Hey there! Today marks the beginning of a new weekly feature especially for writers. The Wednesday coffee wisdom posts have been fun for the past year, but it’s always good to change things up occasionally.
On Writer Wednesday, I’ll share a brief video of motivation or encourgement along with bonus tips!
Knowing where you’re going can make your writing life much easier. Although I am naturally an author who prefers writing without an outline, to meet deadlines in an efficient manner, I had to find the right kind of map to work with. Too much outlining spoiled my journey, yet going without any sense of direction gave me too much leeway and made edits far more cumbersome than they needed to be.
When I chart any book – non-fiction or fiction – I begin with my general idea and what I want the reader to understand or feel by the end of the book. For fiction, digging into characters and how they’ll react on the story journey helps me find that happy medium that guides my writing process without wrecking the joy in the adventure. For non-fiction, I do more of a mindmap brainstorm, connecting ideas and following those ideas down a few rabbit holes until I’m satisfied I have the right idea for the content.
The character journey and mind map then translate effectively into a working ‘guideline’ to keep me on track through the writing process.
During a recent writer’s conference I heard several authors describe their outlining or pre-writing habits and each of them had a slightly different routine. Play with different strategies and don’t be afraid to test and discard options until you find what works best for you.
Live the writing adventure!
2Aug2017
p.s. Visit the For Writers page for more resources and encouragement for your writing journey as well as more details on the Cynthia Bazin-Regan Black mastermind/coaching program for writers.
