That Dreaded Writer's Block

Many writers say that there is no such thing as writer's block. I disagree. There are many times when you sit down to write and nothing comes. There are no words. Not “crap” words, just nothing. Your brain is a blank, just like your sheet of paper. I know it to be true because it's happened to me often over the last year. How do you fix it? I'll share 10 ideas that have helped me get the words from my brain to the page.

1. Try some music. Sometimes getting into a different medium will relax you and allow your words to start flowing.
2. Use a writing prompt. Even though it might have nothing to do with what your work in progress, a prompt gets your creative juices flowing.
3. Read a few pages of a book. You can choose one in your same genre or a totally different one. Reading another author's words can inspire your own.
4. Change locations. Perhaps a change in scenery is what you need. If you're indoors, try heading outside for a bit. I find nature to be inspirational. If you're at home, head to the bookstore, library or coffee shop.
5. Look at some pictures or create your own art. Art stimulates emotions. Emotions are part of what we communicate when we write. So get your emotions going and get the words flowing!
6. Read some affirming quotes. Quotes that affirm your calling as a writer and your gift of creativity help unearth again your passion for this craft.
7. Make a list. Make a list of other things on your mind. You might just be distracted. Putting those distractions on paper may free your mind to focus on the task at hand.
8. Take a bubble bath. I know it sounds weird but bubble baths are relaxing. Sometimes when you sit down to write, you get stressed out when the words don't flow. So go enjoy some bubbles and then lets the words bubble out of you onto the page.
9. Journal. Start writing the thoughts running through your mind. I've started doing this and then suddenly an idea directly related to my project crops up. When that happens, you have your starting point for the day!
10. Read something else you wrote. Sometimes reading your own words will spark new ones, Give it a try and see what fresh idea appears.

There are many more things you can do to combat writer's block. These are just a starting point. My final piece of advice is to not get stressed. Writer's write. Even if all you can get on paper is one or two sentences, it's writing. That's what we do!

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Marietta (Mari) Taylor

Author of “Surviving Unemployment: Devotions To Go

http://www.mariettataylor.net

http://marismorningroom.blogspot.com/

About Mari:

Marietta (Mari) Taylor is the author of Surviving Unemployment Devotions To Go and is a monthly blogger at the Go Ask Mom blog on WRAL.com. Each month she blogs about parenting teenagers. Mari was also a contributor to the devotional anthology Penned From the Heart XV. Mari resides in Raleigh, NC with her husband of 18 years and her two teenage daughters. Mari has a bachelor's degree in Biology and currently works in Healthcare IT. She is also a small group leader for the women's ministry at her church and is the lead teacher for the toddler room in the church nursery. The most important thing about Mari's writing is that others would come to know, accept and adore the God who has created such a crazy jumble of things that make her who she is.

Preparing to Present

Curriculum fairs, teachers' conferences, librarians' conferences and other similar events are great ways to get yourself known by offering workshops and being an exhibitor. Who better to show what you know and get your books in the right hands than this group of folks.

I've been working on my children's workshops for about three years now. What happens when a conference geared for teachers and school librarians asks you to do a presentation? You rack your brain and try like crazy to come up with a workshop that works.

Recently I made contact with the SC Independent Schools Association (SCISA) inquiring about being an exhibitor at the upcoming teachers' conference. After explaining what my books were about and how they would be perfect in schools and/or classes, the lady on the other end of the phone stated, "We would love to have you as a presenter in addition to being an exhibitor." My reply? It was something on the lines of "Well, I usually do workshops for kids and don't really feel I have anythng to offer teachers." No, it doesn't end there. She assured me that teachers love having authors do presentations since they are always looking for creative ways to teach the students writing. So I thought about it a few minutes (or maybe it was an hour or two) and then went on one of my social networks and posted a comment something like this Elysabeth42 wonders what she has to offer teachers when she is but a writer herself?. The replies I received from the teachers in my network were amazing. That one plurk (like twitter but to me much more enjoyable and easier to follow the postings) went on my FB page as well as my twitter page. I received a direct comment from a twitter follower @SCASL about doing presentations for librarians as well. So, now I'm in the process of coming up with workshops or presentations geared for librarians and teachers.

The process will take a little time for me since I have to switch my mindset. I know what I have to offer but it's a matter of putting it into action.

I also may be doing a short presentation to a group of teachers at a curriculum fair but right now that isn't definite.

My question to all those writers who do workshops for groups of adults is what is your process? What kind of workshops have worked for you in the past? Do you do the same workshops at every opportunity you are asked to present or do you switch them out every so often? How do you go about getting the opportunities to be a presenter? I think I will come up with several different workshops geared for different groups - one or two for teachers and one or two for librarians - but on similar lines. This way, if I present to groups in the same area and there are some repeat people, they won't be bored.

