Courtney Wendleton's Blog, page 12
March 29, 2017
4 Creativity Lessons We Can Learn from David Bowie’s Rich Artistic Career
by Maja S. Todorovi
In January 8, 2017, we celebrated David Bowie’s 70th birthday and marked a year of his passing. Let us remember how great artist he was:
Ever since I was a little kid, as a great fan of gothic and mythological stories, my first recollection of David Bowie has to do with his role in the movie Hunger. Along with that came an interest in his music and artistic work, which later translated in true admiration.
View original post 530 more words
4 Ways to Handle Backstory
By Andrea Lundgren
Every story has exposition–details of the character and world that you, as the author, need to pass on to the reader. You’ve spent hours fleshing out the world of your story and learning about your characters, and now you have to find some way of getting this information (or at least the essential part) from your head to the readers’. (This is especially true in science fiction and fantasy, where you need to tell how the world of the story differs from our world.)
So what’s an author to do?
View original post 1,059 more words
Here are 2 Important Things I Learned While Writing This Book
by Stephanie O’Brien
This is an exciting week for me. My latest novel, Catgirl Roommate, is finally complete!
If you enjoy funny stories about cats (or humans with the ears, tail and mind of cats), and you want to laugh, roll your eyes, and say “I know, right? My cat does that too!”, I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy!
Creating this novel was an interesting challenge, with some big bumps along the road. Today, I want to share two success tips I got while writing Catgirl Roommate, as well as how to use those tips in your own life.
View original post 869 more words
March 16, 2017
Writing to Market – What Does It Mean?
By Julianne Q. Johnson
Should a novelist write to market? Should they avoid writing to market like the plague? Should they write to trend or to tropes? What does it all mean?
Take heart, gentle reader, I will do my level best to tell you what it means.
To start with, my research shows these terms to be a bit fluid. If you ask different people in the know, you might get different answers. The following is my understanding of the terms and what they mean.
View original post 1,054 more words
March 13, 2017
Why You’re Not You When You’re Not Writing
by Meg Dowell
For the first week of 2017, because of the new year, I did not write any articles. Clients either weren’t ready to assign them yet or they were having me work on other projects (because being a content creator means you get to write marketing emails too).
For many of you, this probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal. But you have to understand that the nature of my work resulted in me writing over 500 articles last year – that doesn’t include these blog posts. I write articles. It is what people pay me to do. And having already taken a week off of work between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, enduring another week without producing an article was like going without food: it was unbearable.
View original post 505 more words
Why You’re Not You When You’re Not Writing
by Meg Dowell
For the first week of 2017, because of the new year, I did not write any articles. Clients either weren’t ready to assign them yet or they were having me work on other projects (because being a content creator means you get to write marketing emails too).
For many of you, this probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal. But you have to understand that the nature of my work resulted in me writing over 500 articles last year – that doesn’t include these blog posts. I write articles. It is what people pay me to do. And having already taken a week off of work between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, enduring another week without producing an article was like going without food: it was unbearable.
View original post 505 more words
Why You Should Read About Writing
by Kelsie Engen
The moment you think you know everything about writing, that’s the moment your writing plateaus.
Last week I talked about why writers should read voraciously. But that was a post focused on fiction. You know, reading in the genre you write. For instance, if you write fantasy, you ought to be familiar with fantasy and read it near daily.
View original post 1,013 more words
Guest Post: Why Books Are Important From a Writer’s Perspective by Joe Baldwin
We have everything we could ever want in this cruel world. We just have to come and get it. As simple as it may seem, getting all the things what we want can be a bit tough. First off, we have to equip our self with all the necessary knowledge to get there. We also need to dodge obstacles that come our way. With that, we find ourselves going to academies and universities trying to learn all the things that we possibly can, which we may, later on, use in fulfilling our dreams and desires.
Back during the days, teachers would require students to read through a certain page in a book. That’s where all the lessons were coming from: books. But nowadays, with the invention of the computer and the internet, books aren’t much of a thing than it used to be. These days, with just a click on…
View original post 910 more words
March 9, 2017
On Your Next Great Book Idea
by Samantha Fenton
You’re ready to start writing another book. Writing’s a habit, or to some an addiction. Why wouldn’t you be writing? You really, really need to start another writing project. The only problem: finding that perfect idea to write about.
What should your next book be about?
View original post 423 more words
March 6, 2017
Has Self-Publishing Made Everything a Bit…Sterile?
by Phoebe Quinn
Six year-old me dreamed of seeing my name shining on hardbacks in the window of Waterstone’s as the latest bestselling debut author. Twenty-seven year old me has altered the dream slightly to a single webpage with the all-important average customer rating hovering between 4 and 5. It’s less enchanting, but more practical.
View original post 621 more words
