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?

Summer Hiatus Week Two

Self Care Prompt:

Write a letter to your inner critic telling her to shut the hell up. No, seriously. Tell her all the reasons you don’t care what she thinks. Be firm. Be raw. Be as brutal to her as she is to you. Don’t worry about hurting her feelings. She doesn’t have any.

Writing Prompt:

What age do you write for? What were the three most significant experiences you had at that age? Give yourself twenty minutes and do a timed writing about those three experiences. Be specific, not general. Not, I feared losing my best friend, but I stayed up for six nights in a row worrying who I would play with when Michele moved away because Amy liked to tease me about my braces. 

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A couple of housekeeping things before we really disappear for the summer!

If you haven't filled out our poll on the sidebar yet, please do! We have 288 followers and only 14 respondents so far. We'd love to know what you'd like from SVP in the coming months.

Also, we have a couple of book prizes we need to give away!

Winner of last months drawing for a copy of The Basilisk's Lair goes to . . . Natalie Aguirre! Natalie, email me with your address and I'll get that copy right out to you.

Winner of last weeks The Healing Spell is . . .  Magdalena Scott! Email Mary with your snail mail address and she will get your prize in the mail.