You’ve always wanted to be the next big novelist, but you have no idea where to start. Very few people can just sit down in one sitting and write a full-length novel. We all have hectic lives and many things that pull us away from our writing. We have families, jobs, chores, school involvement – the list can go on forever. Yet, a writer must write. This is just a fact of life.

Writers are creative personalities with the desire to write. A writer of fiction might speak of a specific character speaking to them. While people that aren’t in the profession might not understand, fellow writers feel their pain. Characters often urge a writer on, occasionally to the point of tormenting the writer as well as inspire. Ignoring or procrastinating a writer’s need can lead to emotional fallout. What writers and other artists refer to as “the Muse” is relentless in its inability to let one sleep at night, and keeps one from paying full attention to important demands with the thoughtfulness we would otherwise give them.

But how does a writer find the time to write the next incredible novel in between their day-to-day stresses? First of all, set priorities! We can’t ignore our families or our jobs, but we can prioritize. Write when children are asleep or at school. Set a daily schedule to allow yourself a few hours to write. Plan play dates for your children or get a neighbor to babysit for a few hours and take that time to write. If you think you can manage without vacuuming for a day, take a little of your housekeeping time to write. It’s amazing how much a person can get done in just a few hours a day of peace and quiet.

Get a notebook and try to flesh out your chapters. That way you’ve got notes to follow on those days that you’re staring at a blank screen trying to figure out what comes next. As you consult your notes, more ideas will come. Being organized is a must. A five-subject notebook works best. You can dedicated a subject to your characters. Give them personalities and make notes on what place they have in your story.

Why not write your synopsis first? That way you have your entire work more or less plotted – beginning, middle, and end. This will help to keep you focused, and keep you from going off on tangents that waste time.

Keep a small notebook with you at all times. Everywhere you go, you’re introduced to people, conversations, and various other things that will spark ideas in your mind. Use this notebook to jot down ideas as they come.

Do your research for the novel on a specific day each week. Your writing time is valuable. Don’t waste time researching when you are supposed to be writing.

Having your own space to write and concentrate is the most important. Quiet is necessary as the Muse influences and inspires. Any outside noise and confusion will chase off your muse quickly. Establish your own space where no one will bother you. Instill boundaraies so that your family knows that this is your space and you’re not to be bothered. If you can’t establish your own space at home, try going to the local library.

Do you know what fosters your muse? Some writers must have absolute solitude without a single background noise. Others need music or television on in the background, but this is purely an individual choice and varies from writer to writer. There is no right or wrong. Whatever makes you more productive is definitely the way to go.

Last, but definitely not least – never give up. Life is always going to threaten to get in the way of your novel. Having confidence in yourself and your abilities is necessary for a novel to be completed. Keep the Muse alive and the Muse will help to guide you to your goal. First novels are published in spite of all the naysayers out there who say it’s almost impossible. The next first novelist could very well be you!


- Amanda Baker

By Gary McCarty

We’ve all experienced it. Sitting at a desk or computer table while a blank piece of paper and blank screen stares back at us and dares us to write anything, even a sentence–just something.

This is the crippling disease known as writer’s block.

What to do?

I’ve been writing long enough that I usually don’t get writer’s block, which of course is of no consolation to you, but I do get something called “writer’s laziness,” especially when I’m doing technical writing. Writer’s laziness kicks in when you find yourself basically regurgitating the stuff you’ve just devoured for research. It may not be word for word, but, man oh man, the tone and turgidness ring authentic to the original!

That’s another disease that I’ll deal with at another time, but for now let me propose a list of cures for writer’s block, beginning with the least recommended first and then moving on to the most recommended:

Go have a stiff drink or two. This will loosen you up, but it almost might twist your writing and take it to places you don’t want to go. It might distort, or it might just work fine. It’s up to you to figure out by experimentation (if you so choose).

Take a break and go for a brisk walk. This will actually get the hormones and juices flowing again and should help you overcome the blockage, but remember, go straight back to the writing when done. Don’t dawdle in the kitchen for a snack or plop down in front of the boob tube.

Start writing in the middle or end; that is, just write whatever comfortably comes to you even if it’s not the beginning and even if it doesn’t even make that much sense yet. Just getting the writing process started will jar you out of the blockage.

