7 Steps to Writing Success

1. Show up.

2. Start Anywhere.

3. Write NOW!

4. Lean into it.

5. Read. Read. Read.

6. Don’t give up – give hugs instead.

7. Buy a pug.

Okay, okay, that last one is optional.

But you don’t have to listen to me.

Let’s see what Ray has to say…

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. 

Then see what happens. 

Most of my friends who are put on that diet 

have very pleasant careers.”

~Ray Bradbury

Yeah, Ray thought the pugs were optional, too.

PROMPT: Use the 7 steps to ROCK that May goal.

May I Help You?

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! Your manuscript is calling you!

It’s been many moons since NaNoWriMo, and summer is just around the corner.

Well, you know what that means…

May is the perfect month to kick some writing booty!

To accomplish this, let’s take a tip from those biggy wiggies of the business world. Many of those coffee-slugging movers and over-caffeinated shakers use a nifty goal-setting acronym –

SMART

And we’re talking smart as in intelligent, NOT smart as in ouch.

The SMART plan goes like this:

S – Make sure your goal is SPECIFIC. “I am going to produce three new chapters” or “I am going to revise my entire manuscript” are two terrific specific goals.

M is for MEASURABLE. When it comes to carrying out the goal mentioned above, how do you plan to go about it? Word counts, page counts, and minutes are great ways to measure progress. “I am going to write for 15 minutes a day every day” or “I am going to produce 500 words every day” will get the job done.

A – Make sure your steps are ACHIEVABLE. Do yourself a favor and ditch the “I will write four hours a day come Hell or high water” goal. Err on the itty bitty step side – you get to say “YAY!” more often, and “YAY!” is always fun.

R – The business world says this stands for relevant, but I say it stands for ROCKS! Make sure your goal fires you up! Otherwise, what the heck is the point? Please refer to the “YAY!” bit above.

T is for TIME-BOUND. This one is easy squeezy because we’ve already established it. These are May goals. And conveniently, May rhymes with “YAY!” (See above).

There you have it – SMART!

Feel the POWER of rising IQ points!

But hey, if you don’t want to be SMART, you can always celebrate May some other way –

It is National Better Sleep Month, after all.

PROMPT: Get SMART or get a whole lotta sleep. Your call.

They’re Everywhere!

I have just returned from a fabulous biking-camping island adventure.

Such an excursion now holds the top spot on the “highly recommended” list–

What a wonderful way to fill the artist/writer well!

Well…

Wouldn’t you know it, as I stopped at the Ferry terminal to grab a coffee for the road… I mean sea… a very special sign caught my eye –

Writing prompts –

Wherever you go, there they are!

PROMPT: have you ever made a bad decision that would make a good story? Everyone has. But if you’d rather not think about that cringe-worthy time when you… spray-painted the fence next to the new blue car or used that "empty" hornets’ nest as a piñata… then go ahead and give a really bad decision to one of your characters. He or she won’t mind. Characters LIVE for this sort of thing, after all.