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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Several times a month, writers ask me, “How can I balance blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, Goodreading, and all the other stuff I’m supposed to do to build my platform, while also focusing on my writing? I have a full time job, a family, and a cat. I just don’t have time for all that other stuff.”
Writers today are overwhelmed, frustrated, and let’s be honest, a little pissed off. Why do we have to build a platform anyway? Can’t we just focus on writing?
![The Creativity of Children [writing prompt]](https://thewritepractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/creativity-children.jpg)
Spend fifteen minutes free writing about the creativity of children.
When you’ve finished, post it in the comments and comment on a few other practitioners’ pieces.
Many writers say they struggle most with appealing to one’s sense of smell, yet studies say our strongest memories are linked to specific scents.
The most beloved and engaging books are descriptive-rich, engaging all our senses as we move through the story. As writers, we usually have our favorite sense, finding it easy to paint compelling visuals while potentially ignoring, for example, the kinesthetics among us.
To create a full, engaging experience for our readers, however, we must write to delight all five of the senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Neglect one or several senses and a story becomes flat, one-dimensional and sadly cast aside.
If you’d like to better write to all five senses, here are my three tips:
What is experimental fiction? And how can you incorporate lessons from the genre into your own writing?
Choosing among the multiple attempts to define it and trying to keep it short and simple, let’s just say that experimental fiction is about breaking the rules, skipping conventions, literary innovation, and uniqueness.
Innovation comes only by trying out new things – experimenting – since progress in any field is a result of reaching out to what was once considered impossible. In this sense, experimental fiction is truly revolutionary.
Participating in a writer’s group can make a big difference, helping you improve your skills and giving the support of a community. But despite the benefits, it can be hard to get a group to stick it out for the long haul. People run out of work to submit, or something in the group dynamics doesn’t mesh, or one by one your members start slipping away like you’re in an Agatha Christie novel.
But it doesn’t have to get that way.
Creating a novel series—such as the Harry Potter, Dune, The Wheel of Time, or even Border Trilogy series—is one of the best ways to build continuous momentum with your book marketing efforts. It’s also a unique experience and can open up life opportunities you may never have had otherwise.
However, creating a novel series can also take years if not decades of effort. How do you even get started?
The following are my top five tips for creating a must-read fiction series.
Time is relative, especially in a writer’s world. It’s easy for any one of us to get sucked into some shiny rabbit hole. We lose time like it’s cool.
We spend time being ‘busy’. Busy marketing on social media. Busy networking with fellow writers. Busy submitting manuscripts to publishers.
You know what we forget? We’re writers. We need to write!
When you get up and get dressed for the day, why do you pick out the clothes that you do? Are you looking for comfortable clothes to fully enjoy your lazy Saturday? Are you attempting to look professional in your work uniform? Maybe you never even change out of your pajamas.
Showing what your characters are wearing can be a great way to show your readers what they might be up to that day without having to actually narrate anything.
Here are five examples….
Yesterday, I quit the story I was working on. I tried to start something new but then hated the new idea and quit it, too.
I go through these periods every once in a while when I hate all my writing ideas. Even writing this post was hard. Every sentence I wrote, I hated. Has this ever happened to you? How do you handle it?
What do you do when you hate your writing?
I have a couple of guy friends who live together who are Star Wars fans. Calling them fans is actually an understatement.
The Star Wars canon follows the theme of last week with a truckload of characters. But what happens when you take the complete opposite approach, and pare down your cast of characters to one person?
