Fall brings cozy sweaters and yummy coffee, the perfect combination to cuddle up with words. It also brings NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where writers from all around the world compete with themselves to write 50,000 new words on their novel in 30 short days. It's a writing marathon that requires commitment, energy, and dedication to your story. To successfully prepare for NaNoWriMo, the writing community has also created Preptober. A portmanteau of prepare and October, this month-long retreat gives you the time to plan your story, create your characters, write an outline, and manage your obligations outside of writing so you can focus and succeed during your writing marathon. Learn all about Preptober and get the resources you need to successfully plan and prep your novel!
Read moreSay hello to The WriteLife Planner!
To live your best writing life, you need to set goals to accomplish your big dreams and tackle them one step at a time. You have to be intentional with your approach, making the time and space for life and the time and space for writing. You have to take consistent baby-steps to actually accomplish your writing goals, experiment with your writing process to perfect your best writing routine, show writing the love and attention it deserves to thrive, and balance writing with your life, so you can be both the human and the writer you hope to be. And I created an AWESOME tool to help you do it. Say hello to The WriteLife Planner – your 3-month guide to conquering one major writing project, strengthening your writing practice, and loving your writing life while you do it.
Read moreEverything You'd Ever Need to Write a Novel: The ULTIMATE Novel Packing List
Perhaps you're ready to attack Camp NaNoWriMo next month or classic NaNoWriMo in November. Perhaps you're just embarking on your own personal writing quest on your own schedule. The truth is, you want to write a novel, and that's awesome! You're about to do an amazing thing. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be a challenge. But it's going to be well worth it. Before you get started with your novel, you have to be prepared. There's a lot of time, effort, and energy that go into writing a novel, so you want to make sure you're well-equipped for whatever's going to happen. This is the ultimate packing list of everything you'll need to write your novel.
Read moreHow to Write a Character-Driven Plot in 4 Steps
Literary fiction writers tend to avoid plot. We’re trained to be plot snobs, focused only on character development and description and point-of-view amongst other things. But your story can’t be plotless. Plot is tension, plot is drama, plot IS story. So we must learn to fuse plot and character seamlessly. Learn how in 4 steps to get started with your story.
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