If you’re working and trying to write, or if you’re trying to balance your own writing with paid writing or family commitments, you’re probably stressed. You’re trying to keep track of a thousand different responsibilities, ideas, appointments and tasks, juggle friends and family and actually have a life. When your head is full of [...]
Category Archives: Writing Tips
Procrastination and present-bias
Temporal proximity, our brain’s bias towards the present, and some techniques to overcome procrastination. My favourite tip is to accept that you WILL procrastinate. It’s no good thinking you’ll do what you should when you should, you have to accept that you are likely to procrastinate and find a workaround in advance.
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Got the novel-draft blues? Try this motivation trick
You know that feeling when you get part-way through a large writing project and all of a sudden it feels like the worst thing ever written in the history of time? You go to bed one night pleased with your progress, wake up the next morning and everything’s vanished. All the ideas and the enthusiasm, [...]
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Why every writer should blog
Today’s guest post comes from George Copeland, a freelance features and content writer who can find on Twitter @WordsOParadise. It doesn’t matter how good you are as a writer, or if you have ‘hidden talent’. As someone who kept my own talent hidden away from public eyes, I know that hidden talent means nothing if [...]
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How do I find beta readers for my work?
I’ve heard from a couple of people recently who want someone to read their work before they send it out. This makes sense – you want your book to be as good as you can make it before you send it to an agent, and if you’re self-publishing I’d say that you need to use [...]
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2013 – your free writing year planner
January 4th, I’d say that’s not too bad for a chronic procrastinator to produce an annual review and planner! This is my free gift to you. Use it and abuse it however you wish. It’s a guide to a 4-step process to plan your goals and set you on the right path to achieving them in [...]
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Why writers need to be vulnerable – Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly
Brené Brown is a research professor studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. I found out about her while browsing TED, and her talk on the power of vulnerability is still my favourite. She was in London for the launch of her new book, Daring Greatly, and I was lucky enough to see her speak at Conway Hall for [...]
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Writing for Theatre
Today’s guest post comes from Carla Grauls (http://cybergrauls.wordpress.com/), whose play Occupied will be performed as part of Labfest at Theatre 503 on 10, 12, 14 July http://theatre503.com/whats-on/labfest-2012-occupied/. I think that this advice is sound for writers of screenplays, novels and short stories too, not just for theatre writers. In the past few months I have been developing [...]
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Why failure is necessary to writers
Are you prepared to make a million mistakes? How repeated failure is necessary to improve your writing skills. We need to choose our words carefully when we talk to ourselves. Choices often affect responses to situations and feelings. We condition the brain to behave in a certain way and this can result in a profound [...]
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The Secrets to Becoming a Freelancer
This week’s guest post comes from freelance editor Amie McCracken. Those moments in your life when everything falls into place, those are the times when you are happiest. But what if you can make that happen instead of waiting for it? For the past few years I have been trying to break into [...]
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