At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
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NaNoWriMo is upon us again! I’m sure some of you are jumping out of your desk chair with excitement, but others are still nervous. It is intimidating, after all. 50,000 words in one month? Insanity.
Luckily, it’s not as hard as it looks. And with these five tips, it’ll look even easier.
We know what it feels like to be human and write from the perspective of a human. But, what does it feel like to be a shoe or a pencil or a dictionary? And, why should we even try to write from the perspective of a shoe? What does a shoe think? Do they prefer walking...
“I am a writer.”
In America, where so often our job defines who we are, these four little words can throw a wrench into the gears of polite conversation.
It’s almost time for that annual, month-long festival for writers, NaNoWriMo. Are you going to subject yourself to the excitement and stress of writing a book at least 50,000 words long in a single month?
If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, you may feel a bit nervous about whether you’re going to be able to finish. Honestly, you should be nervous.
Here’s the truth: almost ninety percent of people who start NaNoWriMo don’t finish.
How do you make sure that you don’t fail?
The first time I wrote a short story (that others would read), I spent a lot of time describing the character’s clothes. This choice received a lot of criticism. It made my character seem shallow. It made the woman seem cliché.
My critics were probably right that I overdid it at the time, but I stand by my response, which was this…
It might help you put the glut of new creative writing tools flooding the market into perspective by examining the history out of which these creative technologies have emerged.
Like all technology, new tools are built on the foundation of the technology that came it. Let’s take a quick journey through the history of creative writing tools so that we can evaluate modern creative writing in a historical context.
There is one question every writer has to answer. Yes, only one. It doesn’t matter if you are writing memoir, fiction, non-fiction, or a screenplay, you have to answer this question.
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” —Somerset Maugham
The Muse has gotten a bad rap for being temperamental and ruling Her artists by cruel whims. But I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be like that.
You’ve probably heard this before and know it deep in your gut. It’s not earth shattering news, but people seem to be struggling with amnesia about it lately, so I’m going to repeat myself.
If you want to improve as a writer, if you want to grow in your craft, there’s only one way to do so. You must…
We have an important topic to discuss today: the dangers of perfectionism in writing.
I know that being a perfectionist has its perks. We apply “perfectionist” to folks who are detail-oriented, reliable, and efficient. Unfortunately, being a perfectionist does precisely the opposite in writing: it obfuscates details, lets your deadlines whoosh by, and creates a deeply inefficient and unsatisfying writing habit.
I struggle with perfectionism in my writing, but I’ve learned to beat it back with a few large sticks—and it’s my pleasure to teach you my tools of the trade.
