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Mentoring
Mentoring a new writer is exciting on several levels. There is the anticipation of guiding a new writer around some of those pitfalls that often plague beginners and the joy of helping to make someone's dream come true. It is challenging on a different level from writing your own work for the very reason that it is not your story and the point is not to make it your story. It's a dance of learning when to lead and when to follow.
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Fiction, Happy New Year, How To Write A Novel: Step by Step, The Writing Life, Writing prompts, Writing quotes, writing tips
Write Your Story
“You only fail if you stop writing.” Ray Bradbury (from SmartBlogger 138 Writing Quotes to Inspire) For me, 2021 was a year of wandering. I started out with good intentions. With one manuscript out on submission, I had what I was confident was a great idea for a new teen contemporary novel. Maybe it would even be a rom-com. I wrote happily away, making excellent progress, until, I didn’t. It wasn’t a problem of not planning enough ahead, or anything like that. I actually had written beginning, middle and ending scenes. Enough to convince myself that I had a viable idea. Enough to convince myself that I had an idea…
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Writing Prompts: The Lie
Writing Prompt: A time you were caught off guard when someone confronted you and you just didn’t think you could tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And so, you resorted to the “little white lie.” Maybe no one found out. Maybe they did. Either way, rewrite the situation only this time you are completely honest. What are the consequences? Are you glad you told the truth or do you wish you had resorted to the little white lie? Possibilities: Write a scene where you lie and one where you tell the truth. Follow each story to its outcome. A friend asks your opinion on something and you…
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More Writing Prompts – the “book of regrets”
In Season three of The Crown, Queen Elizabeth made a decision not to go to a disaster site that involved the loss of the lives of many school children, when it first happened. Later, we learn, she always regretted not going earlier. She made several visits in the years that followed, trying, no doubt to make up for what she viewed as her initial error in judgement. We all make decisions we wish we could change. Why not rewrite history and make that decision you always wished you had made. Choose a memory in which you were torn between two choices. Were there two different and super important events at…
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Writing: It’s Complicated
Each September, I write a New Year post, because for me, the back -to-school schedule feels most like the start of a new year. Teaching for over 30 years will do that for you. This year, however, the landscape looks vastly different to everyone, school or no school, and I’m finding it hard to get motivated. It doesn’t feel like the usual fresh beginning of September. It feels like dragging my feet through yet another day of uncertainty. One bit of advice that has come in handy from time to time is fake it ‘till you make it, and perhaps this is one of those times. So, even though my…