Get Organized. Get Writing.

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Quick poll.

How many of you when you roll out of bed in the morning find your house and writing project in perfect order?

There’s a rich aroma of rainforest coffee wafting through the quiet and dark house as you sit down to your clean desk and boot up your laptop. You pull up your documents and immediately your fingers start flying over the keyboard. No hunting around for your charger, no searching for that character chart you filled out yesterday, or your hand drawn map—it’s all there and ready to go.

If “that’ll be the day…” is your response, this post is for you.

Getting organized is often the bane of a writer’s existence. But it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few helpful tips I’ve picked up along the bumpy writer’s road.
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A Guide to the Forgotten Sense

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We often overlook scent in our writing, opting to create our characters and worlds through sight alone, but that’s a cheap version of the human experience.

Scent 2

Have you ever passed a stranger in the airport and been slammed with homesickness because they’re wearing the same cologne as your husband? Cried because that shirt still smells like the loved one who’s now gone? Felt like you were home despite the miles just because a certain candle was lit?

Scents are tied to memories and memories are inextricably linked to emotions. Good stories elicit emotion in their readers by making the characters and the world real in the same way that readers experience their own world– through their five senses.

Here are some words to help you incorporate scent into your writing.

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A Protagonist Worth Reckoning With

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Let’s do one of those little exercises you might expect to do at a psychologist’s office. Don’t worry, we won’t go too far back into your childhood or keep asking you “why do you think that is?”. I want you to think back to someone you’ve been attracted to at one point in your life.

Why were you attracted to begin with? Was it her status in the corporate world, his personality, the way she made you laugh, or his aura of mystery?

Someone worth spending time with pulls you in. They’re interesting.

For different reasons, albeit, but if s/he doesn’t interest you, that person is doomed to the inescapable dreaded pit we call the friend zone.  Readers have a similar relationship with the protagonist in a book.

Sure magical lands, mythical creatures, or witty dialog can intrigue us, but story ultimately centers on people. If the protagonist can’t pull you in, it’s time to say “bye bye Felisha”.

So what to do about the predicament of your protagonist?

How do you prove to your reader your protagonist is worth reading about? First things first…
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Use Music to Inspire Your Writing

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Frau mit Kopfhšrer in DŠmmerung (von hinten)

I almost always write to music.

This habit began as more of a personality quirk; I could never study in school unless I had absolute silence (difficult to procure) or music to drown out other sounds. This translated well to writing, especially when I used to write while I worked (during downtime!) as the surrounding noise often pulled me out of my writing head-space and made staying in the flow of the story difficult. Continue reading →

Freeing “Don’ts” for Your Holiday Writing

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Don’t delude yourself. The holidays are busy and they make it impossible to keep up your writing routine, but that doesn’t need to be a bad thing. This season provides the perfect chance to take a break from your overall project and focus on individual skills that will improve your writing as a whole.

So with that in mind, here are some freeing “don’ts” for the Holidays…

Christmas

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Tricks to Selecting the Perfect Story Ideas

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butterfly

Some people call it a muse, while others say they get their inspiration from everyday things: people or events that catch their imagination in just the right way. Sometimes it’s something as simple as reading a story that ends differently than you’d wanted it to, sparking your imagination into how it should have gone, if the pen was in your hand[i].

Wherever your story idea emerges from, the next (and sometimes worst) part can be determining if the idea is worth keeping. I don’t mean jotting down a note to yourself about an idea – that’s never a waste of time.

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