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.
Check out the latest articles below or find ones that match your interest in the sidebar.
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Sometimes getting your writing into readers’ hands can seem like a long, arduous process. You might feel lost. You might feel like the “gatekeepers” in the publishing industry are out to get you, hate your work, or are just plain mean.
In this interview, we’re talking with Iseult Murphy about her writing journey, her decision to self-publish, and the power of connecting with other writers.
When you started your novel, how long did you think it would take to finish? Have those initial estimated writing deadlines come and gone? More importantly, did you finish your novel in that time frame?
If the answer is no, don’t fret. You’re not alone. Like me, you might fear you’ll never complete your story in a timely manner.
Maybe one day you lack inspiration. The next you don’t know where your story needs to go. Perhaps you procrastinate or feel low energy.
You know, the struggles all writers go through.
I suffered those afflictions and more during the 100 Day Book program at The Write Practice. And for a time, I thought I wouldn’t finish my novel by the deadline.
Let’s skip to the ending: I completed the second draft of my book on time.
Barely.
But I learned four valuable lessons in the struggle. Lessons that will help you in meeting deadlines and enduring the writing process.
I’d like to share them with you now, so you can write your completed novel far faster than you believe possible.
I bet you have a great idea for a story right now. In fact, I bet you have several. But can that story idea withstand the length of a novel? If not, have you tried turning your story idea into a premise of a book?
It’s goal-setting season again! Have you set your writing goals for 2021 yet?
Love them or hate them, the idea of setting goals permeates the entire month of January. And most of those goals are “positive.” From physical appearance to self-care to organizing your pantry, it’s all about improving one’s life.
And most of those goals end up in the dumpster before the month’s end.
I have a new approach for you: Set a goal for getting (and overcoming) one hundred literary rejection letters in 2021.
Read on for my very sound reasoning on the subject.
Have you ever seen the New Years Resolution episode from Friends? You know the one where Ross wears leather pants, Joey tries to learn how to play guitar, and Rachel tries to gossip less?
If you’re a Friends fan, I’d be shocked if you didn’t know the episode I’m talking about. Rolling Stone even suggested this episode really should be called “‘The One With Ross’ Leather Pants’ because no one else’s 1999 New Year’s resolution produces results as memorable — or disastrous.”
But even though Ross’s leather pants fiasco is what makes the episode, it’s not the only resolution that wins some laughs. Today, let’s focus on brainstorming some New Year writing prompts to kickstart your writing year with some humor.
“Strong” is a word we often hear when describing good characters. But how do you create a strong character for your story? What makes the difference between a character your readers root for and one they forget?
Strong can mean many things. It might mean they’re intelligent like Hermione, resilient like Katniss, have exceptional physical strength like Hercules, or are cunning like Sherlock Holmes. And while all of these characters have different strengths, they all successfully encourage readers to get behind them and their pursuit of their endeavors.
Creating characters that readers view as strong is not an easy task. Here is one quick writing tip to help you write them.
Writing from one person’s perspective is hard enough. Writing from multiple perspectives can seem downright impossible. But it can be done.
I wrote my last novel from three different perspectives. It was difficult. Sometimes it was stagnating creatively. But sometimes it was fun and kept me engaged in my own book when I wanted to give up.
So if you’re ready for the challenge, here’s how to write a book from multiple perspectives.
You’ve worked long and hard on that book, and it’s finally finished! Now what?
It’s time to identify your book genre (if you haven’t already) so you can better place and market your story.
Understanding genre is one of the most important details you need to market and identify your book. Here are some key ideas needed to figure it out.
Do you find that the beautiful story in your head doesn’t always come out the way you want? Are your unique characters dragged down by a list of stilted writing descriptions? Let’s breathe some life into your descriptions.
You’re writing a paper for school and suddenly you stop in the middle of the sentence. You have to write a book title but you don’t how to format it? How do you format a book title in MLA? Good news: you’re in the write place (sorry, I had to).
In this post, we’ll talk about MLA style and formatting, whether it’s appropriate for your project, and most importantly, how to write a book title in MLA.
