New Daily Writing Guides from The Write Practice

10 Steps to Dealing With Mean-Spirited Critics, Comment Trolls, and Other Jerks

by Joe Bunting | 46 Comments

1. Write.

2. Keep writing.

3. Whenever you think about it, write.

5. If you’re angry, write anyway.

6. If you’re feeling insecure, write anyway.

7. If you’re depressed and think no one cares about you or your writing, write anyway.

4. Don’t work for hours on the perfect zinger to respond with. Work on your writing.

8. If they convince you that you’re not a real writer, write anyway.

9. If you need to delete their comment, do it. Then go and write.

10. It doesn’t matter what they said or why they said it or who they are. It only matters that you write. So get to work.

When It’s Okay to Use Clichés

by Joe Bunting | 35 Comments

It’s New Year’s Eve. I was thinking about the end of the movie When Harry Met Sally. You know the scene (well, unless you haven’t seen it, in which case, spoiler alert!)—Harry is racing to meet Sally and tell her how he feels as the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year’s Eve.

The countdown to the new year, the airport chase scene, the race to the altar. All of these so-called clichés don’t have to be avoided entirely. (After all, the urgency in the examples I listed helps to heighten the drama.) You just have to know how to use them in a fresh way. Here’s how:

How to Write a Story Like Les Miserables

by Joe Bunting | 40 Comments

My family and I went to see Les Misérables the day after Christmas. My dad said, “It was probably the best film I’ve ever seen,” and while I may not go that far, it certainly had me (and three-quarters of the theater) dripping with tears more than once.

I want to write a story like Les Misérables. Not a musical, but a story so powerful, so captivating, that it could move people in the same way.

If you’d like to write a story as powerful as Les Misérables, I’ve put together this list of five observations about what made the story so powerful, and how writers can emulate it.

Fact, Fiction or Autofiction?

by Joe Bunting | 52 Comments

Doesn’t the best writing come from the heart; something experienced in real life? The writing that speaks directly to the reader and gets them involved in the event and the circumstances taking place? After all, the most spread advice of ‘Write what you know’ has a firm standing for a good reason. If this is so, what happens with all those writers who feel they don’t have a significant real life story to tell, assured their lives are boring and not worthy enough to show?

Three Things Writers Can Learn from the Beat Generation

by Joe Bunting | 33 Comments

I’ve been in San Francisco with my family this weekend. Needless to say we’re having a great time.

While San Francisco is a relatively young city, it has a storied history regarding the arts. Notably for writers, it was the home of the literary movement known as the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

The Beats included writers like poets William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg and novelists Jack Keruoac and Neal Cassady. Their motto was liberty of expression and their style has influenced writers for the last 60 years.

The Mayans Were Right [writing prompt]

by Joe Bunting | 39 Comments

PRACTICE

The Mayans were right. The world ended today.

Write about the end of the world for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, be sure to comment on a few practices by other writers.

Six Effective Ways to Inspire Yourself

by Joe Bunting | 26 Comments

Don’t you hate the feeling that you get when you stare at your blank computer screen or your fresh piece of paper, your hands above the keyboard, your pencil hovering above the paper, and you don’t know what to write? I sure do. But instead of sitting and staring, frozen with not a single idea of what to write, I get up, walk away, and get inspired.

How Writing Helps Us Heal

by Melissa Tydell | 65 Comments

Conflict is a necessary ingredient for creating an intriguing story. And conflict is an inevitable part of life. Disappointment, sadness, sickness, and death plague us at different points in time and in different ways.

We all have methods of coping with what we don’t understand, of dealing with painful situations in our lives. One therapeutic technique that helps us heal in times of confusion, broken hearts, and deepest loss is simple but so very powerful—writing.

What You Haven't Written Yet

by Joe Bunting | 36 Comments

What if you only had only one more day to write? What would you write?

This is the dilemma faced by Harry of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The Snows of Kilamanjaro.” We find Harry on his deathbed, plagued by the depression that his life will soon end. Yet, the thought that torments Harry most is that he will never be able to write all of the stories he has put off writing over the years.

Does Your Story Really Matter?

by Joe Bunting | 62 Comments

Let’s take a look at the numbers:

– There are currently over 181 million blogs.
– Three million books were published in 2011. That’s one book for every 100 or so people in the US.
– The chances of getting your book published traditionally are somewhere between 5% and .1% (1 in 20 to 1 in a thousand).
– If you give up on a traditional publisher and decide to self-publish, the average self-published book sells somewhere between 20 and 100 copies.

For the aspiring writer, those are not great numbers to hear, and in the midst of that, you might wonder, “Does my story really matter?”

Here to learn? You’re in the WRITE place!