Remember, it is all about making the right connections - the ones who will benefit from your books, and the ones who have the buying power to make sure your books get in the right places. - E :)

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Ma America, The Travelin' Maven (Elysabeth Eldering)
Author of the JGDS, 50-state, mystery, trivia series
Where will the adventure take you next?
http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com
http://jgdsseries.weebly.com

Author of "Finally Home", a YA paranormal mystery coming soon
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://eeldering.weebly.com

About Elysabeth:
Elysabeth Eldering is a traveler from birth. She has traveled with her family due to her father being in the military. She has lived in several states and overseas during her childhood. Ms. Eldering calls South Carolina home these days with a mindset of "Southern by choice, not by birth." She entered her first writing contest at the age of 41 and took second place for a children's mystery story, which has inspired her to take that story and write a series for children, the premise being that each state would be the mystery. Her series has a Jeopardy!® like style to it but for guessing the state in the form of a question. Each book concentrates on one state and there are supplemental study guides available, which take the series cross curriculum. For more information on the series, please visit the JGDS website. Elysabeth may be reached at eeldering@gmail.com with any questions or to place an order.

Relating to Your Reader with Tal Yanai

You sit down to write a book when you feel passionate about something, having the desire to share it with others. So writing a book, in part, is the art of building relationships with people you don’t know, and who have no idea you even exist. Well, it’s not that bad, just makes the process a bit more challenging, and in the long run, makes you a better writer.

The process of relating to your readers starts with understanding your audience. After deciding on a targeted audience, ask yourself what do you know about them? For example, you decided to write a self help book for teens (hi, just like me….), what do you know about them? What do their daily activities look like and what motivates them to do or not to do things? What problems do teens face and what make them feel exposed and vulnerable? Once you have a good understanding of the issues, you positioned yourself as someone who can provide good answers.

Based on your understanding of the audience, you will be able to connect on issues that matter to them most. For example, showing you understand the emotional and moral dilemma teens experience when feeling obligated to do something as a result of peer pressure, will build your credibility and help the young readers stay open minded as they continue reading. In general, connecting with readers on the emotional level is a good way of bringing them into the story. You can bring back memories by providing details most readers would find easy to relate to. Most readers will be able to relate to your story when they read about what a teenager feels being in a summer camp and away from home. The images you will create in this part of the story will trigger an emotional memory for most of them. Almost anyone will think, “Oh yeah, I remember….” The period time of uncertainty, being away from the parents but still having a wonderful time with old or new friends can be used to open many emotional doors. If you write a Self Help book, for example, you can use this background to show that the character in the book, despite hesitations at first, was able to experience something new and exciting, and the same is possible for the readers, if they only gave it a chance.

Details bring your story alive; however, sometimes you are better off staying with more general descriptions, so not to lose a large part of the audience. Let’s say you decide to write a book about sport fans and spend too much time focusing on baseball, you might lose readers who like basketball better. Instead, you could describe in details experiences all fans have in comment, such as the excitement driving into the game, entering the stadium and the electricity in the air when the home team enters the field. Everyone who ever went to a ballgame would relate to your story, even if the background is a baseball field and not a basketball court.

Finally, be yourself! Your readers already read books about sport, self help, cooking, or home decorating. And they don’t mind reading another one! Let your creative inner voice lead your writing and find interesting angles to the story. This inner voice is there wanting to express itself for quite some time now. Find it, listen to it, create with it, and the readers will relate to it.

Meet Tal Yanai: During his formative years, Tal Yanai was not happy with his reality. What he was creating in his life was not in alignment with what he wanted in his heart or what he knew and deeply felt was possible.

For two years he worked as an historical analyst at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, established by Steven Spielberg after the filming of Schindler’s List. As part of his job, he listened every day to testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Many were children or teenagers during WWII and their stories greatly influenced Tal’s decision to become involved with educating youth, so he proceeded to get his Teaching Credential in Social Studies.

Bringing two wonderful children into the world gave him a new sense of urgency to share and teach everything he’s learned about God and spirituality. Today, Tal teaches Hebrew and Judaic Studies in Temple Beth Hillel in the San Fernando Valley as he continues his quest to explore the meaning of soul and achieve his full potential as a spiritual teacher.


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Self Publishing Your Poetry – A Brief Primer (and a few pitfalls)

Self-publishing is an option open to everyone and it’s becoming easier and more powerful with different software and online options becoming available all the time.  Why would you want to self-publish?  Here are a few reasons:

  

There are no entry barriers. You don’t need a list of publications or any kind of awards to be considered, and your work can be on any topic. You retain complete control over the look, quality, and promotion of your work.

