Jumpstart Your Creativity With Collaborative Writing
Sometimes writing with someone else is what you need to get back on track with your own writing. When I was in college studying creative writing, I was required to take classes outside of my chosen tract — fiction. At the time…
Writing Emotional Scenes
Emotions are hard to experience, much less convey in your writing. One of the hardest things we face as writers is conveying emotion. Using words to make someone feel — better yet, to make a reader understand your characters — is tricky. I’ve mentioned…
The Art of the Synopsis
Planning that even a pantser can use. So you’re writing a book. Or planning to write a book. Or you have an idea for a book to write one day, that for now sits in the back of your mind,…
Writing Good Villians
It might seem like an oxymoron, but even villains need to be good characters. So you’re writing a story. It might be a novel or it might be a short story. It could be fantasy or thriller. Maybe a mystery…
How to Get Your Writing in Every Day
Writing can sometimes seem daunting, but if you keep at it every day you will succeed Talk to any established writer and they’ll likely all tell you versions of the same thing —to write successfully, you have to write. I’ve…
Fighting Distraction While Writing
Sometimes, I find that distraction can be a good thing. At this moment in my life, I am slogging through the last semester of my undergraduate degree and impatiently waiting to hear back about whether or not I have gotten…
Vulnerability and Armor and Words in Creative Nonfiction
It takes a lot to be vulnerable. To lay your thoughts and feelings out in the open and truly let others see your inner workings is momentous. Sometimes vulnerability is seen as something negative and something to hide. We are…
Writing While Overwhelmed
How about this title? This is how I feel right now. I am slightly (okay, maybe very) overwhelmed with life at the moment. I like writing. I love writing, but with the start of the semester I have been falling…
Diving Into the Writing Process
I have been immersed in the writing process for the last few weeks. Not only have I been focusing on the process to take for writing my book, but also on the process for writing effective essays in my summer…
Writing Consistently is Key
Last week was the first week that I failed to write a post. I went from a published piece on Thursday to this new piece on Sunday, with nothing in between. Although I certainly have not been on this little…