Let's Write

Time has not been on my side this week juggling work commitments with my burning desire to spend time writing so that I can reach the end of the first act of my latest story where I’m struggling to keep up with the new direction my plot is heading off in.

The best part about writing is that I have so much in the way of resources to work with. I love books and have many shelves (and desk space) full of reference books, dictionaries and thesauruses, and I use creative writing books to help myself get through what I term ‘blank spells’. Three particular books that live on my desk are Outlining Your Novel, by K M Weiland, Outlining Your Novel Workbook, also by K M Weiland, and a firm favourite is Alan Watt’s The-90-Day Novel.

There's a universe of online writing resources I access on a regular bases. Among these a few of my favourites are:

www.businesswritingblog.com – Lynn Gaertner-Johnston’s fabulous and comprehensive site for grammar, syntax, proofreading symbols, and so much more. It is a business writing site but the writing resource section is tremendous if you’re looking for specific information.

www.edufind.com – The English Grammar tab provides guidelines and rule for everything you need to know about the correct use of English grammar.

www.Rinkworks.com – I can spend hours on this site. My favourite is the Hobbies section, particularly Fun with Words and Fantasy Name Generator.

One of the best writing blogs I've come across and subscribe to is K M Weiland’s site www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com. Signing up to her newsletter was one of the best things I ever did as a budding writer, and there are fab resources including a superb Story Structure Database.

Another favourite of mine is author Jody Hedlund's blog http://jodyhedlund.blogspot.co.uk which I find refreshingly honest and often very helpful, written from the heart of a story-teller.

My greatest writing struggle is avoiding clichés. I'm on a constant quest for unique characters, plots, scenarios and narratives. Getting these wrong slams my creative door tightly shut. Discovering Alan Watt’s the 90-day novel (although, in my case, this stretched to the 90-week novel and beyond) opened up the writing experience for me in so many ways, and I found this to be one of the easiest guides to follow.

A defining moment for my writing came when I reached Day 8 of Watt's book (the introduction of the three-act story structure) when I realised that all of the guides and advice on story structure and outlining I've read over the years had never managed to clarify the process for me in the way this book did. My Day 8 stretched into several weeks as I poured over my three-act story structure until the final eureka moment when I realised that I finally had what I’d been missing all along.