You retain a far greater profit for your book.  

You learn a lot and it can be quite fun if you enjoy playing around with your computer and trying out new things.  Although the learning curve is steep (more about that soon), your learning belongs to you - you can apply it immediately and improve what's already out there.

But self-publishing isn’t all roses.  You’ve got to do everything yourself and it’s hard work.  You’ll have to learn about formatting, about graphics, about designing a cover, about ‘bleeds’, about document conversions, about distribution channels, about Amazon and other online stores and the list goes on and on.  If all you want to do is write, then self-publishing is probably not for you (and believe me, it will take time that you would otherwise have been spent writing).  

The biggest pitfall in self-publishing is that you don't automatically get a professional editor like you do with traditional publishing.  Because this is an area that should never be skimped on, if you do decide to save money by not bringing in a professional, you may end up producing a sub-standard quality book.  A book full of mistakes is not only unprofessional, it can render a book almost unreadable, and will tarnish your name as a writer in general.  There is already a bias against self-published books and this is the key reason.  So if you do decide to self-publish, obtaining a high-quality editor has got to be the first priority and that may require some outlay upfront.  If you really can't afford a professional then you must bring in someone else - someone picky and meticulous.  This isn't an option.

How do you self-publish? The easiest way is to just add a cover and copyright information to your book and save as a .pdf file.  Lo’ and behold you’ve now got an ebook which you can sell from a website or blog.  When you do this, 100% of your sales are profits, but you may not get many sales!  

Or you can send your digital book to one of the big copy houses like Snap printing or Qwikcopy and have them print out what you need when you need it.  You can hand print and staple your work too, although it won’t be very professional looking. 

You can also go with one of the print on demand companies, who will produce a professional looking product for nothing, but take a cut of each sale.  Many of them will also provide you with a barcode and ISBN.  You probably won’t make much, but the book will be attractive, and often you can buy copies inexpensively and hand sell, which is probably the best way to sell poetry.  Some of the more well known print companies include:

CreateSpace:  this is Amazon’s own publishing house and to my mind, it’s one of the best.  It will take you a while to learn their particular formatting requirements, but everything is .pdf based, fairly straightforward, and they’ll give you all the templates you need.  The one key advantage this one has over the others is that your book will be sold on Amazon once it’s complete.  Also their prices are pretty reasonably, and I suspect will set a trend that others will quickly follow. 

Lulu: Self publishing / print on demand publisher. Very popular. You can sell your book directly from their website. 

Cafe Press - Self publishing / print on demand publisher. Also popular. 

There are plenty of others out there and new opportunities opening all the time, but bear in mind that none of them will edit your work, and few of them will help you design and develop a professional cover, not to mention helping ensure that your poetry is pulled together in a manner best suited to it.  

You probably won't get rich selling poetry no matter what you do, which is part of the reason why it's hard to find a traditional publisher, especially if your work is unusual, experimental, or controversial.  But self-publishing your work is not difficult and it can be a fun way to begin learning about and developing your author platform - getting your name and your words out to the public.  

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Get to Know Your Character

By Dallas Woodburn

Once upon a time, Peter Pan was just a faceless name. Before The Lord of the Rings, Frodo was merely an image inside Tolkien’s mind. When I was in elementary school, nobody had heard of Harry Potter.

Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? As readers, we often get so attached to our favorite characters that it can be difficult to remember they aren’t real beings but rather figments of an author’s wonderful imagination brought to life on the page. Indeed, I believe one of the most important aspects – if not the most important aspect – of a good story is its characters. The characters are the ones who bring the reader inside the story – and keep her turning the pages to the final sentence. Characters are the ones who make the reader feel like he has a stake in what happens.

How can you create interesting, memorable characters who feel like real people? Get to know them yourself! YA author Joan Bauer once told me she writes 30-page biographies of all her main characters before she even starts writing the book. Now, I’m not saying you need to write a 30-page biography, but you can at least spend a few minutes interviewing your character and getting to know him or her better.

Below are some possible questions to answer in the “voice” of your character. These are just to give you ideas – feel free to jump off into answering your own questions! See where the “voice” of your character takes you!

My name is …
I am ___ years old. My birthday is ____.
I live in …
I like to …
My favorite color is …
My favorite food is …
My favorite type of music is …
My favorite movie is …
My favorite animal is …
My best friend is …
My secret hideout is …
I dream about …
I am obsessed with…
My greatest fear is …
My greatest wish is …
If I had a super power, it would be …
I love …
Something that makes me really angry is …
I worry about …
One day, I hope …

As you get to know your character better, you might find a story developing. Some ideas to get you started:

My happiest memory is …
My saddest memory is …
My most embarrassing moment is…
My favorite holiday has always been…
Last summer, I …
I was terrified when …
My life changed forever when …
The last time I cried was …
One time, I lied about …
I couldn’t believe my eyes when …
I never, ever thought I would …
I knew I was in trouble when …

Do you have any other questions you ask your characters? Share them with other writers! Email them to me at dallaswoodburn@aol.com and they might be posted on my blog, http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com.

