Now that we’re a few weeks into 2021, let’s all breathe a deep sigh of relief together for overcoming what has to be one of the hardest years we’ve experienced in modern times.
And you made it through! That’s a victory worth celebrating, especially with the people who helped you navigate the chaos with websites filled with guides, tips and tricks, blog posts, podcasts and newsletters to help get better at the one thing you love the most: writing.
If you wrote a novel while under lockdown, good for you! And if you didn’t? Good. For. You.
When it comes to writing, output isn’t the only critical part of the process — it’s just as important to reset, refresh and reinvigorate your writing brain with new techniques that help you write better.
Wherever you’ve landed in your writing journey, we have just the websites that’ll help…
Last week, I spoke about how my writing habit had been crushed and re-shaped by the pandemic. And as part of the re-adjustment, I’ve been thinking of different ways to make a writing habit. The thing is, every day is unpredictable at the moment. And so the typical habit-making behaviour of picking a set time each day to write isn’t working. In fact, I’m often finding that my other commitments (work, uni, health) mean that my timings change day to day. So I’m trying the methods below instead, and it seems to be working! Have a peek;
Weekly goals, instead of daily I used to focus on daily goals. Set word counts or time goals. The issue with daily targets, is if you don’t reach it one day, it sets you on a downer for the rest of the week. So it’s well worth considering setting weekly targets instead. This…
The pages were instantly recognizable due to black typeface and hand-painted red paragraph marks. Image: University of Reading/The Independent
Pages from one of the first books ever printed in England were recently found by librarians at the University of Reading. The pages, which were hidden away for decades in the pages of a different text, were meant to tell priests how to plan feasts.
Sarum Ordinal
According to Atlas Obscura and The Independent, the librarians found two pages from a priest’s handbook called Sarum Ordinal or Sarum Pye, which had been pasted inside of another book to reinforce its spine. A librarian working to restore that book noticed and pulled out the pages from the priest’s handbook; they date to between 1476 and 1477.
The librarian said she instantly noticed the “trademark blackletter typeface,” the layout, and red paragraph marks, which were typically added by hand after printing and…
The worst thing that can happen to a writer is becoming “blocked” in their writings. If you do a search on “overcoming writer’s block” on the internet, you’ll find almost five million results.
What about writer’s burnout? I did a search and found over thirty-nine million results. That’s extraordinary. In my author circles, being blocked seems to supersede burnout. It looks like I may be wrong according to the web or maybe nobody wants to talk about “burnout” because that would mean you’ve failed or are a quitter.
Thinking of the difference between blocked and burnout has led me to do additional research.
Bill was glad to see that Jeff and Lucy had managed to patch up their quarrel, but he knew it was only just a band-aid on a bullet wound and they would be at it again soon. It’d been a rocky relationship from the start, after all.
This post is part of the Tuesday Use It In A Sentence prompt, “patch”:
I work at a day job, as well as write science fiction novels. As you can imagine, this doesn’t always leave me with time to write, and when I do have time, I don’t necessarily have the energy.
What I do have is deadlines, so despite the lack of time, I still need to either get the words out of my head and onto paper, or revise the words that I already have down.
Goodreads Ransom Scam And The Platform’s Astonishing Indifference
January 13th, 2021
A number of authors are being attacked by scammers who first post multiple fake 1-star reviews and ratings on Goodreads and then demand ransom to take them down.
If you are not a book geek, you might not be familiar with Goodreads. They are ‘the largest site for readers and book recommendations’ as they claim on Twitter. They are, essentially, a social network built around books. People track their reading, write reviews, discuss books, etc.
A lot of folks have criticized Goodreads because the website is obsolete and unituitive and hasn’t been improved in years. It was also bought by Amazon several years ago, which is viewed by many as a conflict of interest. All of it is true, but despite that, it still has millions of users who create all the value the website provides. It…
“First thing in the morning,” grumbled Martha as she reluctantly climbed out of bed to answer the scratching at her bedroom door. “Always first thing in the morning.”
She opened the door and stared the orange tabby cat sitting there. It mewed at her and she sighed and said, “Yes, yes, I know, Garf.”
The cat walked off and she followed it to the kitchen, where she opened a can of food and dumped it unceremoniously onto a small plate. She put it on the floor in front of the cat with a mumbled “Enjoy”, then headed back to her bedroom to try to get a few more minutes of sleep.
Once Garf was finished eating, he dashed out the cat door into the back yard. There he found a clowder of cats sitting in the middle of the yard in a circle, all staring at each other. There was a space open in the circle, as if waiting for another cat to join it. Garf ran up and slipped into the open spot.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said to the assembled cats. “My human wouldn’t get out bed like she’s supposed to. I’m working on it, though. I almost have her trained to get up and feed me first thing in the morning.”
The silver tabby in the group nodded. “Good. Are you making any other progress, Number 5?”
“Some. She’s decent with cleaning my litter box and I almost have her trained with using toys. I’m still working on other aspects of her training.”
The silver tabby nodded again then faced the Siamese cat. “How is the training of your human coming along, Number 3?”
“Fairly well, Number 1,” the Siamese replied. “He also is doing well in regards to litter box cleaning. He’s also good when it comes to giving me those tasty, crunchy treats. He still insists on trying to put stupid outfits on me, though, even though I warn him off with growls and paw swipes.”
Many of the other cats nodded and commented on having similar problems with their humans.
The silver tabby looked at a Russian Blue and asked, “How about you, Number 4?”
“Not too bad, sir,” she replied. “They have finally gotten a huge cat tree for me, after all the effort I’ve put into showing them the necessity of one. And they’ve gotten a bunch of fun toys for me. Treat training is going fairly well, too. I am still working on trying to get them to let me outside more. I keeping having to find ways to sneak out to make these meetings.”
Number 1 looked around the group and asked, “Does anyone have anything else to report?”
A black cat opened his mouth, hesitated, then said, “My humans brought home a dog the other day.”
The rest of clowder gasped and began talking over one another, some offering sympathy and some offering advice, and others remarking their angry disbelief.
Number 1 brought the group under control before telling them, ” All right. I think that’s enough for today. Let’s all return home to work on training our humans for the Master Plan, and also think of way to help Number 6 with the dog problem. We’ll meet back here first thing tomorrow morning to discuss the dog. Dismssed!”
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, “first thing”:
The TARDIS is, after all, the Doctor’s ‘Thing’. It’s what makes him stand out as a truly unique character. Many characters in fiction have travelled through time and space; many are aliens; many speak in BBC English but no one else has a space/time capsule disguised as a British police box. If anyone did, we would all cry ‘Plagiarism! A space/time travelling police box is the Doctor’s Thing!’
Almost all of the most memorable characters in fiction have a Thing. It might be a physical object they carry, something they wear or perhaps even something they simply say. When one thinks of James Bond, we imagine a man who carries a Beretta 418 (though in reality, he did occasionally use other weapons) and drinks vodka martinis, shaken not stirred. Batman dresses like bat, drives a Batmobile and operates from a Batcave; no prizes for guessing what his thing is. Even characters from history are often assigned Things that make them recognisable when they are portrayed on stage or on film today. For example, one of the first plays I recall ever seeing included a portrayal of Henry XIII, who spent most of the play munching a turkey leg.
"Whatever you do, don´t stop writing, write only for yourself if that´s what you want". It might sound as nothing, but in a time in which I doubted so much about myself, it meant the world for me.
on The Write Life:
The worst thing that can happen to a writer is becoming “blocked” in their writings. If you do a search on “overcoming writer’s block” on the internet, you’ll find almost five million results.
on Fiction University:
