On July 21, 2018 I am scheduled to appear at the Middle Georgia Indie Book Festival and I am excited for the opportunity to participate. For this to be a successful event I am respectfully requesting support by conducting a fund-raising campaign, and your support would be greatly appreciated. As a special thank you gift, I am giving copies of “Stories outside the Box” to anyone making donations toward the project. If you would like to support this campaign, you may do so in two ways. You can either visit http://www.ko-fi.com/annbarnes to “buy a coffee” for $3 or you can make a donation of any amount directly to my paypal account by visiting paypal.me/annHarrisonBarnes. Your support is much appreciated.
Why You Feel Guilty About Not Writing (and What to Do About It)
Do you feel guilty when you don’t write? You’ve come to the right post. And the right blog.
The thing about guilt is that it sends a sickening fog through our minds and makes it difficult to do the tasks we feel are important. So in feeling guilty about not writing, you end up pushing yourself even further away from making it possible to write.
A vicious cycle. Maybe one that has an end.
My theory: writers feel guilty for not writing because they’ve been told that the only thing writers are allowed to do is write.
When you read about writers living the “starving artist” life, all you hear about are the late nights, the carpal tunnel syndrome, the isolation. The pain.
And for many “active” aspiring writers, there are plenty of late nights and physical/mental ailments and lonely stretches of very slow time.
But even though writing is…
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Why You Need a ‘Nope Day’
Thanks Meg for such a great post today.
For all the NaNoWriMo participants out there, this is especially for you. When I started NaNoWriMo in 2014, I thought I had to plan to write every day, but guess what, I have learned over the years that when you don’t stress yourself over not reaching the 50K word goal for the month of November, you just might reach it and your story won’t be all over the place, like mine was.
At least once during the week and once over every weekend, I allow myself one “Nope Day.”
A Nope Day is a day purposely dedicated to — you guessed it — saying “nope” to any writing that is not immediately required of me to complete.
Why do I do this? Because I needed a reason to stop feeling guilty about not doing work. But I also knew that doing work all the time in an attempt to stop feeling guilty was only going to wear me down and knock me out.
So I decided to try giving myself at least one or two days a week to do the absolute minimum.
On a weekday this might mean getting up, going to work, clocking out, and lounging on the couch (read: entertaining the puppy) until bedtime. On a Saturday it might mean waking up whenever I want (read: when the dog…
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NaNoWriMo Update and a Pep Talk
Hello everyone,
The first full week of November is almost at an end, and if you’re like me, you’re over 12 thousand words deep into your story. If not, that’s okay too. Personally, I have had a couple of days (if you count today), where I was unable to come up with a thing to write. On Tuesday, I had a bit of an upset stomach which threw me off my creative course, and today I’ve been a bit tired and couldn’t think of a thing to write. However, you, like I, will have days where either the muse doesn’t visit you for whatever reason, or where you don’t physically feel like you can sit down and concentrate enough to write a single word. If this has happened to you, let me give you a bit of encouragement, you’ll be all right. You’ll eventually push through, whether you win or not.
This is the reason why I started a day early, so that I could make up for the day or so where I would be lagging for physical or creative reasons. If I don’t reach the 50 K word goal, that’s find with me, because I have won NaNoWriMo once, so winning isn’t my main reason for taking on this challenge. For me, this is an opportunity to give myself an excuse to start and flesh out a new story. I’ve started a few new things, yet I haven’t fully fleshed them out, so here’s my reason for seeing this threw in one month. As to the other stories that I’ve started and not finished, I’ll work on those later, but for now, Hidden Gems is the story vying for my utmost attention.
Let this be a word of advice to any new NaNoWriMo writers out there. No matter whether you’ve fail to reach the 50-thousand-word goal in thirty days or not, you’ve still started a new project and now you have the chance to give yourself the permission to flesh out your brand-new creative baby, so to speak. All I can suggest is that you keep pushing through the best you can and don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day of writing, no matter what the reason for not doing the work.
When I wrote my first Nano novel, entitled The Apple Wheel, in 2014, I felt as though I had to hurry up and get the 50 thousand words written before the month was over. Although I surpassed my goal, my story was literally all over the place. I told several stories and jumbled them up into one. At some point I will revise the novel and cut it down to size, so I can publish it as a middle grade mystery. The lesson I took away from winning my first NaNoWriMo challenge four years ago, was to get the words down on my computer screen. However, don’t think you have to win to succeed at this challenge.
I hope you take courage from my update and my story, because even if you fail to reach the overall 50k word goal, you’re still not a failure. You have taken the first step toward either becoming a writer or advancing your writing career. With four books under my belt, I can tell you that the accomplishment of getting your book published is an exciting and rewarding experience in itself, so get those words down and then come back and revise after a much-needed break.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my NaNoWriMo update and pep talk. I need to work on my story, so if you have a lesson you’ve learned in your writing, whether you’ve done NaNoWriMo or not, please share it in the comments below. Until next time, happy writing and God bless.
