Writing Tips – Page 48 – Marie Alice Writes & Reads

Writing a novel: Setting Realistic Writing Goals for 2020

Setting realistic writing goals helped me take a more professional approach toward creative writing.
It also helped me create a great writing routine, which has become an essential part of everyday day life.

Isn’t it the worst?

Having grown-ups look at us kids and say, in a sometimes quivering voice, « you’re growing up so fast » or « time flies » when we, poor kids, were spending endless hours at school AND were forced to attend stupid grown-ups parties during the week-ends…

Yeah, well… Time does fly by in a blink of an eye, as time go by and the kids we were once are now the ones with kids, families and a never-ending list of grown-ups stuff to do.

If I don’t set aside time to write, I simply don’t write. Or if I do, it never lasts very long.
I shouldn’t be writing a novel, I should be looking for clients, working on my business blog, etc…
Writing a novel, what a frivolous waste of time, I used to think, even though it was my most precious, most beloved dream to live by my pen and write novels to earn a living.

Continuer la lecture

Diary of a writing project. Day 61: Plot twist!

Word count goal this week: 55 000 words
Word count goal so far: 35 284 words

While writing a fairly overly dramatic scene, an idea came up. Plot twist, it is a great idea!
It adds conflict, tension, it creates one more opportunity to interact with a character I thought I would have to delete.
Hooray!

But.

It means going back to the start in order to leave breadcrumbs. The new idea needs a backstory, so to speak. It needs to feel more realistic, more deeply connected to the main plot, and not out-of-the-blue, what-the-heck, how-convenient-writer filler scenes.

It is so exciting though!

Will the idea still ne that awesome tomorrow? Don’y know.
But, it’s boosting my writing motivation, so for now, it’s just a great way to kick off the writing week.
After skipping last night writing session, it feels good to be back on track and super excited about the book again.

Until tomorrow, dear writer friends…

Diary of a writing project. Day 60: In a bubble, a storm

Word count goal this week: 55 000 words
Word count goal so far: 34 139 words

New week, new hope.

Will reading a tons of tips about self-care for writers, and actually making some of those tips happens, like take a walk, eat well, changing up the writing set-up and, a personal favorite, clean up the working area and get organized help that word count reach the top?

A tons of books are hitting the shelves and the online stores these days. As a reader, I am thrill !
As a writer, I find it very discouraging.
So. Many. Books. aka: competitors.

The writing community is really friendly and all, but at the end of the day, all the authors among said community are competitors.
If not for the literary genre they write in, for readers and social media attention, for sure.

Everyone wants to grab our attention. Phones, socials medias, blogs, podcasts, compagnies, they are hunting our attention down.
Every sphere is fighting for it.
In the book world, publishers and self-published authors are battling hard to create something around the books they sell. If only they could go viral, if only they could get on that tv show, podcast, YouTube channel.
But it doesn’t stop there. In the book world, others want our attention: writer platforms (yours truly thank you for hanging around here, by the way), literary agent, freelance editors, designers, proof-reading people. More they often, every single one of them has a craft-book, an ebook or a class to promote.

Writers always had to be entrepreneurs as well. I know. They had to fight to get for reader’s and media’s attention.

But they didn’t have to fight that many attention grabber.

The book world is a bubble. Inside that bubble, all I can see now is a never-ending storm of new-new-new-better-better-better-copycat-copycat-copycat with a twist.

So, yeah, at night, in front of my writing project, it is hard to imagine how I will manage to make my book stand out in the dark, stormy book bubble…

« You only fail if you stop writing. »

I know, dear writer friends…
I know.