Ten Tips to Help You Finish Writing Your
Novel
by: Ann Roscopf Allen
- Set aside a time to write and keep it sacred.
- Remove all distractions while you write.
- Outline your plot.
- Avoid the intimidation of a blank computer screen.
- Keep a draft mentality.
- Don't feel compelled to begin at the beginning.
- Organize your files, especially if you are not
going to write in order.
- Revise, revise, revise.
- Don't be afraid of putting yourself out there.
- Only you can determine when you are finished.
[ Read
Full Article ]
|
|
 |
Writing a Book
Take Baby Steps In Your Writing To
Yield A Book
by: Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ
The thought of writing a book is usually daunting for
many writers. After all, how and where do you begin writing
a book that's anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 words?
Big numbers can be pretty intimidating. But there's a
way to get around this. And it's by taking baby steps
-- writing one chapter or even 300-500 words at a time.
This is how I wrote my book, WEEKLY WRITES: 52 Weeks of
Writing Bliss!** Every week for one whole year, I wrote
one chapter or module. Each module was only 250 to 500
words. It helped too that as I wrote each module, writers
were "testing" it. They did the activities in
the module I sent out to them every week.
When I started, I began with an outline for Weekly Writes.
This was just so I could see what I was supposed to do
every week. An outline doesn't have to be set in stone.
Think of an outline as a frame, a guide. It can be modified
as you go along. So by the time I'd written chapter/module
52, I realized I had a book ready to show to a publisher
or one that I could self-publish and sell the next day.
I didn't intend for Weekly Writes to be a book. I created
it as an e-mail course. But when week 52 came around,
I knew Weekly Writes could be a book too. I sent a proposal
to a publisher and a week later received a note that she
wished to review the manuscript. A couple of weeks later,
I was offered a contract and given a deadline for submitting
the final draft.
It took about 6 weeks to edit and rewrite some chapters.
And to make the book even more useful to readers, I invited
writers who had taken the e-mail course version to contribute
creative pieces they've written as a direct result of
doing the writing activities in the course modules.
The result? A *writer-tested* book.
 On
top of that, I had fun writing it because when I wrote
a chapter, I simply wrote. I stuck to writing 250-500
words once a week. One baby step at a time. It was certainly
easier to write when I worked with smaller goals (word
quota every week).
Perhaps you can try it too. You may have a book 52 weeks
from now, even sooner!
**NB: The book I talked about in the above article was
released last March 15, 2004 and is now available on Amazon.com
and other online and offline bookstores. Grab a copy from
Amazon.com and get free unlimited access to the WeeklyWrites.com
Exclusive Members Area that features over $250 worth of
goodies!
=> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0971079676/
For excerpts, reviews and what you need to do to become
a WeeklyWrites.com Exclusive Member, just head on to http://weeklywrites.com
About The Author
Copyright (c) 2004 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ
Shery is the creator of WriteSparks! - a software that
generates over 10 *million* Story Sparkers for Writers.
Download WriteSparks! Lite for free - http://writesparks.com |
|