Give up. This is basically the best solution. Now, by “give up,” I don’t literally mean just walk away and forget about it. What I mean is to give up thinking you have to write the perfect paper. Just lower your standards to the point where the words flow. This is akin to turning off the inner critic.

Remember these immortal words, which I’m going to have to paraphrase since I can’t find the original author or quotation: “There’s nothing you can’t write so long as you lower your standards low enough.”


- Gary McCarty

Congratulations! You have begun your viral marketing campaign by writing and submitting articles that have been spread throughout the world through ezines, blogs, and other online publications as others picked up your articles and posted them on their own pages. Two or three times a week you sat down to write and hardly knew how much time had passed from the moment you began writing until you finished. The time went quickly and you remembered how much you enjoyed writing. The ideas flowed and there seemed to be no end to the number of thoughts you could put in print.

You watched your stats for each article, did a Google search for your own name and articles, and were excited by the results you found. Even your “expert” status gave you a high and made you feel good about this new venture you were on. And each day the adventure continued.

Then suddenly one day you sat down to write and nothing came to your mind or you started writing but your thoughts were disjointed and jumbled. The ticking of the clock was there to remind you that hours had passed and the piece of paper or the computer screen before you was half empty. In an effort to complete the article, panic set in and then there were no words, no ideas, no third point to support the main theme (and everyone knows you have to have at least three points to support your theme, don’t they?).

If writer’s block has stopped your article writing campaign in its tracks, choose one or more of these five ideas to break through the block and get your viral marketing efforts back on track.

Move away from the computer

If you have been sitting at your computer, staring at a blank screen, pulling your hair out to get a new idea to write about, get up and move a little. The mere movement away from your computer to get some blood flowing will help to jumpstart your creative juices. If you haven’t come up with an idea to write about just by staring at the screen, continued staring will not change anything for you, except to give you a headache.

Read today’s headlines or your favorite blog

By reading today’s headlines or your favorite blog, your mind will reconnect with words and ideas again. It might take just one sentence or one article for your mind to come up with a new idea, but if you don’t come up with a new idea after the first headline or the first blog, try, try again. If still nothing comes to your mind, at least you have kept up with the news and seeds have been planted in your brain that might surface hours or days later.

Read through your previous articles

Read through some of your own articles to find an article that was written from a broad angle and pick it apart to come up with more articles on narrower topics.

In a typical article, as you were taught in school, you probably made three points that supported your main point. You can write an article on one of these three points and support it with three more points that can be used in later articles, then these three points can be used in three more articles and so on. See where I’m going? Until you get down to the article that tells about the “molecular structure” of whatever your topic is, you can write articles for days based on solely on one of your previous articles.

Make a list of words

Start with just a list of words associated with your business or area of interest that could become the topic of your article. If your business is about decorating on a budget, list the rooms in your house or the techniques, such as paint, wallpaper, stenciling, etc., that can be used to spruce up your walls. Start with just words then move up to phrases as those come to mind.

From this list you can choose one of the words or topics and write an article about that, or you can choose one area, such as walls, and write a series of articles on the different ways to change the look of a room just by changing the walls.

Write a post for your blog

When you have an idea to work with, write a post for your blog. Most blogs are written in a less formal, conversational tone than that used for articles for publication; often you feel as though you are writing to a friend rather than to an audience. Choose a topic or word from the headlines, a previous article, or your list of words and phrases start and writing a short post to your blog.

After writing this less formal, probably smaller, article for your blog, use the main ideas therein to turn it into an article for submission. You can then direct your blog readers to the full article and ask them to rate the article, which will in turn boost your author status, which will likely boost your morale and thus your creativity.

As in Newton’s 1st Law of Motion: a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. If the ideas you need to get your writing campaign back on track have come to a sudden stop, use one of these outside forces to get in motion again: move away from the computer, read today’s headlines or your favorite blog, read through your previous articles, make a list of words and phrases, or write a post for your blog. You will find the words flowing from your fingertips in no time.


- Claudia Pate

Yeah, I know its like asking somebody how do you write. The typical response is ‘write one word and 50,000 more’. I’ve done NaNoWrimo and written a pretty medicore novel, really. Now, I planned out the novel; I want to write a really good novel not under pressure.

But now I’m staring at a blank screen. How do I motivate myself to write and what should I write about (a setting, description of a character) to begin?
- mbtafan