Joseph Hunt's Blog, page 18

February Round-Up!

This year we have a leap year and that means that February has an extra day! Yay for the extra day in February, giving us 29 days instead of 28 and an extra blog post for Feb!



Something new that I'm going to start doing is a round-up at the end of every month and collect all of the statistics across all of my social media sites. I'm going to try and keep this off until the latest moment but still be inside February so that everything is right.




Facebook: 1,442

Twitter: 1,459

Blogger: 178 with 15,413 hits (4,558 in February)

Scribd: 196 with 10,564 reads



Facebook| Joseph's Writing

Twitter| @Joe_Eastwood

Scribd| Joseph Eastwood


And hopefully next month I can compare and see how far I've gone up! Because all these figures will rise. Ha.



I'm going to apologise here because I said that I was going to release Lumen in February and I never, and I'm really sorry and properly punching myself right now, but I am trying my absolute hardest to get the book out because I know that a lot of you really want to read. I'm going to say March! But I can't promise anything, my life is really hectic at the moment.





And hopefully when I do publish I will post statistics about how many sales etc. just so that you all know my progress.





AND something else you guys should know...I've blogged Monday to Friday ALL of February! And I have a really good feeling that March is going to be a great month!




How was February for you?

What have you got planned for March?


-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

LGBT: Gay Gene & God!

I was talking to a friend the other day about whether there is an actual gay gene and if we're born gay. I've always had this conflict inside, sometimes I know I was born the way I am and then other times I think it was how I was raised and in my head I blame my mum etc. -- I do now know inside that it's how I was born and you cannot change it at the flick of a switch.



So onto this talk about a gay gene...is there such a gene? If there was do you think people would try and take it out? You can now modify your child before it's born, changing its hair colour or eye colour. I don't think it's ethical to try and change someone. Nobody should change for anyone. Ever!



I for one would not mind someone finding this out, that way you would know if someone is gay and not just a metrosexual. That way all of those religious nuts who hate on homosexuals will learn that it is NOT a choice and even if it was, I was watching Queer as Folk and that put a lot of things about religion and sexuality into perspective.


"Because he [God] created you in his image. At least that's what I was always taught. And since God is love and God doesn't make mistakes, then you must be exactly the way he wants you to be. And that goes for every person, every planet, every mountain, every grain of sand, every song, every tear... and every faggot. He loves us all." - Queer as Folk, Ted (episode #1.13)


I am not religious so God doesn't bother me, but this was really warming.



If you were having a child, would you want to know its sexuality if you could?


I also haven't asked you what your stance is on gay marriage!


Do you think homosexuals should be able to get married?




I think we should, why not, we're only human, our blood is red, our blood is warm, we're no different to anyone else. In fact, we are, we're a little bit more accepting of different people.




If you hate gay people then say it, I'm not going to rant at you. I'd like some truthful answers from the people reading and following my blog.



I'm going to leave you guys with such a great clip from a film called 'For The Bible Tells Me So' and if you haven't watched that yet then I think you should, but before that, I think you should watch this clip. It's great.









This is the last LGBT blog post as February is almost over and so is LGBT history month! However, I will still be posting every now and again. But next month is Greek Myth Appreciation month...I have created this month, it isn't a real one, but when Hallmark gets a whiff of it they will start making cards for it!




I will be posting every Friday...so be expecting your first Greek Myths post this Friday and every Friday after in the month of March!



-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

Everyone Has a Story...

[image error]
I read somewhere, and I really wish that I remembered where so that I could share it with you guys, but I remembered reading that --




"we know enough when we are 15 to write a series of novels"


Probably not word for word but it got me thinking about when people start writing and why people start to write.



I love writing, if it wasn't for writing then I don't know what I'd be doing right now...in fact I can't think of a life without writing because it's actually a huge part of my life, if not everything in my life.



I have some questions that I'm going to answer and I want you guys to answer with me! Then we know that little bit extra about each other....and we get that little bit closer.




When did you start writing?

I'd say I was about 7-ish, I don't know, I was really young and I used to get really angry because I wanted to write about things I didn't even understand then. It wasn't the typical nonsensical stuff...I remember quite fondly how I wanted to write about people, how I wanted to use them and make them do things.




