January 2010
23 posts
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Self esteem: a writer’s challenge
The first challenge of a writer is to become a good searcher of ideas, a real hound for inspiration. After overcoming it, you sit with a pen in your hand or your fingers ready on the keyboard, and you are ready to face the second challenge: yourself.
What’s worse than a writer who isn’t inspired? An inspired writer who thinks he/she is not able to write a story. You surely don’t lack...
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Writing Tips for Organizing Writing Projects :... →
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The Most Powerful Two Hours You’ll Ever Spend as a... →
I’m about to introduce you to the most exhilarating and useful hands-on writing exercise I’ve ever experienced.
So effective, in fact, that it’s more a tool than it is a way to limber up the ol’ creative muscles.
So which is it? An exercise or a tool? Doesn’t matter.
Either way, I urge you – I challenge you – to try this. Why? Because just sitting there waiting for the blood to emerge from your...
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First Draft Secrets: Five Simple Steps | Write to... →
Draft Secrets: Five Simple Steps
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“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start...”
– Anne Lamott (via ilovereadingandwriting)
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Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules For Writing Fiction
ilovereadingandwriting:
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist....
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“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the...”
– (via iwannotowidigdo) (via libraryland) (via ilovereadingandwriting)
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“For anyone who is: just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a...”
– Robin McKinley
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Beat Blank Page Syndrome: 10 Tricks to Get Your...
By Dustin Wax
Anyone who writes, whether for school, for work, or for a living knows the scene: you sit there, a blank document open on your computer screen, that little cursor silently (accusingly?) blinking away, and your mind a complete blank. You know overall what you want to say, but how do you get there?
Fortunately, there are ways to beat that blank page into submission. The trick...
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The Writing Tip That Changed My Life →
“In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.”
The implications of this are stunning, not only for writing, but for living. Which to me are synomymous, by the way. It means everything you write moves you closer to your goal, including everything that brings yet another rejection slip. It means that writing, like life itself, is a...
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“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least...”
– GEORGE ORWELL
(Source)
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Tell the Reader to Go Jump in the Lake
The writer is only free when he can tell the reader to go jump in the lake. You want, of course, to get what you have to show across to him, but whether he likes it or not is no concern of the writer.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR
(Source)
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3 Simple Tips for Effortless Writing
by David Turnbull
I feel writing should be effortless. To some that may sound ridiculous, and a few months ago I may have agreed with you, because syphoning thoughts from your brain into a coherent structure is mighty difficult, but alas, I love writing too much for me to be content with its inherent difficulty.
This desire for effortless writing encourage me sit down one day, a green tea...
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“Buy a blank notebook. Draw a huge heart on the cover. Don’t write anything...”
– Kim, Advice from a Mermaid in a Manhole (via julie911) (via quote-book)
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Don't Be Afraid of Your Idea
Use your eyes and ears. Think. Read … read … and still read. And then, when you have found your idea, don’t be afraid of it—or of your pen and paper; write it down as nearly as possible as you would express it in speech; swiftly, un-selfconsciously, without stopping to think about the form of it all. Revise it afterwards—but only afterwards. To stop and think about form in mid-career,...
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Read Bad Stuff
If you are going to learn from other writers don’t only read the great ones, because if you do that you’ll get so filled with despair and the fear that you’ll never be able to do anywhere near as well as they did that you’ll stop writing. I recommend that you read a lot of bad stuff, too. It’s very encouraging. “Hey, I can do so much better than this.” Read the greatest stuff but read the stuff...
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Freewriting
Freewriting is the easiest way to get words on paper and the best all-around practice in writing that I know. To do a freewriting exercise, simply force yourself to write without stopping for ten minutes. Sometimes you will produce good writing, but that’s not the goal. Sometimes you will produce garbage, but that’s not the goal either. You may stay on one topic, you may flip...
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8 Nasty Writing Habits You Should Quit
By Suzannah Freeman
They’re insidious little habits–those ones you don’t even notice creeping into your work.
It starts innocently. First, you’ve got far too many pencils that need sharpening (you couldn’t possibly get to that latest project until you finish). Soon you’re looking at the two lonely pages of your novel and thinking, “Boy, these could use a quick edit before I move on.”
In the...
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The Most Important Sentence: How to Write a Killer...
By: Christopher Jackson
I remember being taught, in English class in school, that a good story should grab the reader’s attention right from the first page. In those first few hundred words you should introduce characters, create interest and mystery and raise questions in the reader’s mind – questions that they will want to find out the answers to.
But, how much better is it to do these things...
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Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing →
Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted up 50 tools that can help you when you do any kinds of writing. This is a extensive list of writing tools, but by no mean you need to apply all of them when you do any writing.
… You will become handy with these tools over time. You will begin to recognize their use in the stories you read. You will see chances to apply them when you revise your...
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Create a Morning Writing Ritual
By: Leo Babauta
If you’re like most writers, you procrastinate. You have a hard time getting started writing, unless you’re seized by a burst of inspiration. Instead, you might do some “research” online, fiddle with your to-do list, or work on a number of other tasks instead of doing the writing you need to do.
If you’re having trouble getting your writing done, try creating a morning writing...
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The Power Of Rituals
By Scott Young
Life is wasted in the in-between times. The time between when your alarm first rings and when you finally decide to get out of bed. The time between when you sit at your desk and when productive work begins. The time between making a decision and doing something about it. Slowly your day is whittled away from all the unused in-between moments.
The solution to reclaim these lost...
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Tumblr as an online scrapbook for writers
By Iain Broome
This post provides an overview of microblogging service, Tumblr, and looks at how it can be used as an online scrapbook by writers.
Ideas come in all shapes and sizes and can be generated or inspired by almost anything.
As writers, we’re encouraged to read, read, read, but our imaginations are just as likely ignited by the things we watch, the things we listen to and the people...