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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: 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: Visible Progress
Keeping track of your progress can help you stay motivated and focused, even when things get challenging.
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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: 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: Invite Yourself Back To Your Writing
Whether you are facing a blank page, or trying to get back into the ‘zone’ you were working in last time, starting a new writing session can be a challenge. But getting your writing started doesn’t have to feel so hard. In fact, if you can develop a practice of inviting yourself back to your writing, you can make it easier and easier to get started. So, how do you invite yourself back? Check out the list below so you can begin to develop your own enticing invitation to get writing. Start at the end Obviously, you can’t jump ahead to the end of a session that hasn’t even started.…
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Overcoming Obstacles on the Writer’s Journey: Fear
Like our intrepid heroes, as writers we also occasionally find obstacles standing in the way of our goals. Since the very first story was told, storytellers have had to overcome fear.
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Fantastic Fridays: Keep Trying
It’s really important not to get discouraged by a single day’s writing (or lack thereof.) Even if the words are misbehaving and refusing to get on the page, you have to keep trying. And I don’t just mean ‘trying to write’, although that is obviously important, I mean trying in all sorts of ways. Try to focus on your process All writers need a reminder to focus on their process, not on the final product. This is especially true in the early stages of a project when thoughts of how it will turn out can seriously derail you. You don’t need to worry about where it will be published, whether…
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Fantastic Fridays: Choosing to Write
Christine is inviting you to rethink how you describe your writing time. Reframing writing as a choice could make a huge difference.
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Fantastic Fridays: Your Writing Matters
In the first post in this new ‘Fantastic Fridays’ series, Christine offers a reminder that your writing matters and encourages you to return to the page.
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Take 5 Friday: Five Gentle Reminders About Writing
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Joyous Friday! Whatever you are celebrating (or not celebrating today) I hope this post finds you with some of your favourite comforts and, perhaps with a little time to write! As a little holiday gift, I offer you these five gentle reminders about your writing. You can write whatever you want If you are writing for your own happiness, to work your way through something, or for the sheer joy of stringing words together, you can’t write whatever you please. You don’t need to be writing something that someone else would see as useful. Your writing can be just for you. It’s okay to write something…
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Take 5 Friday: Five Writerly Ways to Round Out 2020
Planning to spend the next few weeks in holiday mode? In relaxation mode? Going full steam ahead? No matter how you plan to spend the rest of 2020, it can be VERY good for your writing. Here are 5 links to previous posts to help you see how your plans can foster your writing. Taking a break? If your plans involve taking time away from your writing, don’t feel guilty about it! Enjoy that time away. Let your writer-brain rest and let those ideas bubble. If you find yourself feeling a bit weird or guilty about taking time off, choose a specific time to get back to the page. Sometimes…
