Why I Hated Writing And What I Did About It

A terrible thing happened when I was writing my latest book. 

I hated writing it.

 

I kept going and finished the first draft, but I wasn’t enjoying the process at all.

 

And as we all know, if you don’t enjoy writing it will always result in bad writing.

 

We can’t hide our feelings from our writing.

 

I sat there dumbfounded, staring at all the useless garbage I’d just written. No matter how many different ways I looked at it there was no way I could save any of it.

 

So what had gone wrong?

 

I realised that I’d written it from the vaguest of outlines and I’d forgotten where I was going with it, so I’d simply ‘winged’ most of it, not even knowing what points I was trying to make along the way.

 

So I scrapped the whole thing, thousands of words and hours of time lost. But it had to be done.

 

I then planned it out, outlined it thoroughly so I’d know exactly what I wanted to say, and rewrote the whole thing.

 

And this time I enjoyed writing it and I managed to finish it in just one week. In fact, I was enjoying working on it so much, I was disappointed when it was finished.

 

No doubt the same thing happens to you sometimes too. You start writing a new book, but you’re not enjoying it and it’s not your best work. Something is wrong and you need to figure out what that is.

 

It may be that you simply need a better plan, a better outline, and clearer direction of what you need to do.

 

Take the time to figure out where you’re going wrong, and get a clear plan of action.

 

 

The 12 Month Writing Challenge: Write and Publish 12 Books in a Year

Use the introductory discount code ‘12mthpromo.’

BONUS copy of The One Month Author

https://cheritonhousepublishing/books/12MTH.hml

 

The One Little Secret That Separates Prolific Writers From Clueless Wannabes

I’ve been a writer for a long time and one thing I love, is having written. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write, but when one of my books is written and published, it’s a great feeling of accomplishment. It also motivates me to do it all over again.

And it’s this immense feeling of satisfaction that prolific writers feel over and over again.

It’s also the feeling that writing wannabes know nothing about.

So is that the difference between a prolific writer and a wannabe?

Nope.

The secret (that is absolutely no secret at all) that separates prolific writers from dreamers, is that the prolific writers write. They not only write, they work.

Writing is what they do for a living. It’s what they spend most of their time doing.

I always think that what makes a writer prolific is that they’re organised. They make time for their writing and they stick to it.

They also know exactly what they’ll be doing before they even sit down.

Their writing plans aren’t just day to day, but year to year, sometimes planning 5 years in advance how many books they’re going to write and how they’re going to expand their writing business over time.

Writing is like anything else in life, in that you can’t get what you want until you know what it is that you want.

So, what if you decided that you want to write 12 books in the next 12 months?

How would you do it?

You’d need a plan. A plan to write, publish, and market a dozen books in a year.

And it all starts with clicking the link below to learn more.

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/12MTH.html

(Use the discount code: 12mthpromo)

Over 200 Writing Markets and a Writing Competition

Here is a list containing over 200 writing markets to choose from, and a play writing competition, to help you earn even more money from your writing.

And when you've finished with the list, go over to https://ruthiswriting.com/books/12MTH.html and use the discount code, 12mthpromo, to download your own copy of The 12 Month Writing Challenge for only $9.99 while this less-than-half-price deal lasts. It's already proving popular.  :)

Happy writing and earning.

Speculative Science Fiction Stories

Proton Reader is a new, not-for-profit speculative & science fiction semiprozine.

Accepting stories ranging from 250 to 15,000 words.

Speculative fiction involves speculating in some form or another (directly, indirectly, metaphorically, etc) about the human condition in the immediate or distant future. 

Prefer stories that use technology over stories that use magic.

Payment: $0.08/word for the first 2,000 words, and $0.02/word after that.

Deadline: Midnight 31st January 2022

https://protonreader.com

The Financial Diet

TFD is “the #1 destination for women to talk about money.”

Looking for pitches of personal essays and experience about money.

No topic is too serious, or not serious enough.

Saving money by going to free yoga meet-up groups is just as valid as hard-learned investment advice. It’s all part of living smarter.

Everyone has a story to tell about personal finance, whether it’s living with six figures of student debt or buying a home at 25.

Pitch via email with Headline idea(s), and a 2-3 sentence description of your proposed article(s).

Article length: 800-1,000 words.

Payment: $250 per article

https://thefinancialdiet.com/write-for-us/

10 Literary Magazines Open to Fiction, Poetry, Essays NOW

Here are ten literary magazines with no firm deadlines open to submissions right now.