Why did you start writing?
Even for a question I asked myself, I'm going to say that is a tough one. I don't know why I started, but I can tell you why I continued to write...because writing is a form of expressionism and I love to express myself, some people like to do it through music, some people through dance, and then there are some people who don't do anything at all and it's a shame because when I start to write I wake something up inside me and then I'm no longer me, Joseph Eastwood...I'm hundreds of different people who all need me, and I need them.



I can assure you that I am only two thirds weird, the rest of me is writer.




How old where you when you wrote your first novel?
I wouldn't say that it was a novel because a novel sounds so grand and prestigious etc. and the first real project I worked on was something called Energies and it worked its way over 50,000 words. I was 15 years old and I was going through a rough patch and I was in that teenage angst/depression stage. I haven't looked at it since, I cry every time I think about it....so yes, my eyes are starting to glass over with tears.



I think we'll stop there then.



I hope you answer some of these and tell me a little bit about my readers.



-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

6 Types of Love

During Valentine's week I wrote a guest blog fro Mera's YA Book List, here is the post: V-Day Love Post. I also thought I'd share it with you guys!




There are 6 types of love, I will list them and include a little personal note. Enjoy!



Eros - a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love.

Joe: I would love to be in this kind of love…I would love to have a hunky guy cuddle me tight, his chiselled cheekbones and the perfection to his body. What isn't to love about this type of love?

Ludus - a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once.




Joe: I really like the idea of having more than one sexual partner at once, is that bad? I hope not, but I like a variety of guys and looks etc. plus I really don't mind the whole flirting/game thing.


Storge - an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity.


Joe: this is so sweet! This is the kind of love that childhood sweethearts have, and then they get married, have kids, get a divorce. Oh—maybe they just live happily ever after.

Pragma - love that is driven by the head, not the heart.


Joe: I have to admit that I have done this because I didn't want to be alone and I like the company of other people. I didn't love him, and I still don't. Other people do this for wealth and status.

Mania - obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous lovers.


Joe: I've never experienced this, but if you spend a lot of time on Facebook you will know what this type of love looks like.

Agape - selfless altruistic love; spiritual.


Joe: these are those religious people you see on the street handing out insightful messages about the future and our impending doom. Failing that, I think these people are the nicest people in the world.



What's your ideal love?

Are you in love? Have you been in love? Do you want to be in love?




-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

Interview: Kate Hawkings, author of The Sphinx Project!

Kate Hawkings is a 22 year old who grew up in Auckland, New Zealand and now lives in the UK. She is releasing her début novel, The Sphinx Project on the 28th of February! So keep an eye out for it! It sounds like it is going to be an amazing book!



Read this great interview and then connect with Kate with the links I've provided at the bottom.








Authors say that they put a bit of themselves into their characters. What part of you has gone into your main character, Michaela?

To be honest, I don't think Michaela is too much like me at all... There are some minor similarities in our personalities, but not many... the biggest is probably her obsession with ice cream.



As fiction writers we are constantly pushing ourselves to be better. How do you keep yourself motivated?

I guess most of it comes down to a desire to prove myself... I'm quite competitive, so the just naturally pushes me forward. I also love writing, so I'm not exactly swimming against the current.



If you were going to commit the perfect murder, how would you do it?

Hmmm *puts on crime writer hat*.... I'd probably do it in Rotorua, New Zealand... or somewhere else with a lot of geothermal activity... I wouldn't want to get too personal, and I wouldn't want to leave any evidence (such as blood spatter) so I'd probably poison them. I'd wrap them in plastic and drive them to one of the remoter geothermal areas and drop them and any evidence into one of the deepest, hottest, geothermal pools... There is the question of chopping them up though, because they'd probably deteriorate faster in smaller pieces with a greater surface area... But then there's the possibility of leaving blood … and I'd have to get rid of all my clothes and the cutting implement... I'm also wondering if the bubbling mud pools would be more suitable than the water...



When did you consider yourself to be a writer?

This is a tough one, because even now with the book due out in the next few days I feel awkward saying I'm a writer. I guess it would have to be when I first got the manuscript back from my editor. That's when it started feeling real.



Did you have a playlist while writing? If so, what were the main songs that stuck out?

Yes, I have several depending on my mood. However, that is a question I'll be writing at lengths about later in the blog tour, so I can't go into too much detail here.



If you could compare your writing style to any writer, who would it be?

I'm not a hugely technical writer, and I just can't make myself look at my work and compare myself to others in that way, it makes me feel uncomfortable.



Do you have any more self-publishing plans for 2012?

