Category: Blog

1. It’s on your own terms. If writing is something you want to do, no one can stop you from doing it. If you want to choose to invite writing back into your life, you can. You are in control.

2. You’ve had your time to reflect, to rest, to figure out why you needed to set your writing aside, forgive yourself, and accept that it’s OK to start again. If you want to.

3. Life feels empty, even lonely when you aren’t writing. When you are, you feel alive in a way you simply don’t at any other point.

4. You’re feeling inspired to tell a story you can’t get out of your head. What do you have to lose?

Continue reading “10 Great Reasons to Come Back to Writing After You’ve Walked Away” →

1. You have a finished, polished piece of writing that’s ready for eyes that are not your own.

2. You’re not afraid of criticism, but you’re not desperate for it, either. Sharing your work doesn’t automatically generate feedback, which shouldn’t be the only reason you’re making your work public.

3. You’re doing it because you want to, not because someone else says you should.

4. You’re so proud of what you’ve written that you don’t even care about its flaws. You just want other people to know it exists!

Continue reading “10 Signs You’re Ready to Start Sharing Your Writing With the World” →

1. Find your go-to relaxation technique. It doesn’t have to be traditional meditation or yoga or anything like that. For you it could be taking a walk, listening to music, or baking. But you need that non-writing thing to turn to.

2. Trim down your to-do list. When you’re feeling overwhelmed already, trying to maintain the same level of productivity — or increasing it — is only going to intensify that feeling.

3. Focus on one “essential” task and one “nonessential” task. Write if you have to, write if you want to, but try to fixate your thoughts on just one project at a time until your work on that project for the day is done.

4. Leave room in your schedule for “nothing time.” What you end up doing with that time is completely up to you, but keep it spontaneous, even if nothing else in your day is.

Continue reading “12 Tips to Help Writers Feel Less Overwhelmed With … Everything” →

I’m writing this after watching the series finale of a show I love. And while I won’t get into specifics (because let’s be real, that’s not why you’re here), that’s weighing heavily on my mind as I’m sitting here in awe that something fictional can have such a strong impact on my emotional well-being. Not just me. Thousands of people.

Sometimes we forget how powerful stories are.

How impactful they can be.

When you’re sitting alone in front of a computer screen and you’re squeezing a story out of your brain one sentence at a time, it’s easy to completely ignore the fact that while your words are important and your work matters, without the emotional weight of the story you are trying to tell, it’s all meaningless.

I just finished reading a book I didn’t care for, and it took me until now to realize it wasn’t the writing or the characters or the subject matter that lost me. It was the lack of emotion I felt while reading it. I wanted to care about what happened to each character. But I didn’t. I felt nothing.

And that made what could have been an entertaining book seem almost pointless to me.

That’s not what you want your audience to take away from your story … is it?

Continue reading “People Need to Walk Away From Your Story Feeling Something” →

The Blank Page is a new weekly series on Novelty Revisions dedicated to any writer who is just beginning their journey or starting again after a long pause. Check back every Monday for more tips and inspiration.

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When I held my violin for the first time four months ago, there was a small part of me that wished I could just start playing my favorite songs without breaking a sweat.

I did sweat the first time I played, though. Seriously. Playing the violin is not physically natural. The struggle is real.

The same thing often happens with beginning writers who are just getting the hang of all the processes involved in telling a story from start to finish. They just want to be able to write a gosh darn story without having to stop every ten seconds to question every single word they’ve just written.

When experts say starting is the hardest part of learning something new, in most cases, they’re right. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to teach yourself how to play the most challenging instrument or struggling to write a book as good as the best one you’ve ever read. Starting something and sticking with it — especially when you’re honestly just terrible at it — just happens to be something not everyone can do successfully.

But what separates those who succeed from those who don’t — those who can keep squeaking away until they start to play real notes or continue to write bad stories until they accidentally crank out a good one compared to those who can’t?

It’s not money. It’s not even talent or the resources you do or don’t have available to you.

It’s resilience — something you can only build through failure.

Continue reading “When You Just Want to Be Good at Writing Already | The Blank Page” →

You will release imperfect things into this void.

You will work for days, weeks, months on a project and hold your breath and hit publish and still, after all that effort, after all that time, it won’t be perfect. It will be flawed.

And yet you’ll work for days, weeks, months on yet another project, and another, releasing those too, even though they won’t be perfect.

You do this because you have no other choice.

You do this because you are a writer who is learning the ways of the creative world. And doing all this, working so hard, showing off your work even though you know it could be better? That is the way of things.

You just don’t know it yet.

Continue reading “You Will Release Imperfect Things Into This Void” →

1. Finish writing a book, even if you close it out and never look at it again after that.

2. Self-publish a book just so it’s easier to share with your family and friends (because why not?).

3. Get an article published on your favorite fan site or blog.

4. Network with other writers/online creators — make friends!

Continue reading “12 Writing Ambitions That Aren’t ‘Becoming a Bestselling Author’” →

1. You’re learning that writing even 200 words on a bad day is better than nothing — and you’re getting better at celebrating those small kinds of wins.

2. You know there’s a good story in this big mess you’re making, and you’re determined to find it. Eventually.

3. You’re unapologetically not great at writing this thing, and that’s OK. No one is good at writing a first draft. It’s called a draft for a reason.

4. You’re able to laugh at yourself a little. Not take yourself so seriously, and all that. Hey, you’re human. You know making mistakes is just part of this whole process.

Continue reading “12 Signs You’re Going to Make It Out of This First Draft Alive” →

1. The act of writing itself may seem simple, but going from not writing to writing in a matter of minutes just won’t happen for everyone every time. It’s normal. There’s nothing “wrong” with you.

2. Writing is also something most who do it desperately want to do well, if not perfectly, and setting your personal bar that high before you’ve even started is almost 100% guaranteed to lead to not reaching that bar.

3. Many people — maybe even you — are afraid that what you’re about to write won’t be worth your effort or time. You usually just have to do it anyway, even if you’re not totally confident about it.

4. Sometimes we try to use writing as a procrastination tool for avoiding something else we need to do. Do that thing you don’t want to do first, and writing will come much easier once that other thing has been checked off your list.

Continue reading “Feeling Unmotivated to Write? Here Are 10 Things You Need to Know” →

1. Don’t talk about writing on the internet more than you actually write off the internet.

2. Making writer friends is much more valuable in the long-term than treating everyone as your competition, especially online.

3. Your social media presence should be a reflection of who you are and what you’re interested in, not constant self-promotion.

4. Don’t ask random strangers to review your work for free, even if you do admire/respect them and their work.

Continue reading “12 Unofficial Internet Rules All Writers Should Know” →