To write, you need to focus. You can write anywhere - in a coffee shop, at your dining room table, on the train - but you need to concentrate on the words you’re putting on the screen or the page not on the world around you. You need - -   Question: What colour does a Smurf turn if you choke it? - - - to shut your mind to distractions. To immerse yourself in the world you are creating on the page. You must listen to your characters. Discover their rhythms. Their flaws. Their - -   Question: Why is the letter called ‘double u’ when its two ‘v’s joined together?  - - motivations. Every character is unique because so is every writer. We all crave different surroundings. Some write best while listening to music. Many require silence. Others write while surrounded by people, while a number crave solitude. But all writers - - -   Question: Why do we press harder on the tv remote when the batteries are dead?  - - - must develop discipline. You must b...

There’s a saying: Go big, or go home . That’s great to say if your goal is to pump someone up, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with “going small.” Going small can actually help you in many activities, to include marketing your book. Buy Local image by Stuart Miles with FreeDigitalPhotos If you want to market your book, start in your own backyard. Why go local when marketing your book? Well, you know the area, you more than likely already know people who could be a benefit to you and your book, and you might find yourself paying little to nothing for the endeavor! Where do you start when “going local”? There are several places, depending on your hometown: Contact Local Media, Big and Small Newspapers When I first moved to SW Louisiana to pursue my MFA, I didn’t tell people that I was a published author (long short story). When it was discovered, almost immediately, I was being interviewed for our local newspaper. The press would be good for not only me a...

Years ago, I traveled to a library to talk about storytelling with a group of children. It was my first time, and I was so nervous. Why? Because children can be brutally honest. Unlike adults, they haven't had time to develop a filter to which they feed their opinions before spewing them out (though these days, a lot of adults have forgotten their filters, but I digress). I was worried the children would be bored or rude or want to be anywhere but in a library--on a Saturday afternoon no less. But I was wrong. As I approached a long conference table, I was met with a full house of children with wide eyes, stacks of paper, and pencils and pens at the ready. After I introduced myself, I went around the table and had the children introduce themselves. Many talked about why they loved writing. Some of them even wanted to be writers. We talked about their favorite stories, favorite characters. We talked about setting, plot, conflict, and other storytelling elements, and I...

It is said that April showers bring May flowers. For us writers, sometimes our inevitable writing droughts seek those showers so that we can bring forth the blooms of new writing. Back in March, I wrote a BRP post titled " 3 Ways to Reclaim Your Passion for Writing ." This month, I want to add three more suggestions on how you can grow your writing. Find Time Stealers in Your Daily Life We all have them--those activities that steal time from our daily lives but that offer no real rewards. Examples? Almost EVERYTHING that has to do with electronics, especially when we don't take time to break away from those activities. Spending too much time on Facebook or any form of social media, whether on the computer or on our smartphones and tablets. Checking email every five minutes. Keeping notifications for all apps on so that we're distracted by every ding, chirp, and bell. Take an honest look at a 24-hour chunk of your life and write down how much time you spend doi...

Years ago, a dear friend read my MFA thesis, a novel titled, The Greyhound Chronicles . He told me how much he enjoyed seeing my use of line breaks throughout the story and how the breaks affected his read. My response? “Uh, thank you.” You see, I wasn’t consciously doing it as I wrote. I had no idea I was doing it. After my friend’s comment, I reread the book and saw the breaks and realized it was something I just did while writing, something I learned in studying fiction and poetry and the importance of the word and white space and how readers may be affected by not only what  we write, but also how  we write it. Lines breaks are not just for poetry. We writers of short stories, novels, novellas, articles, essays – we, too, can use line breaks to great effect. For this post, I’m going to use two examples, both from great reads you’ll find on the site  SNAPS 1000 Words , a site that publishes weekly stories of 1000 words that are inspired by photography...

November and December are often hectic months for writers and their creative output because of three culprits: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve, and all of the preparations needed to make each culprit better than the previous year. Although many writers, come December, suffer from PND, Post-NaNoWriMo Disorder, and decide to take a break from writing, the rest of us often struggle to stay creative while in the midst of a busy holiday season. Below are five tips to keep your creative mojo thrumming while you deck the halls and ring in the new year! Thanksgiving , Christmas , New Year , and Writing images from FreeDigitalPhotos.net. REVAMP WRITING SPACE FOR THE NEW YEAR Being creative doesn't necessarily mean writing until your hands hurt--though we always love new words for a story. This tip could be extremely helpful for those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo and need a break from writing but not a break from creativity. Take the month of December an...

One quick yet important way to infuse your story with meaning (emotionally, mentally, physically, even spiritually) is through color. Research shows that color can affect mood and human behavior, and those in marketing often use the psychology of color in branding products. Multicolor Card Stock Image by gubgib with  FreeDigitalPhotos.net Whether you consider color at the start or end of writing a book, it’s a good idea to at least ask what color represents your… …Setting’s personality? What colors within the setting create this personality? …Character’s personality? What colors in a character’s dress and home create this personality? …Conflict? Think about your protagonist and consider contrasting colors to represent your antagonist(s). Don’t go overboard in using color; a little goes a long way. Don’t be cliché in your use of color; allow color to work in the context of YOUR story. When painting your story’s world, how important is color? Shon Bacon i...

