I love the end of the year: the holidays, the decorations, the end of year reviews. It’s the perfect culmination of a year well spent. It’s also when I bury myself in holiday classics and stories. Somehow the dark nights and colder temps make reading better. I mean who can argue with reading a book before the fire, a cup of tea in hand and a cat curled up in your lap?
I remember the first time I performed a monologue in drama class and got some of my fellow students to cry. It was a heady thing. Such power. Such exhilaration making someone else feel the way I wanted them to feel.
Getting to those feelings are the goal of every writer. We want our readers to feel the thrill of the chase, the fear of a killer, and the joy of falling in love.
Being a writer requires a strong foundation in many things. It’s more than banging out a few lines and hitting post. Like any profession, there are basics every writer needs to master. Grammar is your foundation, but there’s so much more.
Story doesn’t rely on how to use a semicolon or the definition of a dangling participial phrase. It needs understanding and ideas that come from a broader education and perspective.
‘Tis the season for school assignments asking students what they are thankful for in their life. My son came home with just such an assignment and it made me think about what I was thankful for this year. It wasn’t hard to come up with an answer. It’s been a good year.
Tracking client work will save you time, money and frustration. Here is how I track my client work and clients.
Like most writers, I love the research and writing parts of the job, but don’t care for the administrative tasks that come with the gig—doing the taxes, accounting, legal and tracking everything. It’s easy to let those things slide and I did when I first started out, until I learned better.
It is easier than you think to misplace vital information, lose track of invoices and payments, and forget to track what you send out into the publishing world. The only way to stay sane and solvent is to track everything. It will help your sanity too.
Last week, I shared my reasons for joining the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Challenge to write a 50k book in 30 days. But I have more to say about the benefits of taking on such a large writing challenge.
Anytime you can set aside a chunk of time to write is a good thing, but dedicating an entire month to a huge goal allows you to be heroic about it.
One month. Fifty thousand words. No problem, right? Right. Even with a major holiday involving family, stress, traveling and other distractions, you can do this. It’s November. So it’s time for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month challenge of writing a 50k word book in the month of November.
Time is the number one excuse given for not writing. People love excuses. They never end. I have a job. I have a family. I have a life. Where could they possibly find time to write a book? Where indeed?
Clients often ask me about my process, wanting to know how I am going to spend my time on their project. It’s not an easy answer. I approach every project differently depending on what I’m writing. A script is different than a speech, which is different from an article or blog. There is no one answer. But there are basic steps in common.
There are basic details I need before I start any project. They determine how I begin and how I set up the piece. It also sets up my process, which I will discuss next week.
These are the top seven things I need before the first word is written:
Better yet, stop banning books altogether. The truth is the act of banning books is on the rise. According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), the organization that compiles data on challenged and banned books and generates the Top Ten Challenged Books List, there was a 17% increase in book censorship complaints last year. In a typical year, 10% of books are banned and pulled from the shelves and it’s time for it to stop.