If so, do you mind listing them? Yes I do, but after The Sphinx Project I refuse to set and release dates until I get the final copy back from the editor.



Has your vision of The Sphinx Project changed from how you had originally planned it?

Oh yes, hugely. When I began, The Sphinx Project wasn't even on the cards. I wrote a completely different story, using the same characters, but decided I wanted to go more in depth about what happened before that. The original story is still on my computer, and I have plans to rewrite it as the third book in the series.



Everyone has a reason for self-publishing. What's yours?

There were so many reasons, but ultimately I wanted to see what I could do it by myself. I got to try my hand at so many things I usually wouldn't have any control over.




What one piece of advice would you give to writers who are looking to self-publish?

Research. I don't care who you are or what you know, you need to know what you're getting into. There's so much more to it than you think.




What did you think?

Are you going to be buying The Sphinx Project?


Now, let's not forget to connect! <3



Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KCHawkings

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kchawkings

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3319171.Kate_Hawkings

Blog: http://www.katherinehawkings.blogspot.com/



-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

10 Top Tips to Becoming a Better Writer!

There is no definitive guide to becoming a better writer, if there were then we'd all be amazing and making a lot of money...but that's not how it works, writing is a craft, like any other art form. Some people are born with a natural talent, and then there are others who have to learn.




Also, when I say writer, I mean creative writer.


In no particular order, here is my list of tips to help you become a better writer.




1. Write! Write everyday!
This might seem obvious, but there are some people who don't write everyday. The only way you will ever get better at doing something is if you exercise, and writing everyday is THAT exercise and exercising all the skills that you've developed. It could be a blog post for that day, so if you blog daily then you know you're writing everyday! You might want to write poetry or flash fiction.




2. Read! You have to read!
Reading and writing come hand in hand, if you can't write, how can you be expected to read and if you can't read, how can you write? You can't. Read in the genre that you writer and read in different genres, diversify yourself, you can learn a lot about other genres and even incorporate that into your writing.




3. Get the 1st draft done!
Don't stop now, or in a minute, or ever! Just get that first draft done, don't edit it or anything, you need to write everything down and then you can start worrying about how shit it actually is...that's when you NEED to edit.




4. Keep it simple!
This is especially true for a first draft, if you get sidetracked by the fine details and the long metaphors etc. then you're going to start editing it as well. So if you keep everything simple then you can edit it at the end.




5. Write for yourself!
Don't allow anyone to tell you what to write...unless of course it's your muse. And something that Stephen King said, "Don't care too much of what others may think." basically saying that you're not allowed to think 'Oh, but that might be a bit sensitive' because it's often the sensitive issues that bring about the emotion in your reader...and you're not going to write something that is uninteresting.




6. Do your research!
You need to know what you're talking about and you need your reader to believe you. I don't think that you can just write a room into a scene, you have to plan the room, you have to visualise and know about the room before you can write. Sometimes before you even start to write you're going to need to go deeper and research harder.




7. Be Descriptive.
Another point that seems obvious, but by being descriptive I don't mean by saying something like "very nice" or "very nasty" -- I mean strong descriptive words like "furious" and "joyous" also improve your vocabulary with words like these so that when you do come to describing something you're not stumped or keep repeating the word "nice" until you think of another word.




8. Show, Don't Tell!
I'm not saying always show and never tell because that would be stupid. I think that there should be a balance of showing and telling, you will want to show an emotion, while you'd want to tell a the back story of that character. Showing should be one of the most important technique for all you creative writers out there and you must all know how to use it.




9. Read Books on Grammar.
Unless you're going to rely on people hammering you with criticism whenever you post on Facebook or a blog post etc. I'd suggest that you brush up on your grammar. It would also be a part of that reading we talked about.




10. Accept Critique!
Ask people for help! Always ask for feedback! Always, always! If someone doesn't like something then they will have a reason for it, and if they don't or they're really negative then it's probably personal. Don't let it hurt you....if you want to be a good writer you need to have a thick skin and be able to take criticism.



I hope you enjoyed this weeks 10 Top Tips, and I hope that they are helpful! If you have any tips of your own, add them in the comments below, I'd love to hear what you have to say!



-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

Prologue, Lumen -- My Fiction Thursday

This weeks My Fiction Thursday is going to be the Prologue of Lumen. As you know, Lumen is not far from being released and I really want you guys to have a taste of it before you drink from the deep end. Please, tell me what you think, but remember that this is still a draft.




