When you're ready to take writing seriously, you create Your Writer's Business Plan: a detailed action-plan to set your goals, earnings, investments, intentions, and mission in one organized place! In 6 important sections, we're going to figure out what your Writer's Business Plan looks like. We're going to dive into your mission, vision, and goals, your brand personality, style, and how you portray yourself, your products (aka the stories) and the production process to get them done, the earnings and investments you'll make for your writing, and your ongoing education and personal growth strategies to be an even better writer than before. Let's take writing seriously, and create your Writer's Business Plan! +I made you a workbook to get started!
Read moreHow Create Your BEST Reading Life in 3 Steps
A well-read writer is a well-fed writer. We all know that by this point. If you want to write Real+Good Writing, you've got to read Real+Good Books. But how do you choose what to read next? How do you make a plan for your reading so that your writing can flourish? And how the heck do you read more? Let's talk about create your BEST reading life, so you can continue your best writing life.
Read more3 Mistakes You Make When Writing Setting + How to Fix Them
Setting does NOT simply equate to drawing maps and designing house floor-plans and planting trees all around your world. It isn't just about the weather or the town where the story takes place. It isn't just world-building from scratch. Setting certainly can be these things, but it also goes a lot deeper than that. Setting grounds you in place and time, but it also sets the mood and tone, provides a lens to understand the world through, and works in conversation with your other elements (characters, plot, and theme). Setting does A LOT more work (even if it is subtle, background work) than we often give it credit for. So, how do you get your setting to do its work – productive, necessary, hard work – without going overboard? We're going to look at the 3 mistakes writers often make when designing their setting or world-building and how to fix it.
Read moreHow to Become a Happy + Productive Writer (1 Simple Formula)
I used to be a Procrastiwriter; you know, a writer who wants to write, but has a lot of trouble actually getting words onto the page. I've had some real low writing slumps throughout my life. But then I got sick of them. I wanted to become a happy AND productive writer, and so I set out on a quest to discover just how to do it. And I emerged successful. Now, I've distilled my super secret, life-transforming process into a simple formula so you can become a happy + productive writer too.
Read moreWhy Do You Write? Discovering the BFF of Your Writing Motivation + Perseverance
If you're ready to take writing seriously, you have to know what you're doing; and, more importantly, you have to know why you're doing it. Your why will be there to give you energy to start, it will comfort you and keep you going when you slog through the middle, and it will pull you up and dust you off when you crash. Your why is basically your BFF as a writer. Have you ever stopped to consider why you write? There's a history of writer's exploring their reasons and motifs. Learn all about it and discover your own why in this post! (+ There's a FREE pretty printable for you!)
Read moreHow to Approach Your Novel: Thinking about YOUR Process for Big Things
With so many resources out there telling you how to write your novel and how to write at all, it's easy to feel like you HAVE to do things a certain way. But the only person who knows what's best for you is you. So what SHOULD you do? Step #1: Figure out what you know about how you approach big things. I tried considering what I do in two separate case-studies of "big things" I've tackled in the past, and it illuminated a process that I didn't know I had. Here's what I learned, how you can figure out your own process, and apply it to your current work-in-progress.
Read moreThe Frankenstein Technique: How to Use Juxtaposition + Causality to Discover Deep Themes
When your story is falling flat and you're wondering if you should abandon it, DON'T! Learn how to use The Frankenstein Technique (juxtaposition, causality, and subtext) to bring deeper themes to your story and reinvigorate it with new life.
Read moreHow Write About Big Themes Without Being Too Sentimental or Cliche
We write “about” the world. We write to document the human experience: the beauty, the chaos, the pain, the sentiment. We want to write something real. But how do we evoke it without falling into cliche? Poet Joy Katz shows us how to defeat that pesky cloud of "aboutness" when it comes to big themes once and for all. Here’s how she got me to think about common, but big themes in a whole new way.
Read more12 Weird Places to Find Story Ideas While in Your PJ's
I'm sure you've Googled "story prompts" or have a writing prompt book on your desk. But have you ever considered using Facebook, Twitter, or even your email for story ideas? Learn how to get an endless supply of prompts that speak to you.
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