In July 2011, I accomplished what was at the time the third best thing I’d ever done in my life (after marrying my wife and writing my first book): I started a blog to share what I was learning about the writing craft.
It was called The Write Practice. My goal was to create a place where people could become better writers, finish their books, get published, and accomplish their writing goals.
Since then, over twenty-nine million people have visited The Write Practice. It has grown from just me working out of a coffee shop to a team of over twenty employees, contractors, and contributors.
Together we’ve helped over 7,000 people write books, get published, and accomplish their writing goals.
Why do we write? Non-fiction and fiction writing has been an instrumental way for people to connect to one another in the real world.
Stories are about change, and by reading and watching them we, ourselves, can change for the better.
But do people write for different reasons, and are some of those reasons more meaningful than others?
Are you sitting at your computer right now, possibly plunging through your first draft (or much later draft), and debating whether or not a writing career is the one for you?
Do you wonder if the written word is how you’ll make your mark on the world—and if it is, is a writing career what you want in life?
Where do you find story ideas? Here are seven inspirational ideas to fuel your creativity. What kinds of stories will these writing prompts lead you to tell?
Writers groups can be an incredibly rich experience. In fact, you can learn more about the craft of writing from a good writers group or creative writing club than you can learn from a thousand blog posts on writing.
However, at the same time, a bad writers group can be a waste of time, and if particularly dysfunctional, can even be incredibly damaging to your confidence and your writing.
If you’re part of a writers group, how do you take it to the next level? And if you’re looking for a writers group, how do you make sure you choose the right one?
If you’re reading this, then you want to be a better writer. However, becoming a better writer is elusive, isn’t it? It’s more art than science. There are hundreds of writing rules, thousands of words to know, and millions of possible ways you could write even a simple message.
How do you become a better writer when writing itself is so complicated?
Are you looking for a writing challenge that really tests your writing skills? Something that pushes your writing process beyond national novel writing month (although trying out NaNoWriMo is a good challenge to face)?
As a writer, you’ve probably heard this question: “What’s your genre?” Or maybe you’ve been asked, “What is your book about?”
As writers, we tend to find a creative “happy place” and stay inside three boxes: medium, form, and genre. This allows us to find a consistent voice and target our work towards ideal readers.
But staying inside these boxes without any deviation can have major drawbacks that threaten the quality of your writing, and the joy of writing itself.
In order to stay sharp, writers need challenges to keep their creative juices alive and well.
And whether or not these challenges are daily writing challenges or something you find on social media without even looking for them, it’s important that, as a writing habit, we tackle them head on every once in a while.
We only become better writers when we step out of our comfort zones.
These three writing challenges will test and strengthen your writing skills.
