There is so much advice on the internet. There's advice on how to eat, how to sleep, what that slight pain in your side means, when to see a doctor, and how to negotiate your medical bills. There's also plenty of advice on writing. There are YouTube channels, podcasts, blogs, forums, and ebooks. There is so much content online trying to tell you how to do things that it can be difficult to know who to listen to. To help you sift through the mess, I've decided to offer four questions to ask yourself about any writing advice (that I ask myself): Does this advice in any way serve the person giving it? There are plenty of people out there ready to make a quick buck off of the dreams of writers, so beware any kind of advice that seems to profit the adviser. For example, is one bit of advice that you should take a writing workshop--when they happen to offer a 2 week online writing workshop? Do they encourage doing daily writing exercises, and then offer you a handy ebook ...
I'm hitting a wall with Weather Vane Island. I'm on chapter 8 and, despite the grouping of many tiny adventures, a question still lingers: "When is the story going to begin?" Looking at the manuscript, I feel dejected. I can only shrug my shoulders and answer: "I don't know." This is familiar territory for me. I ran into it in the first draft of Weather Vane Island and my answer was to just add whatever crazy thing came to mind, eventually kneading the dough of my story into something ineditable. I ran into the same wall in my first draft of Nothing Extraordinary (a work in progress) and my solution then was to charge forward, keeping faith in my outline until my writing became a bland, programmed march to the end. I've also run into the same wall with other stories that I put into drawers, unfinished, because I didn't have the wherewithall to push through. I've come to term this a "Mid-Book Crisis." For whatever reason, af...
Everyone needs a little room to themselves, writers even more so. Something about going off into your own little world is so much easier...in your own little world. However, not everyone has a literal room to themselves and it can be a little difficult to come up with [small] [space] [solutions] . Or maybe not. There are fixes for claustrophobic circumstances [all] [over] [the internet] . Me? I share a one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend and a fourteen pound cat (definitely more on him later :D ). Our kitchen could fit in most closets. Despite all of this, we make it work without feeling like the walls are closing in. This is my writing space: It’s a mess, I know, but it keeps me focused. I find that the busier my space is with creative energy-colors, pictures, poems and the like-the less likely I am to stray from it in boredom. Since we have no extra rooms, I’ve basically segregated what would be the “dining room” into an office. The Tour: -The storage bins against th...
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