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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You’ve heard over and over again that the most important thing to do as a writer is to write. Write when you don’t want to. Write when you do want to. When you don’t know what to write, write anything.
But there are two sides to the writing coin. There is writing, and there is editing. In this post, I’m going to share a proofreading technique I learned recently that is changing my writing life.
They say there’s two types of novel writers: pansters and plotters.
Pansters catch the spark of an idea and just get down to the writing. Plotters, on the other hand, create an outline of the novel before stringing sentences together.
Today, we’re officially opening the The Write Practice Writing Contest, our first official writing contest in over two years.
But just in case you think you know what a writing contest involves, let me tell you that this is not your average writing contest.
No doubt you’ve heard the old writing advice, “Show, don’t tell.” But how do you do it, and how do you balance the showing versus the telling?
Today I’m going to share with you a simple strategy for deciding what you should show in your writing and how to approach it.
I recently dreamed that The Write Practice owner, Joe Bunting, Monica Clark (TWP regular contributor), and I were trapped in a room together overnight. We had to write 100 different blog posts until dawn…or, we died.
I know it sounds silly, but you know how dreams are. It was writing until the death, people! I awoke in a sweat.
Here’s the kicker: Joe wore a mustard-colored matador costume the entire time, complete with the bedazzled knickers and little black hat. I paused occasionally from our brainstorming to persuade him to change into regular clothes, but he refused because it made him more creative.
The next day, I realized….
Your writing brain has turned into a lump of frozen hamburger meat. The only way to thaw out your creativity is to write, and if you don't know what to write, here is a list of writing prompts. A gentle nudge towards getting words on the page. Writing prompts are...
This summer, I’ve been binge-watching my way through the television show Dexter. For those of you unfamiliar (don’t worry, no spoilers here): Dexter is a serial killer. He is also the protagonist of the show.
As writers and storytellers our heads are often filled with a number of plotlines, characters, and conversations. But there are still times when we struggle to think of story ideas that get us excited; ideas that sees us racing to grab a pen and paper and jot it down before it slips away.
In these moments it feels like you’ll never have a good story idea ever again, right?
I’ll gladly tell you you’re wrong. You just have to look around to see that you’re surrounded by inspiration everywhere you go.
This may be one of the most important questions you ever answer in the course of your writing career. Why? Because there will be days when no one around you—including yourself—believes you can really do this.
On those days, this answer will be crucial.
Read on.
Do you remember The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein?
I picked it up for the first time in decades (literally) while visiting my friend’s baby at her house. She asked me what I thought the book meant. I told her. She was surprised by my answer and then told me that every other person she asks interprets it differently.
I was fascinated.