These publications want everything from horror, to SFF, to social commentary, to anarchist poetry, to Yiddish humor. The sky's the limit. None charge submission fees and all are paying markets.

https://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2022/01/10-literary-magazines-open-to-fiction.html

Playwright Competition

The 2022 Platform Presents Playwright’s Prize. 

An open call for distinctive, dynamic, heart-stopping, extraordinary, wonderful plays.

Plays to be no more than 10,000 words.

The prize includes ongoing mentoring and producing the winning script, as well as the £5,000 cash prize.

Closing Date: 7th March 2022

https://www.nycplaywrights.org/2021/12/2022-platform-presents-playwrights.html

94 Poetry Manuscript Publishers Who Do Not Charge Reading Fees

Most traditional poetry manuscript publishers charge their readers a fee to submit.

This is the longest and most accurate list of poetry manuscript publishers who do not charge fees for online or postal submissions. 

https://authorspublish.com/94-poetry-manuscript-publishers-who-do-not-charge-reading-fees/

Children’s Picture Books

Cardinal Rule Press are accepting unsolicited submissions for children’s picture books that empower children through meaningful stories for readers, age 4-11.

Stories must be realistic fiction, meaning, it could happen in our real world.

Word Count: Up to 1,000 words.

Deadline February 1st, 2022

https://cardinalrulepress.com/submissions/

100 Websites that Pay Writers in 2022

In this list, you’ll find a variety of websites that pay you to write, covering various topics and pay rates.

https://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/websites-that-pay-you-to-write/

You Don’t Have To Write, You Get To Write

Photo by Austin Schmid on Unsplash

I was reading an article recently about a man who is a single parent of a very special needs child.

He said that his life seemed difficult and often he felt it was unfair that he was always so busy and that his son required his constant care.

Then one day he had an epiphany and suddenly his life was so much easier and pleasurable. He didn’t change a thing about his life. He still got up every day and did the same things he’d always done. The only thing that he did change was his attitude.

It all happened when he was showering with his son one night (his son can’t shower on his own) and he was grumping to himself about never being able to shower on his own because he always had to shower with his son.

Then for some unknown reason he suddenly stopped and thought, “I don’t HAVE to shower with my son, I GET to shower with him.”

And that was it. His life changed in that moment. He decided that from then on, he would stop saying ‘have to’ and say ‘get to’ instead. And that one small decision changed his whole life.

I then read about a woman whose friend had an auto-immune disease and could no longer move and needed constant nursing.

She said that seeing her friend’s predicament changed her life because it made her appreciate things instead of complaining.

She said that whenever she woke up during the night and had to turnover, instead of her usual irritable thought about being awake when she didn’t want to be, she’d think to herself that she didn’t have to turn over, she gets to turnover, which is more than her friend could do now. Her friend had to wait to be turned over, no matter how long she was awake and how uncomfortable she was. She didn’t get to turn over anymore.

Thinking that we get to do something instead of having to do it, puts everything in a new perspective of realising how lucky we are that we get to do so much.

And it can be applied to writing when you really don’t feel like it.

Just think that you don’t have to write, you get to write.

And then sit down and enjoy it.

Mission Critical For Life: Start Living Your Life on Your Terms by Pursuing Your True Life Mission

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCFL.html

This is better Than a Writing Prompt

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

Writing prompts are such useful things for getting our creative minds working. They also give us a starting idea of what to write about which is all a writer needs to get going.

But writing prompts are just that. A bump to get you started writing. Nothing more.

So, what if, instead of using random prompts, you look for paying markets and writing competitions and use them as prompts.

You don’t have to submit them, just use them as writing practice. There’s a lot of advantage of doing it this way.

1.    You’ll be practicing writing what the industry is looking for, so you’ll know what kind of writing sells         and what subjects/topics are currently popular.

2.    You’ll get used to writing to deadlines. Having a limited time to write can give you the bit of pressure you need to get your writing done. Writing to tight deadlines can also help improve your writing by not giving you time to second-guess yourself or to try and edit as you write, both of which are fatal to good writing.

3.    You can submit your writing if you want to and earn money. And because you’re only practicing your writing, it doesn’t matter if it gets accepted or not or if it wins a free competition or not. You’re just getting used to being a regular writer.

There really are no disadvantages to using writing markets and competitions as writing prompts.

It’s great practice, gets you writing regularly, and gets you used to deadlines.

Plus, you can submit your work if you want to, and even if it’s not accepted, you can find another market for it later. Or not.

And it can really get your creative mind working, which is what using prompts is all about.

Monthly Challenge Writing Series

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCWS1.html

Writing a Million Words a Year

I was reading a story recently about a writer, who already had two traditionally published novels, when she had a baby. She also had a full-time job. He husband, in his infinite wisdom, decided that writing, working, and family obligations were too much for her, so for the time being he said she should stop writing, and instead spend her time at home spending time with him and their new daughter.