Prologue 








It's normal for a child to die on Templar Island. It's natural selection. Each child born had energy flowing through its blood, but only some lived to be able to manipulate it and keep the flow of energy in order. Natural selection is pure, spilling blood in order to clean away impurity, even if it had been in the form of a new born.



The little boy, Daniel, played with his miniature blue aeroplane, running around the coffee table in the middle of the living room. The toy sat on his fingertips as he jumped around trying to make it fly. His father told him that it could.



"That was my favourite toy too," the boy's father said, sitting back in his chair with a smile. "Your great-granddaddy gave me that when I was little. He told me he got it from another island. A large island, far far away from here."



A burst of laughter came from the kitchen. "Erik, don't fill the boy's head with nonsense, nobody has ever set foot off Templar," his wife butted in.



"It's true, Roan," he grinned and rolled his eyes, then set them back on his son. "We don't have them, but there's somewhere that does. Is that what you want to do when you're older Daniel? Fly in one of them?"



Daniel continued to play with the toy, his arms outstretched as he ran around barefoot, pushing up onto his tiptoes. He watched the toy on his fingertips with awe and berated breath, letting the little air in the back of his throat tingle and dance around in his lungs.



"Daniel," his father said, leaning forward on his chair to try and catch his son's eye. "Daniel, look at me."



Daniel continued to run around, circling the tree stump coffee table, over and over, while his father watched him, wanting to talk more about his grandfather and about the peculiarities of the childhood he had and the stories he'd been told. He sighed, sitting back into his chair, reflecting on those tales. Daniel knocked his father's concentration when he began ducking and dipping with the aeroplane and his blissful smile. His father called out to his son again but it went unnoticed, as did a fine piece of white string trailing off behind him. Erik reached out and caught a strand of it. He observed the thinning thread and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb, his eyes fluttered to a close, as his fingers fell numb, relishing in pure energy. He opened his eyes again, to see the mess his son was creating; the string had become thick and ashen yellow, falling thicker by the moment. Until the first fluffed feather slipped out of the back of his t-shirt.



He couldn't take his eyes off his son. "Roan," he called out to his wife.



"Erik, please stop fretting, he's not gone deaf," she chortled in her gentle voice.



He turned his head sharply to the kitchen quarters, keeping watch in his peripherals. "Just come through—I—I need you to look at something."



She huffed. "Okay, what is it?" she poked her head around the doorway. There was no doubt that Roan had answered her question, but she had a thousand more swollen in her throat. She locked eyes with her pasty faced husband and couldn't look away.



He cleared his throat. "It's his change. Right?"



"Of—" she cleared her throat, "of course." She shut her eyes and forced a deep breathe, wondering if she'd ever regain herself. She pressed her fingers into the collar of her neck and swallowed hard at all the stressed vowels inside.



"What's—" he started, and turned to see his wife's calm ignorance.



She moved her hand to her chest and opened her eyes to see her son still running around. Her glistening tears, ready to pop, shaded her violet eyes and bit her lip to stop it from trembling. She wavered on the balls of her feet and then the first specks of red marked the back of her son's white t-shirt.



"Hun," Erik said.



Their little boy continued to run around, his t-shirt tore at the seams and fell to his waist like excess skin. It revealed two thick white stumps of bone at the top of his shoulder blades that had sliced through his skin, and around the base, little pockets of blood dribbled down his back.



His mother nearly fell, resting herself against the chair and reaching around for her husband's hand. She blinked at a few tears and took another deep breathe. "He's fine." Their son continued to run around with his aeroplane in tact on his fingertips. And the blood continued to drip down his back and freckle the floor, and the thin feathers were now growing in bunches at the bone and then falling out in clumps, falling behind him.



They watched him as he moved around in the syrupy air, his movements locked in slow languid strokes, letting the last couple of seconds settle in time as minutes. One cacophony of coarse crunches broke as Daniel fell to his knees and his aeroplane came loose and crashed into the wall ahead. He dropped to his chest in a small pile of feathers. The protruding bones on his back crumbled and congealed with the blood, making a paste against the feathers.



Roan kept a tight grasp of Erik's hand, and it got tighter when he'd tried to jump from his seat. "We don't want to intervene," she said, sniffling, and gripping a tight hold of the star with seven spokes on a chain around her neck, drawing her own blood.



