can find out more about her and her work on twitter at PressRattler , on Facebook at Author Glenda Thompson, or, soon, on her website. Glenda’s novel Broken Toys will be released later this year. 1. What aspects of writing are easiest for you? Good question. I think character motivations are the easiest for me. My favorite word in the entire world is…
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Hopeful Strategies For When You Don’t Have Time For Your Dream
My dream is just out of reach. I realize this. But I also realize that each day that I do something toward it, it feels more real. Each time I give my dreams ten minutes, that big fluffy cloud of hope seems more like a reality. Every time I squeeze in a blog post there, or a few words there, that dream feels less like a mirage and more like something solid.
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Writing What You Know (And You Know A Lot!)
But I don't believe that “writing what you know” necessarily means that, or at least it does not mean only that. Sure, if you've lived on a farm your whole life, it will be easier for you to tell the story of a farming family. If you've been a businessperson for the last thirty years, you will be able to write an office-place drama more easily than most other authors. However, you know a lot more than that. So do your readers. This is where you need to “write what you know”. And what do you know? Plenty.
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How To Make Small Goals Work For You
As much as you'd like to think you can shoot for the moon, I think that the moon, as beautiful and romantic as it is, isn't even a little bit possible. At least for right now. It could be that in the season your life is in, to be a writer, we need to start small, we need to have low expectations.