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Creative Writing Help & Inspiration. 7 Big Reasons You Need Your Own Book. The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Writing is a muscle.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do.

Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about. Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. The blank white page. Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” Finding a really good muse these days isn’t easy, so plan on going through quite a few before landing on a winner.

There are two things more difficult than writing. It’s no secret that great writers are great readers, and that if you can’t read, your writing will often suffer. Creating Good Paragraphs. How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel-Writing Life. By the end of this post you will have a nagging urge to use an excel spreadsheet.

How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel-Writing Life

Don’t make that face—I know you’re a writer and not a data analyst. Or if you are a data analyst—I get that you’re on this blog to get away from your day job. But guess what? At the suggestion of Randy Ingermason—the creator of the Snowflake Method—I listed all of the scenes in my novel in a nice little Google spreadsheet. It changed my novel-writing life, and doing the same will change yours too. The 10 Types of Writers' Block (and How to Overcome Them)

7 Big Reasons You Need Your Own Book. Writing Guide: Critical Reading. Creative Writing Help & Inspiration. The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Almost all readers keep their list of books. The Book Designer — Practical Advice to Help Self-Publishers Build Better Books. 60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers. June 20th, 2010.

60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers

6 Of The Best Pieces of Advice From Successful Writers. 2.4K Flares Filament.io 2.4K Flares × I’ve been reading some advice from successful writers lately and exploring what their routines are like to see what I can learn about Here are six of the most common pieces of advice I came across that have helped me a lot improving my writing here at Buffer.

6 Of The Best Pieces of Advice From Successful Writers

It also features actionable tips for you on how to implement them in your own writing. 1. 5 Successful Authors On How They Overcame Creative Blocks To Write Their First Book. The best books seem to have an effortlessness to their writing, as though each word has been set down just where it needs to be.

5 Successful Authors On How They Overcame Creative Blocks To Write Their First Book

Nowhere on the page is the agonizing, writing, rewriting, not writing of getting it done visible. "Writing a long novel is like survival training," Haruki Murakami has said. "Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. " And rarely does it come out right the first time around. Ernest Hemingway rewrote the last page of Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied with it. Interactive Creative Writing Games and Gizmos. A 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises.

It’s the perfect time to restart your engine and get back into writing.

A 12-Day Plan of Simple Writing Exercises

Here, I offer up a 12-day plan of simple writing exercises to help you keep your creative juices flowing without eating up too much of your time. Follow this plan and in less than half a month, you’ll not only be impressed with what you’ve accomplished, but you may also have something worth publishing. 8 Signs That You Were Meant to Be a Writer. Are you meant to be a writer?

8 Signs That You Were Meant to Be a Writer

Do you ever wonder if you were truly meant to be a writer? Deep down you sense that it might just be so. But then doubt creeps in, and you just aren’t sure. You look at your writing. Writing. Writing Prompts. The Write Prompts. 25 Helpful Websites for Creative Writers. Jun 08, 2011 Need help getting your creative juices flowing?

25 Helpful Websites for Creative Writers

These websites for creative writers offer grammar tips, writing prompts, peer critiques and advice on getting published. New poem every day. Writing. 36 Writing Essays by Chuck Palahniuk. 1: Establishing Your Authority Chuck teaches two principal methods for building a narrative voice your readers will believe in.

36 Writing Essays by Chuck Palahniuk

Discover the Heart Method and the Head Method and how to employ each to greatest effect. 2: Developing a Theme At the core of Minimalism is focusing any piece of writing to support one or two major themes. Learn harvesting, listing, and other methods, after a fun excursion into the spooky side of Chuck's childhood. 102 Resources for Fiction Writing « Here to Create.

UPDATE 1/10: Dead links removed, new links added, as well as Revision and Tools and Software sections.

