An amazingly kind and patient woman at GoDaddy helped transfer PlotWriMo: Revise Your Novel in a Month to its new home on Vimeo. When she understands what I do for a passion, she proceeds to tell me her whole life story -- one of sacrifice and triumph. Both major plot lines come directly from her heart, one through raising an autistic son and the other reconnecting to a long, long, long lost love.Finding the woman nearly my same age made me think back more than 30 years ago when I did my …
Catching Time to Write or Making Time?
Sounds like the difference between those of us who jump right in and write and those who plan and pre-plot first -- pantser or plotter?The moment words appear on the page, differences cease to exist -- all writers transcend time and space. Whether you're writing to escape your real life, to feel a sense of control over some aspect of your life, resolve bad feelings, define your beliefs, find meaning in some bad or sad or negative experience, share your passion, follow your heart writing becomes …
5 Tips How to Achieve Your Goals When Faced with an Antagonist: Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Goal setting for your characters determines the character emotional development plot, sets the dramatic action plot and points to the overall meaning of the story.The goals you set for yourself determine your emotional development and they form an action plan for a meaningful life.You meet an antagonist -- internal: you wonder why bother, your story sucks, even you're bored by your own story or external: the dog needs to be walked, the mother her medicine, the family demands dinner now, the …
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Finish that Draft of Your Story Now
You started 2014 with the best intentions to write / finish your novel, memoir, screenplay. Now you're faltering with serious doubts that all this time and effort is going to "pay off" (add your own personal pay off here). Rather than write, which makes you feel good about yourself and life at large when you do, you beat yourself up instead with words and a tone you'd never sling at anyone other than yourself.Forget all that. Instead, dig out that old story you threw in the bottom drawer …
Forever Grateful to Writers Digest
I came to writing late in life after a career of helping kids with speech, language and learning disabilities much like I had grappled with. Sinking into the imaginative, non-verbal world of words felt safe, though not always natural. I struggled with plot. After deconstructing stories and discovering many of the hidden elements of plot, I began sharing with writing friends what I was learning.My first big "break", though I wasn't thinking about breaking into anythingother than I was simply …
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