Category Archives: Guest Blog

The wisdom and trials of others.

“The One Habit Every Writer Needs. Right now.”

Post #540

Guest Blog | The following quotes are from the Medium blog post ‘The One Habit Every Writer Needs. Right now.‘ by @shauntagrimes

Here are the steps:

Choose a goal.

When I say teeny, tiny, I’m not kidding.

You want a goal so small that it would actually be more difficult, psychologically, to skip it than it would be to just sit down and do the damn thing.

My go to teeny, tiny writing goal is ten minutes. No matter what, even on my worst day, even when I’m sick, even when I’m travelling, even when I have a million other things to wedge into 24 hours, I write for ten minutes.

If for some reason ten minutes became something I could skip — if it lost it’s status as the goal that’s so small I’d rather do it than skip it — I’d shrink it.

Five minutes.

One minute.

One page.

One paragraph.

Hell, one word. Seriously. If that’s what it takes, set a goal of writing one new word on your manuscript everyday.

The secret of the teeny, tiny goal is that it’s not the finish of it that matters. It’s the start. The magic is in the way that little bitty goal gets you from NOT writing to writing.

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“Create something today even if it sucks”

Guest Blog | The following quotes are from the Medium blog post ‘Create something today even if it sucks’ by @emilywarna. Click the title for the full article.

We all have those days. The days of writer’s block; the days of beating ourselves into the ground over not being able to produce. When we think every piece of content we create is terrible. When we think our mind is letting us down.

We often forget that being good takes practice. Consistency requires dedication. Dedication to the craft, and dedication to yourself.

So ask yourself:

‘Who am I creating for?’

Reassess who you’re trying to impress. Remember, you’re writing for yourself just as much as for your audience.

By producing piece after piece, you’re setting yourself up for future victories. You’re identifying your strengths and weaknesses, how you function best, what circumstances you thrive under. You’re identifying your creative hours.

Credit: The Writing Cooperative
Credit: Unsplash.com

 

“What to do if no one reads what you write.” | Shaunta Grimes

Unread.

Ignored.

Forsaken.

That’s something, simply as people, we all fear, no? Specifically, it’s perhaps a writer’s greatest fear? Certainly one of mine. But there is a kind of irony in the event that situation occurs, so said author/writer whisperer Shaunta Grimes some months back . . .

“I know how it feels to screw up your nerve and post something in public for the entire world to see — and then realize that the whole world doesn’t really care.

They aren’t even paying attention.

Before I tell you what to do when no one is reading what you write, I want to share a story with you that I hope will help you understand a hard, rather beautiful truth.

If it’s possible for you to write something that no one reads — then no one is paying attention. And there’s real freedom in that idea.

Once you realize that no one is paying attention, you can let go of the voice screaming in your head that you better not fuck up, because if you do the whole entire universe will laugh at you/hate you/shun you/whatever it is you’re afraid of.”

Follow the link to read more of “What to do if no one reads what you write.” @shauntagrimes https://medium.com/@shauntagrimes/what-to-do-if-no-one-reads-what-you-write-b341ae80bc64

Welcome to Paradise tomato soup

Jennifer Macaire

Easy Island Tomato Soup Recipe from Jennifer Macaire

Evernight Teen authors are cooking! Today’s recipe is one of Jennifer Macaire’s favorites when she lived in the islands. Be sure to check out Welcome to Paradise which is also based on an island paradise. It’s a great winter break read!

Here is a recipe from when I was growing up in the Caribbean. We loved tomato soup, but could never get ripe tomatoes. This recipe uses canned tomatoes instead.

This recipe is fast, easy, and inexpensive, and makes a great lunch for the holidays, when you’re tired of cookng, but want something tasty and hot!

Easy Island Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

1⁄2 cup butter (or four tablespoons olive oil)

1 medium onion, diced

2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans tomatoes (diced or pureed)

Half a bullion cube (chicken or veal is good, or vegetable if you want a vegetarian soup)

2 cups fresh…

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“NaNo Prep: How to Go From Plotless to Polished” | Derek Murphy

November is just around the corner, and as we gear up, we’re sharing advice on how you can best prepare for a month of writing. Today, author and designer Derek Murphy shares his advice on how to turn a messy work-in-progress into a polished draft in November:

NaNoWriMo is a great opportunity to push your boundaries and see how much writing you can get done in thirty days. If it’s your first time shooting for 50K, write whatever is easiest for you. However, if you’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for a few years and have struggled to turn your newly generated manuscript into an actual book that sells, here’s some advice that should help:

Save a Darling—Plot Ahead

First of all, if you started your story with very little plotting, it’s likely you have dozens of powerful scenes but no backbone to hold it all together. And it’s very difficult to go back and operate on your manuscript after it’s finished. “Kill your darlings” is good advice, but painful for a reason. It’s hard to cut the stuff you love—but if it confuses the narrative or doesn’t need to be there, it’s hurting the story.

Rather than spend a month generating content and then months of frustration trying to polish it into something that actually sees the light of day, it’s much easier to plot before your start—at least loosely. For most commercial fiction, I use a simplified hero’s journey with 12 major plot points.

As long as I hit most of those points in roughly the right places, I know my story will stand strong even if the writing falters. You don’t have to chronicle the exact details of every scene, and you shouldn’t worry about writing beautiful prose, but having a rough idea of your pivotal scenes will make it much easier for you to finish a powerful story in record time.

If you get stuck halfway through your NaNoWriMo novel, it’s usually because you’re sinking into the muddy middle—where you didn’t plot enough events to carry the story forward—so you invent a bunch of random and increasingly incredible plot developments to span the gap, then rush towards the epic conclusion. The problem with this is your story will feel rushed and implausible. [more]

Click the link to continue reading “NaNo Prep: How to Go From Plotless to Polished” from the Nanowrimo blog http://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/166851438740/nano-prep-how-to-go-from-plotless-to-polished