motivation for moving beyond your writing habits: Motivation: The Slump →

totalrewrite:

Over the course of the writing adventure, most of you will experience what will feel like the worst rut you’ve ever been in. Words don’t flow—putting each one onto paper is a chore in and of itself. All your ideas lead to dead ends, and you feel like it’s time to put your novel to rest.

That’s the rut I was just in for over a month, and it was beyond painful. I’ve been working on this novel for well over a year now, and I honestly thought it was going to come crashing down around me and be forced into a series of Word documents that would collect dust on my desktop until I finally had the guts to delete it.

So to celebrate me coming back to this blog, I thought I’d supply my strategy for getting out of my slump.

Disclaimer: This may not work for you. Everyone is different, and this is just one strategy out of many.

  • Close your Word Docs.Sometimes, just staring at a blank screen (or even one with writing) can make it worse.  Give yourself a break. Go watch videos on Youtube or make a Neopets account. Give yourself something fun to do for a little while.
  • Keep the story in your mind. One of the worst things that you can do while in a slump like this is push it completely from your mind. If you do that, you run a risk of putting your story down and never picking it up again.
  • Read for fun. Chances are, you’re already doing a lot of this. But just in case you aren’t, pick up a book that you’ve always wanted to read but for whatever reason haven’t started and tuck in.
  • Think about what else is going on in your life and assess it properly. The reason I fell into my writing slump was because of school. I was taking four classes at once in a university for the first time, and I was scared to death of failing three of them. It was stressing me out to the point where I was pulling out my eyelashes.  If you’re under stress, don’t feel bad taking a break from writing to get the rest of your life in order.
  • Don’t rush yourself. If you try to force yourself to write when you’re in one of these slumps. This is what happens when you try to force yourself: Nothing. You’ll spend hours staring at a blank document and end up getting frustrated with yourself and hating the work.

image

So this is how I overcame my slump, and now that I’m back to writing, I feel a ton better. I’ve gotten my drive for writing back and new ideas come much more easily than they did even before I entered my writing slump. Hopefully someone else out there will benefit from this.

 #advice  #help

britmarlingrp:

Having a character with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)

Through my years in basically every roleplaying community, I see huge misconceptions about OCD. As someone with a moderate form of this disorder, it’s a bit irritating to constantly see a serious mental disorder demeaned through writing. This will a guide to writing a character with OCD including: the basics of OCD; related mental disorders/illnesses; the various ways OCD is treated; and severe forms of OCD (like the ones seen on shows such as Criminal Minds). If you use this for your writing or find this helpful, please like/reblog.

Read More

 #advice  #help
 #help  #advice

Medical blogs on Tumblr

thewritershelpers:

A collection of medical blogs that I know about, they might be able to help you with medical accuracy in your writing.

Cool Health Infographics  - Run by a doctor and has some good graphics
Way faring MD  - Doctor on tumblr, gives good advice
Dr Cranquis  - Doctor on tumblr, ask is usually closed although he has a facebook page
Medical School  - Medical blog, can probably answer questions
Salmonella Place  - Medical blog, they also YouTube channel

 #advice  #help

The Writers Helpers: Androgynous and Unisex Names →

thewritershelpers:

 #help  #advice

"Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that—but you are the only you… There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better—there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can."

—Neil Gaiman (via writingquotes)
 #quote

thehelpfulroleplayer:

There have been a few guides floating around on ‘how to play a cancer patient’ though I haven’t seen any on how to play a sibling of a cancer patient. It is equally important. Disclaimer: There is no specific way of how people react this is just from research and personal experience.

Read More

 #advice

Reblog if you love to write.

Whether it be fanfiction, original stories, drabbles, songs, poems, books, or anything that has to do with creative words, then reblog. Let’s gather all the writers of Tumblr together.

 #gpoy

I’m going to be going away this weekend for a wedding, and I won’t be back until Tuesday. I don’t have much queued up and I won’t be bringing my laptop so I’ll be posting when I get back! 

Have a good weekend!

WriteWorld: Writing: Your Characters Must Earn (or Have Earned) Their Skills →

worddocs:

  • Magic (and other skills—especially physical skills) must be practiced. Yes, your wizard could be the “chosen one,” but remember that even Harry Potter had to practice his patronus charm. In The Matrix, Neo had to learn how to get used to working within the system.
  • Knowledge must be studied: Your character probably wasn’t born with world knowledge floating around in her brain. She might have a high IQ, but she still needs to study. Hermione Granger read Hogwarts: A History well before she attended it. NOTE: This also applies to knowledge about science fiction technology.
  • Wisdom often comes from making mistakes earlier in life: My dad will often say he learned most of his knowledge about woodworking from “the school of hard knocks.” He usually follows that with a story about how he screwed something up. Your skilled characters probably have a lot of stories. Wisdom can also come from watching others make mistakes and choosing not to go down the same path.
  • Wisdom also comes from experience: A legendary general will have seen many ways to fight a war. He knows what works and what doesn’t based on what he has seen.

-by M. B. Weston and continued at mbweston.com

 #advice
TH