Erik closed his eyes and shook his head. He massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to push the tears back. Daniel screeched and his limbs flailed for a moment. "Daniel." His father dropped to his knees beside his son as his wife's arms flopped to her side, she watched, the whites of her eyes turned pink, as a nurse she was taught to steer clear of it, only to aide and never to get emotional. "Hush, Daniel, hush," the boy's Father said cowering over his son. He stared up at his wife. "They can't. They can't decide his fate. We have to do something, Roan. We have to help him get through this change."



She pinched at her lips with her teeth and rolled her eyes. "No." she grabbed her husband from under his arm and pulled him back to his feet. "No."



Blood pooled inside the Daniel's ears, thickening and drying; engulfing sound. His eyes were screwed shut, but beneath them it was scratched film. Trapped inside the skin, like it wasn't his to be felt, and as a cough shook the vessel, blood stained phlegm broke the lips, tainting them. He pulled away. This wasn't his fight.





If you want, you can add Lumen to your Goodreads 'to-read' list! 
Lumen (Blood Luminary, #1)







-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

LGBT: Stereotypes!

There has been a change to the post I originally wanted to put up...and hopefully that post will go up sometime next week. I also apologize that this is the next day. (It's still going down as Wednesday's post though).






This is something close to my heart, as is everything in LGBT History Month, and quite frankly, my favourite month of the year!




Stereotypes are a horrible thing, and if you're ever subject to them then you'll understand, and you WILL at one point in your life be subject to them. For me, it's everyday.




That's not what I'm going to discuss though. I'm going to talk about stereotypes on TV and in books because I'm a writer and I need to keep a bit of a running topic in each of my blog posts.




So as a writer you're not allowed to use stereotypes, it's cheating and it also says a lot about you, if you choose to use them. A fiction writer should be able to create and distance themselves from how society sees people, because that's often a cloudy image at best.




Not every gay person will say "girlfriend" or snap their fingers and shake their arse when they walk.

Not every lesbian will punch a guy's shoulder when they're having a laugh or have short hair.




The fact of this is people aren't the same. People are unique and should be treated as such, in real life and in your writing. Of course some people do conform to these stereotypes and do have these flamboyant personalities, but if that's the only side you're going to show, then it's really not worth incorporating into your plot.




There really hasn't been much LGBT activity on the TV front...so there's Emily in Pretty Little Liars and she's a lesbian, I love the storyline and I love the fact that she's got such a great storyline, but for the rest of TV there just isn't much. I was going to say something about Glee, there isn't much point, it has gays, lesbians, Asians, jocks, cheerleaders, geeks, disabled etc. it's got everything! See---not much point.




Why are there no gay people shown on TV programmes? This is especially true for the ones aimed at a young adult audience like The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, Pretty Little Liars etc. but there was Caroline's dad in TVD and he was gay, it was only said briefly and he was only a minor characters.




So why are there any REAL gay characters on TV?




I don't know, maybe people think if their children are exposed to gay people it will encourage them to join the travelling circus!




I haven't read much that has a gay storyline in it. I've heard of Witch Eyes...and I'm going to read that at some point. I did read, and regrettably so, the House of Night books---yes, they had a gay storyline, but it was horrible and full of stereotypes. Well done for getting it published...you might have wanted to warn the gays that you're also very insulting.




If you missed any of my previous posts, they are all here! Beside are the dates in a British format.

LGBT History Month (05/02)
Authors that are LGBT (08/02)
LGBT: Coming Out (15/02)

And on an ending note...why do girls want a gay best-friend? Every person you tell goes, "oh, I've always wanted a gay best-friend". No, just no, please don't say that to me, I'm not going to go shopping with you or eat ice cream with you because you broke up with your boyfriend. And I'm certainly not going to become some flamboyant gay who has a handbag or too much time on his hands that he'd rather spend it with you.

-Joseph


Comment. Follow. Share.

Why Branding is Necessary!

[image error]
I was supposed to post a vlog today but other plans got in the way and this has been on my mind for some time now.



I feel that as an indie author you need to have a brand, you need to have a genre, you need people to remember who you are---being another self-published author is hard.



I'm going to kick this off by telling you that if your Facebook page doesn't have your name in the title, then there isn't much point in having it.



Book pages are useful, but they are also very boring and don't offer as much as author pages do. I find that author pages are more personal, where book pages just have pictures of the book...or random pictures of people they want to fill the characters etc. and yeah, that's fun and everything, and you want people to "like" your book, and unless that's the only book you're ever going to write, I would delete it!



