Have you ever felt a rush of writing anxiety when trying to finish your story?
Whether you view this as resistance or low self-esteem, writing anxiety can prevent you from finishing that beautiful, unique story that only you can tell. Here are four common problems that feed writing anxiety and tips on how to overcome them.
Writing is hard, and publishing adds another layer of challenge into the mix. You might think that after launching your first book, any subsequent books would be easier. I thought so once too. But from writing to launch, each book presents new challenges. Read on to see what I’m learning as I launch my second book in a series.
You have created a character. You’ve named them and given them a colorful past, as well as lots of fun personality traits. Your character steps into your story . . . and suddenly you find that they’ve fallen flat. How can you fix them?
They’re boring. Those personality traits you meticulously picked out for them just aren’t showing up. Your character goes through the motions of the story and you wonder why this interesting, unique character you’ve worked so hard on is missing that luster you imagined.
Not to worry: there’s a simple, two-step fix to give your characters voice and personality.
Finishing a first draft is a huge deal. If you just accomplished this, be proud of yourself! At the same time, you might be wondering how to revise a novel after that first draft is done. There’s a lot of advice out there. Which do you listen to?
The revision process doesn’t have to be complicated. However, you might feel—especially if this is your first completed draft ever—intimidated to edit your book. There’s a lot of words and scenes to review. Where do you begin?
In this article, I’d like to share how I took a daunting editing process and created a simplified, concise, and clear strategy to revising your first draft. I do this with what I call a Revision List—a table with five columns that can help you simplify big ideas.
If you’re like me, you won’t ever want to edit a first draft without it!
If you’ve finished writing a first draft, you’ve accomplished something huge. You should be proud of yourself! But once the celebration dies down, you might experience a moment of silence as you look at your finished manuscript. You wonder: What comes next?
Maybe you’re not sure what you should do next, or maybe you have an idea of all the things that could follow and feel disorganized and paralyzed by all the possibilities.
The fact is, a lot of budding writers don’t think beyond the “finishing the book” part of writing.
So what is next? This article teaches you what to do after writing a book.
