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When the source of inspiration runs out

It has happened to all of us at some point that we ran out of ideas, arguments or inspiration to write. Most of it happens to amateur authors since we do not have the experience or practice of converting the art of writing into a daily habit.


We even wanted to become a Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks or Collen Hoover as serial writers. But the fact that you have someone in your mind, gives you a role model you want to chase. Aspirations, I believe, works as catalyzers for success if we put the right discipline into it.


That is why today I have a few practical tips to ensure that inspiration is not lacking.


1. Be curious: One of the infallible qualities of the writer is curiosity. The need to constantly learn new things feeds the mind, whether it's reading, watching a documentary, or a tutorial on how to do whatever catches your eye.


2. Ask about family stories: If you don't like meddling in the private lives of others, you will have to put that bias aside to start inquiring respectfully. It is not that you become the reckless aunt of your family, but to get to know their stories. But, if you are one of the people who like to know the whole family tree, I think you can get good stories out of it as well. Grandparents always have entertaining stories about their parents, siblings, children, and even grandchildren. Listen to them and you will see how some inspires a good story.


3. Search for anecdotes: Making a post on Facebook asking about certain types of anecdotes, whether they are curious, strange, scary or funny to your contacts, can inspire you to write a short story. If you believe your imagination can extend the narrative, then why not a long novel?. In the same way, if you have children, ask them to tell you some anecdote from their day to day, at work, at school, with their friends. Take the central idea and develop it. You will be surprised on how many things can pop up once you start paying attention.


4. There are some online idea generators that can help you write. Writing prompts, they are called. You can use them and thus get a more extensive range of stories to develop.


5. Listen to music. Although it may not seem like it, music is a great tool when looking for inspiration. A song can always open up possibilities in your mind.


6. Read. Reading is the undisputed spark to become a writer. If you tell me that you don't read, then I will tell you that your lack of knowledge on many subjects is assured. In addition to being a source of inspiration, reading becomes a source of knowledge for those who dare to test new waters. Do it and you will see how your ideas start flowing.


7. Get into writing challenges, whether on the platform, on Inkspired groups, on Facebook, or any other medium. Find ways to get out of your comfort zone and go for inspiration everywhere. Don't settle.


I hope that these tips serve you and motivate you to write until you form a writing habit that allows you to be consistent. Do not be discouraged, we all go through it but somehow or other we manage to get out of it. Luck!


Article originally written by Gin Les (@ginyales)

Edited by Galo A. Vargas (@galovargas)

15 апреля 2020 г. 7:57 0 Отчет Добавить 16
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How to create the habit of writing

To write a novel you must have a habit of writing. You already know that, however time continues to pass and you are still unable to sit down and spend time on it. Believe it or not, is not a complex thing, you just need a little bit of will, motivation and creating the right environment to help you put the focus of writing.


Find what motivates you:

Ask yourself what do you want to achieve with writing? Be honest, only then you can harness that motivation and use it as fuel.


There are techniques that some people use to motivate themselves on a daily basis, and thus achieve the habit of writing constantly. Some of these are: a fine (punishment), reward and commitment. These can be implemented in the following way:


  • You can fine yourself if you do not meet the time or the daily quotas that you have set. For example, you stop watching that series that you love to watch every night.
  • You can reward yourself for having followed the habit for a certain amount of time with something you like.
  • You can try commit to deliver to someone. Tell someone whose opinion matters to you about a writing goal you want to meet and allow this person to check it out. In this way you will feel driven to reach your goal, and meet that person's expectations. Kinda like having a coach.


Set yourself a goal:

Consider writing a number of words every day for a week, if you fail one day you start again. This will help keep you motivated to keep writing every day. Clear set achievable goals do not exaggerate then you can increase.


Create the right environment:

Writing is a demanding task, an intellectual work that requires effort and concentration. For this reason writing is not something that can be done anywhere. It is necessary to have a quiet space where we have everything we need to be able to concentrate on this task. This is important because it could be an element that reinforces your motivation. For this you can:


  1. Put your goal in sight.
  2. Put your reward on display.
  3. Put your characters in view.


Use the technique of the unfinished scenes:

A good way not to break your writing routine is to make sure that when you finish writing you leave work in the middle of an action or a description, something you already know how to continue later. So the next day you will only have to resume from where you left off and it will be easier for you to continue from there.


Give yourself permission and do it wrong:

There will be days when you feel that what you write is just terrible and others when you will say that you are on fire. It is perfectly normal to experience this. The important thing is that you do it, and make progress. Write without being afraid to fail, you can always fix mistakes later or re-write them; even when you know that you will end up re-writing, that's not a waste of time, it's part of the process! So even though what you are writing sucks, don't get up from that chair. Go on as long as you can, without interrupting your creative process. Consistency is the key to everything.


Article written by: Nataly Calderón (@iamtaty).

Edited by Galo A. Vargas (@galovargas)

31 марта 2020 г. 0:57 2 Отчет Добавить 19
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5 productivity rules that help writers become successful

Becoming successful as a writer requires you to put in consistent efforts in what you do daily. This means that you have to work on your writing skills and continually seek a better version of your writing.


It also requires a certain threshold of discipline as far as meeting deadlines, setting personal goals and organization go.


Keyways of improving your writing include:

  • Working with schedules
  • Organization
  • Avoiding clutter
  • Writing often
  • Practicing in public


1.- Working with Schedules

The thing with schedules is that they infuse a sense of responsibility in what you do. They also make you realize that failing to work within your schedule will hamper other plans that you may have for the day or week. In writing, this holds as well.


A fundamental productivity rule that will help you as a writer succeed is to ensure that you work with a defined schedule. This will make it easy and possible for you to commit to your writing tasks.