102 Resources for Fiction Writing « Here to Create

Are you still stuck for ideas for National Novel Writing Month? Or are you working on a novel at a more leisurely pace? Here are 102 resources on Character, Point of View, Dialogue, Plot, Conflict, Structure, Outlining, Setting, and World Building, plus some links to generate Ideas and Inspiration. Also, I recommend some resources for Revision and some online Tools and Software. Too many links? Five Open Source Apps For Writers and Authors. By Lisa Hoover - Jul. 17, 2009Comments (9) Even if you have the perfect idea for the next Great American Novel, getting it down on paper is never easy. While you could always use standard word processors like OpenOffice Write or AbiWord, they don't have the bells and whistles that make writing books, manuals, and theses as easy as possible. Fortunately, there are a few open source applications that help budding authors get stories out of their heads and into the hands of readers.

Kabikaboo - This recursive writing assistant is perfect for managing large documents, technical manuals, and long novels. It arranges data in tree-form so parent modules, their children, and their grandchildren can be easily moved around and rearranged. 8 Signs That You Were Meant to Be a Writer. Write Everyday. Creative Writing Courses and Ideas: An Online Resource for Writers. 30+ Tools For The Amateur Writer. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is almost upon us. On November 1st, brave souls everywhere will embark on a month long endeavor to write a story of at least 50,000 words. We've gathered 30+ tools to help those folks who want to try their hand at it. Collaborative Writing Coventi.com - A site offering several different packages, with the cheapest being free for the personal user.

Google Docs - Part of the Google suite of products, which enables you to invite others to work with you on a document. Glypho.com - Put down the basic idea of your story, get a plot and character suggestions. Write. Blogging info. Fantasy writing tips, how to write a fantasy novel, creative wri. Sign up to my mailing list, and choose a FREE EBOOK as a gift. Join here. How to Write Magnetic Headlines.

Guide to Publishing. Download the PDF version of this guide Build Your Book on Our Foundation of Excellence You don't have to search long to find a self-publisher. But when you expect more from your supported self-publishing partner, one option becomes clear. iUniverse was founded on traditional publishing roots with the belief that the best in book publishing should be available to all authors. The Writers Block. Writing resources for the students at PVCC. Writing Exercises Meredith Sue Willis Author and Teacher. More Free Writing Exercises below and here : Exercises 1- 20 Exercises 21- 40 Exercises 41 - 60 Exercises 61-80 Exercises 81-100 Exercises 101 - 120 Exercises 121 - 140 Exercises 141 - 160 Exercises 161 - 180 Exercises 181 - 200 Exercises 201 - 240 Exercises 241 - 260 Point-of-View Characters Whose Gender Is Not Yours We had a discussion in my Advanced Novel Writing Class at NYU about the difficulty of capturing a character who is of a different gender from yourself.

Writing about people unlike yourself– by race, ethnic group, age, and certainly gender or sexual preference– is always a big challenge, but also of great interest to a creative writer. One class member spoke of an excellent contemporary novel written by a woman and narrated by a man. The class member said he admired the book but that it was only about 98% believable as a male narrator. That is, of course, pretty darn good. World Building. How to write fiction - hemingway. Image by Lloyd Arnold via Wikimedia Commons Before he was a big game hunter, before he was a deep-sea fisherman, Ernest Hemingway was a craftsman who would rise very early in the morning and write. His best stories are masterpieces of the modern era, and his prose style is one of the most influential of the 20th century. How to write better. 7 habits of serious writers.

Image credit: aless&ro With thanks to Michael Pollock for the article suggestion and title. I’ve been writing, on and off, since my early teens – but it’s only in the last three years that I’ve really taken my writing seriously. It’s made a dramatic difference. I write far, far more. I write better. In the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside all sorts of great writers, during my MA in Creative Writing, and in my freelancing. Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story. By Maria Popova The year of reading more and writing better is well underway with writing advice the likes of David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers.

Now comes Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a Sadist.

22 rules of storytelling by pixar. Writing. Writing Stuff. Soul Journaling with Sarah Whitmire. About Writing. The Therapeutic Writing Institute. 102 Resources for Fiction Writing « Here to Create. Journal Writing Ideas. I Write Like.