Tag Archives: help

A Holiday From Your Writing

A Holiday From Your WritingI hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! Personally, I still feel as though I’m in the midst of hibernation. It’s been a great winter and after a short break from the routine stress of everyday life, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to take on 2015.

I love this feeling! So how do we achieve that same refreshed, can-do attitude with your writing? Simple: take a holiday from your writing.

Do you have a piece of writing or a project that you feel has gone stale? Are you stuck mid-story? Or are you simply dreading the editing stage?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to take a vacation from your current WIP.

Put that pen down (or close out of the word processor).

Stick your work in progress in a drawer. Or store the file somewhere other than your desktop. Give yourself permission to forget about the project for a while.

Clear your head, but keep your writing sharp.

Disclaimer: Taking a holiday from your work does not mean that you stop writing altogether. It simply means that you stop working on your current project and give it (and yourself) time to breathe.

Continue writing, but for now just focus your efforts on something totally different than your shelved project. Keep the words flowing and challenge yourself to do something different (even if just for a short period of time).

DO retrieve your shelved project.

This is probably the most difficult, yet most important part of the vacation from your writing: the return. Make sure you do go back to your WIP. Let the time you spend away from it refresh you . DO NOT buy in to any self-doubt that may crop up. Don’t let yourself make excuses.

When you first shelve your project, I recommend setting a date that you will go back to it. And then STICK to that date. Hold yourself accountable. (Personally, I set the date 1 month from the day I shelve the project.)

By taking a short break from your project, hopefully you’ll be able to breathe some new life into it!
Happy writing and a joyous new year!

~

Have you ever taken a vacation from a project? Let us know in the comments below!

NaNo Prep: Making the Most of the Last Week of October

Posted in NaNoWriMo by

The clock is ticking. Only one week to go until NaNoWriMo. Just 7 days standing between you and your next novel.

Are you ready?

If not, here’s a last-minute guide to help you make sure you’re prepared for the month-long writing marathon.

Get your outline in order if you’re a planner
Get that outline cleaned up. Finish naming your characters and sketching out your villains. Clean it all up to make the writing process smoother once November 1st rolls around.

Start cooking ideas if you’re a pantser
Even if you prefer writing by the seat of your pants, it doesn’t hurt to start thinking about your story. Get a few ideas bouncing around you brain (What genre are you writing? Who is your protagonist?) and let them simmer over the next week.

Tell your friends and family that you’re participating in NaNoWriMo NOW
Seriously, send out a mass text or a Facebook post. Make an announcement with a mega-phone. Tell everyone you know that you’re doing NaNo. This not only keeps you on track (there’s nothing worse than a judgmental look from your significant other followed up with “why aren’t you writing?”), but it also lets the important people in your life know you’ll be busier than usual for the next month.

Set your daily word count goal now
How many days do you want to write each day in November? Do you want to do the standard 1,667 words per day? Do you want to write double that each day and be done by mid-November. Do you want to write less during the week and more during the weekend? Figure it out now and then stick to it come November.

Sign up for the Writember Workshop
Need help staying on track during November? Our very own Faye Kirwin is running a workshop that will keep you writing. For more info or to sign up, click here.

Get your playlists in order
Take some time to hand-pick your music before NaNo starts. Doing this will keep  you inspired through the month AND it saves you from creating more and falling into a pit of procrastination when you should be writing next month.

Create your Pinterest inspiration boards
Pin to your heart’s content. If you’re constantly looking for visual inspiration, create a board full of inspiring photos or quotes that will keep you writing through November.

Stock up on the snacks
Or coffee, tea, alcohol, etc. Make sure you’ve got enough of your favorite munchies to fuel your writing…at least for the first couple days of NaNo!

Pre-write your November blog posts
Or at least outline them. Instead of having to break from your NaNo novel to write your weekly blog post, get it done now.

Get pumped with pre-NaNo sprints
Head over to our Twitter account for sprinting throughout the week and get the creative juices pumping!

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What do you have left to do to prep for NaNoWriMo? Let us know in the comments below!

Harnessing the Power of Camp NaNoWriMo

Posted in Writer Advice by

I’m starting this post off with an apology.  To my fellow word sprinters and writers: I’m sorry I’ve been so absent over the last month! If you haven’t noticed my radio silence, it’s because Faye and Cristina have done some a wonderful job of keeping the site and word sprints running while I’ve been MIA.

Now, I have a hundred excuses as to why I haven’t written a Sprint Shack post or hosted any word sprints in the last few weeks, but none of them are really good enough. When you love writing, you shouldn’t let anything get in the way. So I wanted to return to Sprint Shack with a short post about the power of Camp NaNoWriMo and getting yourself back into the writing game.

Over the last month, I’ve managed to barely keep myself on track with the short fiction posts for my personal site and meet my Write Chain goal each day.

But because of all the other things that were happening in my life, I began to resent the fact that I was sitting down every day to write. I had a million and three things to do – I couldn’t afford to be sitting around for an hour each day, writing a bunch of fiction.

So my writing suffered. My heart wasn’t in it, and I could see that my stories were forced, my writing unimaginative. I missed loving to write. I wanted to look forward to that hour of writing like I used to. But I didn’t know how. And the more mediocre my writing became, the more unmotivated I was to write, and the more my writing suffered. It was a vicious circle.

When the end of June rolled around and I began to see tweets about Camp NaNoWriMo, I wondered if I should even bother signing up. But after some contemplation, I realized that if I gave up on Camp NaNo, I may as well give up on my writing.

So I set my word count goal low and spent the first week of Camp NaNo putting off actually starting my new novel.

After 7 days of no progress with my Camp NaNo project, things were looking bleak.

But then I logged into my NaNo account and checked out all the messages left in my cabin’s chat section.

These people were so excited. They were writing and loving it! They were complaining about blocks and joking about ways to get over them. They were supporting one another and giving updates on milestones that they’d reached with their projects.

It was infectious! I couldn’t help but want to join in. And so I did – I began writing. And not out of a sense of obligation, but from a place of curiosity. I wanted to see what I could do. Even if it ended up being horrible, I wanted to write the story that had been taking up space in my head for weeks.

Since then, I haven’t been able to stop. I’ve been writing like crazy and loving it.

I realize that what I was missing was the camaraderie. I’d used the excuse of being too busy and then sequestered myself off from the freedom of word sprints and encouragement that comes from interacting with the wonderful community of writers that I used to be so involved in.

All I needed was to realize that I wasn’t alone. Everyone feels this way about their writing at times. Everyone thinks they’re no good and that they don’t have time to spend writing below-par stories. Yes, writing is inherently a solitary pursuit. But it doesn’t mean we have to go it alone.

I’m feeding off this positive energy of other writers during Camp NaNo and using it to fuel my own writing.

If you’re in a writing rut, I recommend jumping into Camp NaNo or joining in on some of our Twitter word sprints. Let go of the excuses and enjoy writing again.

~

Are you guys participating in Camp NaNo this month? Tell me why you’re NaNo-ing in the comments below!