This is the 1st of your 3 free articles
FREE TRIAL Available!
Already a member? Sign in to continue reading
Take something you have recently learned – a fact, a skill – and give it to one of your characters in a significant way. Make what you have learned a key element in the progression of the scene. For bonus points, teach yourself something you have always wanted to learn – a foreign language, how to pick a lock. When you feel a little confident in your new skill, write five pages showing one of your characters learning the same thing. Draw out areas of frustration and confusion.
A writing conference is a perfect mix of all the ingredients you need to grow as a writer. It doesn’t matter if you are just beginning or have a thriving writing career; a good conference provides everything, and it all happens over the span of a few days.
Feeling overwrought by a lack of writing time? Finding time to write is about figuring out what works best for you & your passion.
“E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