Stop writing? What a dangerous thing to say to a writer.

Fast forward a year later, and she tells him that she's just had her latest book accepted by her publisher.

It turns out, she'd been using her lunch hour at work to write her novel.

Her husband was furious and accused her of being unfaithful. They had a huge fight about it and she was upset because he still wasn't speaking to her.

I thought, wow. This woman has a full-time job and is clearly a good mother and wife, yet her husband is angry at what she does at lunch time at work.

Writing during lunch at work is also how J K Rowling wrote her second Harry Potter book. Her first one was written when she was an unemployed single parent (which she hated) so she got a job once her first book was published and started her second. She wrote so much at work that one of her female colleagues eventually asked her if she was having an affair because she always turned down 'lunch with the girls'.

What all this goes to demonstrate is how easy it is to write a book if your determined to do so. And the important word here is DETERMINED. Just one hour a day helped these writers produce best-selling novels.

This year I plan to have my best writing year ever and write a book a month. So far I'm on track. I'm actually ahead of schedule.

I'm also currently reading a book about pulp fiction writers who used to be only paid by word count so they had to write a lot in order to earn a living.

They used average a million words a year. Some even wrote one and a half million words a year.

So I worked it out (with the help of my trusty calculator). 

To write a million words a year, if you wrote for 5 days a week, you'd need to write 3,800 words a day. 

Even if you only wrote during your lunch hour on week days, at 1,000 words an hour, you could still write 261,000 words a year (261 working days a  year).

So if you want to up your game (and it's certainly got my interest) to a million words a year, you need to write 3,800 words a day, 5 days a week.

Or if you want to write every day, it's a mere 2,700 words a day.

How about it?

What's your average daily word count?

If you don't know, try writing as much as you can in one week, and then divide it by 7. 

That will give you your daily average.

Then try and beat it every week.

Start today.

Writer Without A Clue

I bought an eBook a few weeks ago and it was fascinating to read.

It’s called “Writing Into The Dark” and it’s written by prolific author, Dean Wesley Smith.

He has written hundreds of books and short stories and this book is all about his writing process.

He calls what he does “Writing Into The Dark” because he begins all his novels and short stories (which are not so short because they’re all thousands of words long) and he has no clue how the story will start or end.

He begins with just a few words, or an incomplete idea in his head, and then he just starts writing with no idea as to how the story will develop or end. He doesn’t even know who the characters are until he makes them up as he goes along.

Writing this way would scare the pants off me. I can’t imagine sitting down to write a novel and not even know what it’s going to be about.

I have done free-writing exercises before where I’m given 3 random words and I have to write about them, or write a story that includes them, for 5 minutes without stopping.

I can actually write ¾ page this way, but it feels weird to have no direction with what I’m writing. Yet strangely enough, what I write in those 5 minutes without any forethought, is quite good. In fact I’ve expanded some of them into published articles and stories.

So maybe ‘Writing Into The Dark’ is a creative way to do things.

After all, it’s the way Dean Wesley Smith has been writing novels for years.

Either way, it was fascinating to read his book about his whole writing process.

https://amzn.to/3pYpS2B

How to Write More And More And More…

Do you dream of writing more? Do you see yourself sitting and writing and having hundreds of published books and selling thousands of copies every month?

If you do then it’s time to stop dreaming and start writing.

And although you’d love it if I told you a “secret” to getting more writing done,  I’m not going to tell you any such thing. In fact, I’m going to tell you the opposite.

The only way to write more is to have more bum-in-chair time and actually get your writing done. It really is that straight forward and simple.

But this is good news because when you spend more time writing, it help you in 3 ways.

1. You get more writing done. Successful writers are prolific writers and so that’s what you need to be too. The more time you spend writing, the more writing you’ll get done. It’s so so logical.
2. You’ll get faster. Anything we do continually makes us faster and better. It’s like when you learn to drive, or start a new job. At first it seems hard and time-consuming, but the more you do it the better you get and the faster you can do things.
3. It creates a writing habit. When you do something every day, it soon becomes a habit so you can do it without even thinking about it. And habits, as we know, make our lives easier and effortless - or at least the good ones do.

If you want to write more, then it means more bum-in-chair time and there’s no getting away from that. There is no quick fix or cheat or secret way to do it.

On the plus side, writing more makes it faster and easier to do, plus you’ll get better with practice too.

And that is the secret to writing more.

Mission Critical For Life: Start Living Life On Your Terms By Pursuing Your True Life Mission

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/MCFL.html