Posted in #amwriting, NaNoWriMo updates, Uncategorized
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There’s Nothing More Frustrating for a Writer Than Feeling Too Exhausted to Write
I started NaNoWriMo a day early for a reason. Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn’t bring myself to write, no matter how hard I tried. When you can’t go any further, sometimes it’s good to walk away so you can think.
When it’s the end of a long day and there’s still more writing to do, you don’t always feel like it.
In fact, sometimes you’re so tired you’ve actually convinced yourself it can’t be done.
You obviously have two options here: write, or don’t. Persist, or don’t. Push through, or don’t.
But it’s so much more complicated than that, isn’t it?
Because it’s not that you DON’T want to write or that you DON’T want to put in the effort or that you DON’T care. It’s that, at least at this particular moment, you CAN’T.
Trust me. As often as I tell y’all to “just do the work anyway,” I get how difficult it actually is to put those words into practice sometimes. There are days I do not want to practice what I preach. I don’t want to sit down at 8pm and write even 500 more words. I…
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Silly questions and answers for fun
Hello everyone, here are a few silly questions and my answers to them. These questions can also be found at the following link:
https://abbiescorner.wordpress.com/2018/11/06/lets-talk-the-tmi-questions-tag/
Q: What are you wearing?
A: Khaki pants and a sleeveless shirt and a pair of slip on tennis shoes.
Q: Have you ever been in love?
A: yes, and I got hurt, so I don’t believe I’ll fall in love again.
Q: Have you ever had a terrible break-up?
A: Yes, one divorce and in the process of getting a second one.
Q: How much do you weigh?
A: More than I care to admit.
Q: Do you have any piercings?
A: No and I don’t plan to either.
Q: Do you have any tattoos?
“A” Absolutely not. I don’t like needles, and I don’t trust those used at a tattoo parlor.
Q: How long does it take you to shower?
A: Long enough to get clean and enjoy the warm water. Other than that, that’s my business.
Q: Have you ever been in a physical fight?
A” No, but the verbal ones have come close to blows.
Q: What turns you on?
A: Not much any more after all I’ve been through.
Q: What turns you off?
A; Bad writing, adults who act like overgrown children, and noises (such as fingernails scraping across a chalkboard) that make me cringe.
Q: Do you prefer loud or soft music?
A: I prefer soft music to either fall asleep to or to inspire my writing. Loud music and other loud noises get on my nerves or freak me out.
Q: Do you have a favorite quote?
A: Yes, it is one that I wrote myself: “The past is but a whirlwind of memories, there are those you want to capture and those you want to forget. Hold onto the precious ones and let the rest spin away into the abyss.” This quote can be found near the end of my latest Electric Eclectic novel entitled Inner Vision, available at the following link:
Q: What’s your biggest fear?
A: Getting disoriented in an unfamiliar place. I have spatial disorientation issues, and when I get lost in a place with no tactile or audible cues, it causes my anxiety to kick into overdrive.
Q: What’s the last thing that made you cry?
A: Painful memories from my past.
Q: Who was the last person you spoke to?
A: The business manager for my employment specialist’s office about my book A Journey of Faith: A Stepping Stones Mystery.
You can find Kindle and paperback versions of this novel at the following links:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H7SCQNM
Q: What are the three qualities in a best friend?
A: Honesty, compassion, and a sense of humor.
Q: Do you like your name?
A: I like it well enough. The only thing I’d change is my married last name.
Q: If you could pick your own name, what would it be?
A: I’d rather not pick my own name, I do that for my characters.
Q: What makes you happy?
A: Spending time with my family, including my daughter and my nieces and nephew, listening to podcasts about writing, and getting creative.
Q: What are five random facts about you?
A: I live in a small town in South Central Georgia, I love music, I love to sit out on the front porch on a sunny day and brainstorm, I love the music of windchimes and rain on a tin roof, and I’m working on a story for NaNoWriMo.
Q: Is there any religious persuasion?
“A: Yes, I’m a Christian and I’m proud of it!
Q: Have you ever given or received a hicky?
A: I really don’t want to go there.
Q: What do you think about the most?
A: My latest writing project, my daughter, and I like to daydream.
Q: Is there someone you really hate right now?
A: I don’t hate anyone, but there are a couple of people I don’t particularly like at the moment.
Now it’s time for you to have some fun. You can do one of two things: You can either write your own blog post with your answers to these questions and link back to my blog, or you can leave your answers in the comments below.
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We’re All Basically Writing the Same Things at the Same Time
This is perfect for NaNoWriMo!
“I can’t keep writing this story, it’s not original enough.”
Have you ever had this thought? The good news is, I think we all have, at some point or another. But one major difference between writers who “make it” and those who don’t is that writers bound for success keep writing, and those destined not to reach their goals just stop.
Is there even such a thing as a completely original story anyway?
Don’t they say that all stories technically originate from the same eight (maybe more, maybe less) tales?
If no story you’re telling is as original as you’d like it to be — even if you work in online publishing and every article you write seems like a not-so-distant copy of another publication’s idea (which they probably got from someone else) — what makes anyone’s work unique?
Think of the story of Cinderella. How many different times and…
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