Just like handover notes will help when coming back to a project after time away, taking stock as you move from one year to the next is a great habit to get into. It also helps shift you into the right head and physical space to achieve your writing goals, with a reset if you're …
Continue reading Taking Stock: Resetting To Hit Your Writing Goals
As writers, we’ve all had those moments when it’s been hard to sit down and write. It could be because other responsibilities have kept us away from our writing desks, or illness has sidelined us. Then there are those times when we’ve been able to write and we just… don’t. When that happens, it’s down …
Continue reading How To Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Writing Progress
When you set out to write a novel, you quickly learn that it takes a lot of drafts. There’s the first draft, which is laying down the story. The second works out what the story is missing, and every draft after is refining until it becomes the finished book. How many drafts that takes depends …
Continue reading Motivational Tricks To Keep You Working On Your Manuscript
I usually like my first blog for a new year to be all about resolutions, but after the year that was 2020, and with 2021 shaping up to be more of the same, making resolutions or plans is a moot point (or a cow's opinion—a reference for anyone who spent a good chunk of lockdown …
Every writer has either a desk drawer or a folder on their computer with a manuscript they started but never quite completed. It might be because the idea was only good for two chapters, they could never dig their way out of a major plot hole, or life became more important than writing the final …
Continue reading Signs You’re Afraid of Finishing Your Manuscript
Writers are fascinating creatures. We’re most comfortable talking to imaginary people, traveling to imaginary lands, and creating stories out of nothing more than words. What we also love is to avoid doing those things at all costs. You love writing and want nothing more to spend your waking hours putting pen to paper? Sure! Right …
If you’re a writer who has typed “The End” on a manuscript, you know it’s just the beginning. There’s still the second draft. Endless edits. Incorporating beta feedback. Re-writing whole sections. Adding or dropping characters. At least five (or more) other drafts—and that’s before you look for agents, tackle the dreaded synopsis, or prepare to …
Continue reading Signs You’re Ready To Move Onto A New Manuscript
Writing while working, adulting, caring for tiny humans, and running a household often means jotting down sentences between appointments, lunch hours, school pickups, or after the kids are in bed. You know, that one part of the day you have to yourself when all you want to do is to binge watch the latest season …
It is not easy to write a book, and if you’re a writer who thinks it is, then you’re in for a shock when after you’ve typed your opening sentence, it takes you (what feels like) one thousand years to type, The End. The hard reality is that writing a book takes blood, sweat, tears, bottomless …
K.M. Allan 