It’s October 19 today. That means that National Novel Writing Month is only twelve days away. National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as the kids call it) takes place every November, with the goal of writing a short novel (50,000 words) in only thirty days. For a full description, visit the NaNoWriMo about page. Registering […]
Let’s Talk About Goals (And Why We Fail To Reach Them)
I often harp on the importance of setting writing goals over here at the blog and often push the idea that if you set specific goals, you can achieve anything you set out to do. But it isn’t always that easy. I know the experts all agree that writing down your goals is the best […]
Preemptively Defeat Your Distractions Before You Start Writing
Hey, it’s that time of day (or most likely night) again. You know, when you go into your isolation chamber and get ready to work on your current masterpiece. If you’re anything like me, however, sometimes it can be difficult to get started. Distractions are everywhere and I’m convinced that the outside world is conspiring […]
The Structure of a Good Story
Planner or Pantser? I’m sure at some point in your writing career you’ve faced the question of whether you’re a planner or pantser. A discovery writer or an outliner? I haven’t written a lot about outlining in the past, mostly because I had considered myself a discovery writer. For me, creating a detailed outline was something […]
When should you give up your dream and stop writing?
My wife and I were having a jovial conversation the other day about the usual stuff (i.e., how busy and exhausted we are) and I said that if I didn’t believe I would eventually make writing to the point where I can do it full time, that I would have quit a long time ago. […]
If you don’t have time to read…
That’s a pretty well-know quote from Stephen King’s book on writing (aptly titled: On Writing.) If you take that statement at face value, it isn’t really saying anything special, just that reading is important and if you don’t read a lot, you won’t become a very good writer. But if you look into the deeper […]
3 Quick Things To Watch For If You’re Writing YA
When I’m working on a Young Adult project, I often need to remind myself that while I may be childlike, I’m still an old guy. That can sometimes make writing a story with younger characters difficult. In fact, as I worked on one of the revisions to my first novel, I found three mistakes in […]
“I always wanted to write a book, but…”
Writing is weird. It’s the only hobby you can have where you make absolutely no money from it but gain instant respect from people when they find out that you do it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve published zero short stories or a hundred. It doesn’t matter if you’ve spent twenty years “working on a […]
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