I believe that if you want to be indie you will not become successful over just ONE book! So quit promoting it to hell and back! Instead, I think you should focus on your writing, Amanda Hocking did not become famous for that one book, nor did Stephen King, or anyone else for that matter. They all wrote several books and have a backlog.



Just like an musician must build a repertoire of songs because lets face it, if they listen to the same song over and over again it just gives you earache and you start to hate it. I think the same thing goes for an indie author who keeps on pushing their book everywhere you look and I've actually said to myself..."No, you're not buying that, it's just spam! The author has done nothing to try and sell it to me, just forever posting it and the reviews they've received."




I recently asked whether I should use my name for Ice Cream Sundae, my gay romance novel, and everyone said no. I actually agreed, I do have a pseudonym that I created a while back for just the kind of writing. However, I do want people to know that it is me, because I have built myself around my name, Joseph Eastwood and you can't just go, oh, but Thomas Jay is another part of me. Although I will still use Thomas Jay, everyone here and on my Facebook page etc. wherever blah blah blah will know that it was me who wrote it. Not sure where I was going with that.




So going back to branding, you need to hone your genre and you need to write, write, write! Not everything you write should be published for money, some things you write can be free! You know, like in your notes that people can read because there aren't a lot of people who are going to be taking a chance on an indie author.



I am 18 years old! 18! And I have several novels planned and these are the ones that are being written and edited at the moment. I know what I want to do with my life...and I'm doing that! I make it my business to know what I need to be a success.

So if you want to know more about what I'm about, here are the links, the first is to the Goodreads page and the second is to the blog page.




The Salem Gates (The Caldwell Witches, #1) - The Caldwell Witches

Clandestine (Night Falls, #1) - Night Falls Series

Lumen (Blood Luminary, #1) - Blood Luminary Series


Sometimes I act like I know what I'm talking about....sometimes I do, sometimes I don't....and sometimes I just have an opinion that might be help.



-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.

Discipline and You!

Everyday we are all constantly followed around by distractions. We have the internet. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Blogger---just there at a click of a button. You can waste hours just chatting with people or promoting yourself, but wait...what are you promoting again? Yourself! As a writer? I suppose that makes sense, but you're wasting an awful lot of time doing pointless things, especially if you're not doing much writing.



So lately, I've been feeling like my life is all jumbled up, I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, this blog which I love to death and now a Tumblr...why I got one of those, I do not know because its only use if reblogging pictures of guys with their stomachs out making their cute face.



I have recently thought a lot about what I wanted to put in this post because I am in no way the poster boy for self-discipline, I have urges, just like every other human.



However, I do have some tips on discipling yourself.




Top tip! Make time to write, edit etc. and unplug the internet and get someone to hide the router! 


I don't like schedules or anything like that...but what I can deal with is no internet, I do so much better when I know no matter how much I try I just can't get to the internet from clicking the Google Chrome button. I also have a lot of bookmarks just beneath the URL bar, so even if I forget what I came to the internet for, it will always end in me clicking on Facebook or something.




Tip! Having people support you or a support group via Facebook where you can post the word count!


We are always vying for the attention and approval of others. I love it when people agree with what I write, there is no greater feeling (except standing on a mountain top with the one you love is, probably). So join a support group where you can post the word count and it's a self-evaluation and also the evaluation of your peers so you don't want to be the one with the 2,000 word increase from last week.




Tip! Get yourself excited over what you're writing before you write!


I say this because it usually helps me. I find that reading the synopsis motivates me to do edits or if it's something that I'm writing, I usually force myself to look at the notes of what the story means to me. That's another thing, make a list of the things in the notes about what you're currently writing actually means to you. Is it emancipating? Do you have a message that you want to get across? And that should keep the spark of motivation you need.




Tip! Stimulate your sight! Get a picture that inspires you to write!


This is one of my favourites ways to discipline myself because I love just being able to see a picture and have it immediately shout at me! Like the one below-- "Okay, sir! Let me just post this and I'll be on my way." So get something and have it as a background or maybe even printed and you have it pinned to your wall or something.







So don't make me tell you again! If you have things to do today, then my suggestion is you get your boot off the internet and do them!



I hope that you follow some of these, and I hope that they work as well for you as they do for me.




Do you have any tips that you'd like to share?


-Joseph




Comment. Follow. Share.