Happy Easter to those who celebrate! A Happy Chocolate day to those who partake. It is a holy day so I am obviously going to talk to you about my religion…
Vocabulary.
There is never a bad time to learn more. Why not, list all of the words you can think of relating to Easter. You will surprise yourself.
Now find a thesaurus and learn a new one!
Q. What if I don’t like dinosaurs?
A. Dictionaries are also really useful
Happy Egg/word hunting
The creators of National Novel Writing Month have spread their craziness to the Spring. Now you can get witty with a word count during April and again I think in July. The joy of camp as opposed to November Nano is the self imposed word limit. Anything from 100 words to 100,000.
Actually I think the limit is 999,999 but no one who wishes to remain sane tries that in a month! Check out the Nanowrimo website or google Camp Nanowrimo and jump in. The water’s lovely.
Resources for writers are notoriously patchy in quality on the web. I recommend everyone visits Joanna Penn at the creative Penn for useful and up to date information about all aspects of writing and publishing.
For a lesson in how to cultivate the joy of writing, you can do no better than view the lectures available on YouTube by the late great Ray Bradbury. If you ever wondered how to tap into your subconscious mind take a tip and listen to the best.
Wise words.
I am an adult, a grown-up, almost ancient if you listen to my children so why do I still feel the need to have permission to write?
I am not talking about external permission, you have to come shopping/cook/buy shelves permission. I am talking about the internal
” shouldn’t I be shopping/cooking/ buying shelves? ”
Sort of permission.
It is insane.
It is also a clear sign that writing is simply too much fun. If it gives you joy then it obviously isn’t work.
Well, I for one am going to laugh in the face of procrastination and dance the Macarena to the beat of my work ethic.
It’s work. It’s fun.
Get over it.
Nothing brings a person in collision with their fears like the wonderful task of writing.
One of the most important things to accept is that it’s fine to be rubbish. Not everything that goes onto the page will be helpful or even useful but the most important thing is that it made it to the page.
I have a main character and family. I have the situation which begins the whole saga.
I also have the ending.
What I don’t have yet is the path from one to the other.
Today is a thinking day.
The number of words that a person can achieve in a day varies widely. My time is a little limited but I need to make a commitment and so I have decided to settle on 750 words a day rain or shine. Don’t get me wrong, I expect to produce more but 750 is going to be my default setting.
I am writing my first novel and until it is written I don’t know what will work for me. Everyone approaches the same task in a different way. Some like to outline and others simply write until they run out of thoughts. I have the feeling that I am going to be an outliner but I may surprise myself.
I am open to the new.
I have never really understood the writers obsession with word count.
Until now that is.
Word count is a tool of the trade. It is an excuse to push on to the next hundred, to get those words on the page. It is true that quality wins out in everything. Every page of every book should be high quality work but thoughts are never going to be that until they are on the page.
writing is rewriting but without the pressure of the daily word count would we get those ideas out there at all?
stirlingwriter 