It also reminds and prepares you psychologically for what you will write on – and this helps to improve your creativity. You will also be in a place to achieve more when you work with schedules.


The essence of success as a writer is about churning out high-quality work as well as improved numbers of the works that you do. Conforming to a schedule is a rule that you can abide by to achieve this.


2.- Organization

There is no contention that the organization can help in improving your chances of success as a writer. How you organize yourself speaks a lot about your planning and your execution.


You need to ensure that you have an editorial calendar that will help to guide your writing. To develop top-notch writing skills, you need to ensure that you equally read.

With this in mind, then you might want to ensure that you dedicate some of your time reading. It could be reading books, novels, or even essays.


This will also require some form of organization on your part. In this sense, therefore, there is a case for a proper organization if you want to become successful as a writer.


3.- Avoiding Clutter

In this digital age, it is easy to get distracted. There is a lot of content on the web yearning for your attention. Social media is even worse. You could drown in your phone’s notifications. All this is a clutter and does not substantially help you advance as a writer.


You need to ensure that you say clear of any clutter. Mute your phone turn off your internet. Keep off social media. Set time limits on how much time you can spend on social media and your phone in general. Devote this time to your writing.


When you do this, you set yourself on a path of improving your writing skills, and this could help you immensely. It also helps you to concentrate on what you do and bolsters your creativity – an essential -component in top-notch and successful writing.


4.- Writing Often

An essential tip on how to improve writing skills and be successful as well is to write often. Writing often allows you to hone your skills since you identify mistakes in the process and subsequently iron them out, thus enabling you to refine your game.


Another upside of writing often is that it helps your confidence and also helps you establish a definite writing style. These help to form a solid foundation in writing, which is something that is a prerequisite for top-notch and successful writing.


5.- Practice in Public

This involves publishing your work out there in public for people to see, read, and critique as well. The upside of publishing and writing work for public consumption is the feedback that you get. There will be people willing to give you feedback on how your work is and the level of your writing.


There is also an impetus to do better day in day out. This is because you are keen not to repeat mistakes, and are equally keen to set up your readers for an exciting piece than the previous experience.


Further, the audience also gives you a sense of responsibility and accountability since you have to deliver. This way, you can easily hone your skills and improve your writing skills. You might be surprised how practicing in public could help sharpen your writing abilities.


In summary, there are tons of tried, tested, and proven ways that can help you improve how you write. Writing is an art and therefore leans heavily on repetition and creativity for improvement and advancement.


Therefore, improving your writing requires more writing as well as working with some principles of organization and discipline. It is highly worth noting that the extent of your improvement is commensurate with the effort that you put into the process.


This article was originally written by Jessica Fender @jessfender.

16 марта 2020 г. 19:15 0 Отчет Добавить 12
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7 steps to promote your story and get readers

As authors, we know how much of hard work is writing, but nobody tells us how difficult it is to get a consistent base of readers who enjoy your stories and let you know what they think of them. So in today's blog, we bring you the 7 key steps to promote our history and get readers.


1.- The first thing that can not fail is that your book has the quality and you must write, at least, well enough for your audience to understand what you want to convey. We are not worth the "hello guys this is my first novel, forgive the spelling mistakes" because that way nobody will ever take you seriously. If you follow that first step well, capturing readers will not be so difficult. The following steps depend more on how you sell your story and yourself as a writer.


2.- The second step that almost nobody does nowadays is to create an author's webpage. Whether in a social network like Facebook or Instagram, or a web page from scratch, this is a very important step. The goal is to contact your readers or potential readers who may be part of your audience in the future. Therefore, having an author profile/website in which you talk about your writing process or your source of inspiration can be interesting. Remember that the more readers know about you, the closer they want to have you. And that means presenting yourself as a real person.


3.- The next thing to consider is the potential of social networks. We have already mentioned that having a website or an author webpage is important, but it will be worthless if you do not promote yourself. Tell your story in an exciting way so that those who do not know you are encouraged to read, or share links from your website or blog. Remember how powerful social networks are, and see how brands use them to attract customers or, in our case, other authors attract readers.


4.- You also have to keep in mind that it is not the same to promote (you) as spam, so be careful, because social network filters are very sensitive and can report you or, even worse, delete your account. Think about the image you want to project to others.


5.- In this section, we must highlight the importance of Facebook groups. The reading groups on Facebook do not stop growing every day, thanks to these, you can reach the audiences you want. Usually, people that joined these groups, are . always looking for new reads, and they are very much happy to share your story if they really love it.


6.- Another very effective way to capture readers is through reviews. Do you know how many people seek an opinion from someone about a book they have not yet read to see if it is worth it? We know that nowadays there are many books out there, but people do not have much time to read them all, so they need choose; and one of the filters is always the reviews. You can ask a blogger or booktuber (it does not have to be very well known since the most popular do not usually accept proposals from new authors who have their books published on online platforms) to review your book. This is also valid if you plan to self-publish.


7.- Finally, I will advice to get creative: be open-minded. You can create a YouTube channel where you can talk about how you got to write your story, what inspired you and invite your audience to start reading your stories. You can also go to writing workshops, and keep learning. Talk to your readers to find out what they would change in your story, ask your family and friends. There are a thousand things you can do (and find online) that can help you capture more readers and improve your story at the same time! You just have to look at all the marketing strategies used by the different companies you know or other more established authors. Learn from the best.


I know that promoting ourselves isn't an easy task. But think it of this way: if you value your work , others will do it too. Put as much effort into promotion your content (perhaps even 10x) as the time you invested on writing it. There are many ways in which you can make yourself known, you just have to look at it from different perspectives.


Original text by: Raquel Jiménez (@extraordinhxrry)

14 февраля 2020 г. 1:01 0 Отчет Добавить 17
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