We are three days into a month full of late nights, hair pulling, and curses lifted into the sky -- all in the hopes of writing a 50k novel. Ahh, NaNoWriMo, how we love and loathe you so. If ever there was a time when we needed to lather ourselves in love, it's during the month of November. Today, I want to offer you a way to give yourself love each day during NaNoWriMo: the Love-A-Day Notes. I started this little exercise about a week ago to give myself some a.m. love before I started the day. On Sunday, I sat and wrote my seven notes, folded each note, mixed them up, then placed one in each day of the week so that every morning, I would be surprised by which note I received. Make sure to do that throughout NaNoWriMo, too! You only need three items to make your Love-A-Day Notes: 7-Day Pillbox (which you can buy for cheap) 1 pack of Post-its Your favorite pen (or set of pens if you want to be creative and colorful) To help in organizing what you'll write, t...

To write is to participate in a lifelong-learning endeavor. The good news is many avenues provide the learning we need to better our writing. Editing, reading, teaching, and walking are powerful learning tools for my literary pursuits. I learn with each story I edit. The learning may tie into the writing craft specifically or with me personally, and even then, the “personal” lessons often find their way into stories I write. Reading books on writing or books for education, entertainment, or enlightenment always ignite ideas for writing. When I teach, the interactions and experiences in and out of the classroom become potential fodder for stories. Walking allows me to see and participate with the world and people around me and to develop new story ideas through that participation. In what ways are you fostering lifelong learning in your writing career? Shon Bacon is an author, editor, and educator, whose biggest joys are writing and helping others develop thei...

In March 2013, I started a website with two authors, Jennifer Coissiere and Pachet Spates, titled SNAPS 1000 Words: Where Images and Words Converge . We (along with new snapper, author and PR guru Makasha Dorsey) provide weekly stories of 1000 to 1100 words that are inspired by pictures. It's something I've always done on my own as I love photography and writing, but I thought it would be cool to create a website where we could showcase some of our writing and where we could further develop our skills as writers. Writing short fiction, just as in writing poetry, requires wordsmiths to practice astute word economy, to pay even more attention to the point of attack for their story, and to figure out the heart of the matter quickly so that a full, engaging story can be told in a short space, among other important tasks. I asked my fellow snappers to provide some tips to writing short fiction (some might call it flash fiction or any number of other terms). I hope you find th...

If you're like me, then you know that time has a way of moving fast, leaving you with many undone to-dos. Over a month ago, while getting back into my dissertation writing, a friend of mine told me about the Pomodoro Technique, and since I've started implemented it into my daily goings on, I have seen an increase in my productivity in many areas, specifically my writing and my workouts. For those not in the know, "The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as 'pomodori,' the plural of the Italian word pomodoro for "tomato" (" Pomodoro Technique "). Image from Wikipedia There are five basic principles to the pomodoro technique: Pick a project you'd like to work on. Set your pomodoro to a certain amount of minutes. Traditi...

Writers Anonymous : There are not enough cemeteries to hold all the dead characters I left behind by not finishing stories. "Old Graveyard" by Evgeni Dinev from FreeDigitalPhotos.net Every writer I know has a folder. What's IN this folder? Every note, every picture, every first line, every character sketch, every idea for a story you've ever had. I have one. It's quite large. It's called WRITING. Inside the folder, you will find other folders that represent various "states" of projects. I have a NOVELS folder that contains novels that are completed, novels with outlines, novels with ideas. I have a SHORT STORIES folder that contains the same elements as my NOVELS folder. I have a STORY IDEAS folder that is full to the brim of ideas. I even have a NEW STORY IDEAS folder because of course those ideas are different from the those in the STORY IDEAS folder. I have a SNIPPETS folder that contains hundreds of notes, each note has a line that I h...

At the start of every new year, most of us make resolutions. For us writers, we think about what projects we want to complete, want to submit to agents/editors, want to self-publish, and the list goes on and on. For 2014, I decided to do one thing that would be playful and might actually create some great stories: start an Idea Jar. On January 1, I started a Joy Jar. I keep a small pack of sticky notes with me throughout the day, and when anything arises that makes me smile or makes me happy (you know, those moments we typically experience at  the moment, but then promptly discard), I write that moment onto a sticky note and place the note in the jar. When I have a rainy "mind" day, I can dip into the jar and remember happy moments I've experienced thus far. Doing so may hopefully put me in a better frame of mind. My Joy Jar I received these years ago, and now have a perfect use for them! The Idea Jar works pretty much the same way. All throughout...

This is probably not the time to talk about this subject, especially while so many people are busy working on NaNoWriMo projects, but we have to face it: sometimes, the writing won’t come. There are some writing experts that will tell you to write through this moment to get back to the story. I’m not really a fan of that suggestion because it can lead to a lot of frustration and negative feelings when/if the story continues to stall. Writing is mental; it’s also physical, emotional, psychological, and for many people, spiritual. When problems arise in one or more of these cogs, writing can stall. Sure, you can push your way through and perhaps suffer agitation, frustration, and anxiety over the lack of writing. However, you can also tell yourself, IT’S OK, and work in other areas to keep your creative juices flowing and ready for when your story returns. So, what can you do when the story packs its bags and flees? Here are a few suggestions. Play with your characters ....

About a month ago, I came across the following quote online by screenwriter, comedian, film producer, and comic book writer John Rogers: You don't really understand an antagonist until you understand why he's a protagonist in his own version of the world. I found the quote intriguing. Not to say we discard antagonists, but often in writing, especially in that developmental stage of a story where we're trying to get the bones of it down, we think about our main character, the protagonist. We write an elaborate backstory for this "good guy" or "gal" and flesh the character out into a living, breathing person complete with yearning and laden with obstacles and burdens. Speaking of obstacles, when we get to the stage where we ask what obstacles or conflicts meet our protagonist, this is where we typically start to think of our antagonist(s). We know that our main character (MC) has wants and needs, and we know there must be things and people to preven...