Tag: Writing Habits

3 Good Basic Writerly Habits That Are Also True for Bloggers & Just Humans in General

Posted August 25, 2021 in Writing // 4 Comments

I’ve been writing for fun since I was nine years old. In that time, I’ve learned a couple good, basic tips that I try to apply to my work and my role in writer communities. I was thinking about a few of these recently and I wanted to share them, because it occurred to me that these items are excellent tips to apply to our on lives, both on our blogging platforms and in our day-to-day. Backup Everything One of the best pieces of technical advice I can give is to backup everything. When I was younger, I used to write […]

Word Counts & Writing & How That Can Be a Toxic Relationship for a First Draft

Posted May 19, 2021 in Writing // 4 Comments

For as much as I love NaNoWriMo as a writing event and motivator, it has created a few bad habits in me. The worst of these is my obsession over word counts. NaNoWriMo encourages writers to scribe a 50k work novel over the course of a month. It’s a very achievable goal, and even though in recent years the program has become more flexible and allows participants to create their own goals with different objectives outside word count… word count still gets stuck in my head. The industry I work in obsesses over numbers. Quality is important, but you are […]

My Grand Collection of Story Ideas

Posted May 18, 2020 in Writing // 4 Comments

A very long time ago, I remember reading a little meme or something of the sort saying that all writers need to keep a journal by their bed, because they’d wake up in the middle of the night with inspiration and need to jot it down before they forgot. How many of you writer types out there relate to this feeling? … I definitely do. I’m also the type of person who doesn’t like to turn on my light and wake my spouse, so if I wake up with the idea, I used to repeat it over and over in […]

“Why Haven’t You Finished Your Novel?” & Other Exasperating Productivity Suggestions During Shelter-In-Place

Posted April 13, 2020 in Blogging, Bookish Things, Reading, Writing // 8 Comments

In the early days of shelter-in-place mandates, a message sputtered up through the waves of social media: “Now that we’re all at home, we can Do That Thing!” For some people, “that thing” was learning a new instrument. Really digging into learning Portuguese. For many, it was perfecting sourdough bread (which I tease about, but I love sourdough bread… please keep baking!). In writerly circles, the pressure seemed to be on writing: you don’t have social engagements, so now you can finish that book. Doesn’t matter if the person was an aspiring novelist or a seasoned author – the vision […]

Writer’s Block: Myth, or Fact?

Posted February 13, 2020 in Writing // 0 Comments

When I first started writing, I remember “writer’s block” being sort of a buzz word among writing communities. Writer’s block is often blamed for lack of progress on WIPs, and phrases like “writer’s block” and “muse” have gone out of style in writing discussions. In short – there’s no such thing as “writer’s block”. You’re just not working hard enough. But that’s a really harsh way of saying it. I think that being a creative is really complicated. It’s not just writing – whenever you are building something from nothing, there’s a certain amount of pressure. Hard work is part […]