Bio: Dallas Woodburn is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories and editor of Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today’s best youth writing. She has written more than 80 articles and essays for national publications including Family Circle, Writer’s Digest, The Los Angeles Times, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Creative Writing and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Fiction Writing at Purdue University, where she also teaches undergraduate writing courses.

Website: http://www.writeonbooks.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/writerdallas
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dallaswoodburn

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Shore-Up Your Sagging Middle

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Shore Up Your Sagging Middle

Writing is a lot like building a bridge. Each scene serves as scaffolding or supports for your entire story to rest on without sagging.

Maybe you’ve made a great start. You have a dynamite hook (some of my favorites: “The last camel collapsed at noon.” Ken Follet, and “The man with ten minutes to live was laughing.” Frederick Forsyth). You’ve gotten off to a good strong start. Maybe you know how your book is going to end, and even have the final scene written.
Now, how do you get through the middle part without it sagging and possibly collapsing?

First of all, you don’t need to write chronologically. You can write scenes out of order. Pick out some highlights and write those scenes, then see if you can figure out what you might be able to fill in between A and G.

Now, send your inner “nice guy” out for ice cream and figure out just how mean you can be to your character. Conflict is the key to keeping a story moving, to shoring it up. You’ve introduced your character and the problem she has to solve. You know what the goal is at the end.

Let’s say Cathy Character wants to be the first teenage girl to climb Mount Huge. What are her obstacles? Her parents are against the idea. It’s too expensive, too dangerous, she’s not in shape, who else is going, etc. Cathy has to overcome each objection, solve each problem.

Maybe her neighbor is a banker, so she approaches him for a loan. If he smiles and says,” Sure, Cathy, anything for you,” the problem is solved too quickly. The story can get boring and the reader’s interest will sag quickly.

But what if he says no? Now Cathy has to figure out another way to raise money. What should she do – a bake sale, a part-time job, rob the local drive-in? (You can see the various paths this story could take.) There are all kinds of ideas and none of them should be easy.

Every time your character figures out a way over, around or through a problem, throw up another obstacle, within reason, of course. You don’t want her to fail at everything.

But when she solves the money part of the problem, there should be another one waiting. Who, besides her parents, are going to oppose her? Does she have a rival? Or is there a friend who is supposedly helping her, but is actually sabotaging Cathy’s efforts?

Building a story is like constructing a bridge. You need conflict as the pillars that shore up the middle.

For each scene you write, ask yourself:
• What is the purpose of this scene?
• Does it move the story forward? (What if I take it out? Does the story flow well without it?)
• Can the reader identify with the character’s problem and struggles?
• Have you created suspense? (Will the reader want to keep reading to find out how your character solves this one? What’s at stake for him/her?)
Have fun being mean to your character and building your bridge!




A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently been released. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild and Pacific Northwest Writers Association. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series. Please visit her website and blog at http://www.heidimthomas.com

Personality Tests for Character Development?

Character development has always been difficult.  If readers cannot fall in love with, feel empathy for, identify with or, on the other hand, hate, be repulsed by, or fear your characters there is little investment for finishing your work. Who couldn’t identify with Harry, Ron and Hermione? I the strength of their personalities that attract readers young and old, male and female, from all socioeconomic groups and all ethnicities. 

One of the best tools for creating interesting, believable and multi dimensional characters is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  Taking the time to learn how to effectively use this tool can be invaluable. 

Do you want your character to have an “out there” personality or one that is more introspective and reserved?  Do you want him to be an idea man or the realistic, this is the way it is kind of guy?  Is your heroine the strong, no nonsense, take charge type like J. D. Robb’s character Eve Dallas or more stereotypical female?  Do you want a character that is goal oriented, time sensitive and orderly or more fly by the seat of the pants, flexible and spontaneous? 

When you have an understanding of personality type and how it influences everything from how a person socializes to how she makes decisions, the possibilities for creating believable, intriguing characters that readers want to get to know are endless.

So check out www.capt.org, or www.personalitypage.com, contact a local mental health professional, or go to the library. 

First learn about yourself, then apply that knowledge to your characters.   

Good Luck!

By: Dr. Anita Tieman

Dr. Tieman worked with Martha Swirzinski to write 3 children's books. 

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