I became a writer when I was ten years old, the same year that I discovered Agatha Christie – and therefore crime fiction. On Christmas Day 1984, I unwrapped a notebook and a box of pens, and after lunch, while everyone else dozed chipolata-stuffed in front of the TV, I made a nest in the corner of the dining room and began to write my own murder mystery.
Writing can be a downright scary process. Whether you’re writing a book or an article, you are opening your ideas to an audience and allowing them to engage with – and maybe criticize – your work.
For this reason, writers often hold their content close and only allow others to read it when it feels more polished and complete.
The downside to keeping your ideas and writing private lies in losing out on valuable feedback if you don’t share early and with the right people.
via How to Get the Right Kind of Feedback for Your Writing | Inc.com
Do your first drafts always turn out exactly how you want them to? Congratulations! Keep doing what you’re doing.
For most of us, there’s a gap between the beautiful, magical book in our heads and the rough, inadequate first draft that lands on the page when we try to write that beautiful book down.
But here’s the good news—for every way your first draft fails, it gets you farther down the road to success. Here are a few of the ways it might happen to you.
via 9 Ways You Succeed When Your First Draft Fails | WritersDigest.com
Every month, the Writer’s Bone crew reviews or previews books we’ve read or want to read. This series may or may not also serve as a confessional for guilty pleasures and hipster novels only the brave would attempt. Here are their November 2016 recommendations…
Tropes and cliches can be hard to avoid, especially when you’re working within specialized genres or categories. Tom Siddell, creator of the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, reminds us why it’s so important to write for yourself:
You have to hold your own interest first, otherwise you will never hold the interest of others.
http://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/149077594827/how-to-find-your-own-writing-style
There are few things that have stood the test of time like a Jane Austen novel.
It’s been more than 200 years since the beloved English novelist released new work yet her characters remain relevant, inspiring Hollywood movie adaptations, television series, critical essays and interpretations across multiple mediums.
Although Austen was never publicly acknowledged as a writer in her own lifetime, since her death she has become a literary icon with many Janeites wishing they could resurrect her from the dead, if only to get her take on the modern world.What would she make of online dating? The rise of goth fiction? Equal pay? KIMYE?
With time travel not yet an option, author Rebecca Smith – who happens to be the five-times-great-niece of Austen herself has brought us (and aspiring writers the world over) the next best thing – a comprehensive guide to writing like Jane Austen.
It’s mid-November, and so to help you keep the momentum going, here are a few prompts to keep you writing…
I wish you all the best of luck and I hope these prompts will help on the days when writing 1 667 words a day for the month of November is hard.
Sometimes you don’t know what you want to say. Other times you don’t know the right way to say it. And very often you can’t get your butt in the chair to write anything at all.
Whether it’s reports and presentations for the office, that great novel you’d love to write, or the movie you can see in your head that hasn’t made its way to the page yet, you could definitely use some tips on how to improve your writing.
via 7 Ways to Improve Your Writing, According to Experts | TIME
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