We’re Baaaack!

And very happy to be so! I hope you all had a hugely productive summer. In fact, we would love to hear what you’ve all accomplished over the last couple of months! As we all straggle back in get settled into our fall routines, we’d love to have a Milestone Monday and learn what everyone’s been working on, accomplished, any breakthroughs people have had. You know the drill.

I’ll start. I actually (finally) finished a manuscript I’ve been working on (off and on) for four l-o-n-g years. Boy, did that feel good! It is my first YA and I am very excited about it.

As for Mary’s milestone, well, there is some good news and some bad news. And the bad news is actually more bittersweet. Mary has radically unplugged. Over the summer she deleted her Twitter and Facebook accounts and is going deeply inward for the next year and taking a year’s sabbatical from SVP.  ::sob!::

I am hugely proud of her that she is honoring her introverted needs and process, but I will sorely miss her presence here throughout the coming year. The important thing is, that if any of you have been feeling a similar need, do let Mary’s decision be a gentle nudge in that direction. She reports that her stress has been reduced by 75% and her muse is happy, happy, happy with the decision.

The good news is that we have lots of exciting things on the menu for you in the coming months. By popular demand, we will be running both a Discover Your Online Persona workshop as well as a Shrinking Violet Bootcamp. We’ll be starting with the Persona workshop on Oct. 4. The Bootcamp will probably begin sometime after the first of the year. We also have a bunch of inspiring, educational, eye opening, and perspective challenging guest posts on the horizon, which I also hope you’ll enjoy.

Also, if you are a regular Shrinking Violet reader and have a new book coming out in the upcoming year, drop me a line, will you? We’d love to celebrate your launch here as well as get your picture up in our sidebar.

And lastly, I’d like to point you to a terrific article, The Revenge of the Introvert, in the current Psychology Today by Laurie Helgoe, who has been a frequent guest poster here on SVP. The article also features Nancy Ancowitz, yet another frequent guest poster here. Do take a moment to read this terrific article.

Look forward to hearing all about your milestones!

Summer Hiatus: The Final Week!

Try an experiment for a week. Every night before you go to bed, write down on a piece of paper something for your subconscious to work on while you sleep. It can be a plot problem or the outline for the next day’s scene; it can be one of the obstacles you constantly run into while trying to find time to write. Whatever needs solving. The point is to give your subconscious an assignment and see if it comes through for you. 

Be sure and check back next week! We'll be back from our Summer Hiatus and ready to rumble! Or grumble! Or . . . something.  ;-]

Summer Hiatus Week Seven

Self Care:

Find an inexpensive notebook and start a word collection. It can be names, verbs, actions, words to describe something you talk about a lot in your book (the sensation of fear or apprehension or loneliness. Handing actions to use instead of having your characters look and gaze at each other all the time, like mine do. )

Writing Prompt:

Are there at least two moments in your book where your protagonist makes things worse?

Summer Hiatus Week Six

Self care:

Next time you are out running errands, take $10 and spend it on something for your writing. It can be a cute little notebook, colorful paperclips, unusual post-it-notes, colored index cards, a big piece of foam core board for that collage you keep meaning to do.

Writing prompt:

To jiggle loose scene ideas: Pick a point in your novel that feels flat. Divide a piece of blank paper in two. On one side, write down everything your character knows right now. On the other side, right everything your character will need to know by the end. These can be either external plot point type things or internal realizations the character will need to come to.

Summer Hiatus Week Five

Self Care:

Make a list of the five obstacles you run into time and again when it comes to your writing. Depending on where you are in your writing journey, this could be logistical (time, family’s acceptance) or mental and emotional blocks. For the next five days, take one obstacle each day and brainstorm as many ways as you can to work around that obstacle.

Writing Prompt:

Draw a rudimentary map of your character’s house, neighborhood, country or any significant place where they spend their days. Does it in any way alter how you view their world and how they move around in it? Are you taking full advantage of the physical world of your novel? Is there some inherent potential for conflict you could use or heighten in the book, based on this map?

Summer Hiatus Week Four

Self Care:

Quick, before summer is over, can you pick a week and arrange it so that you give yourself one day off from everything but writing and your immediate family? Cook meals ahead of time, assign the kids to fix an easy breakfast, have your spouse take the kids to the beach alone? 

Writing Prompt:

Not everyone grows up poor, but can you remember a moment when you felt deprived? Write for ten minutes on what you were deprived of and how that felt. How did it shape you? Is there a place in your story where your protagonist feels deprived?

Summer Hiatus Week Three

Self Care Prompt:

What are the five coolest things people have said about your writing? Write them down, then print them out and put them someplace where you can see them every day.

Writing Prompt:

What parts of yourself shamed or embarrassed you the most when you were your character’s age? Can you think of any situation where those same attributes would be a strength?