Very happy with myself today.
I’ve done little writing (but this counts, right? ;)) but I’ve been catching up on a couple of writing blogs, and found that I’ve already been putting two of their ideas into practice. Writing this very blog entry is carrying out a third.
Larry Brooks is the ‘Story Fixer‘. I also find bits of his blog to be quite cheesy – check out the jeans and leather jacket, and some of the marketing blurb. But his blog posts are uniformly great, and one I read today outlined the nine things you need to know in order to plan a story.
It was greatly satisfying to realise that my latest story (Leisure Society – still in draft) contained all four ‘quartiles’ as well as all five ‘story milestones’ – and in the right order! And I’d not even realised I was creating them at the time! So very encouraging.
The second post I want to mention is by Derek Rieck on the ProCopyTips blog, and is called Program your brain for writing success in 7 easy steps. I’m starting to grow weary of the ’10 Things…’ style of posts, but I did enjoy this one.
In particular, step 6 was ‘Record your progress’. Specifically, write down the great things you’ve done, and ignore the criticisms for now. You’re training your brain to remember the good stuff as well as all the ‘errors [marked] in red pen’.
And that’s exactly what this blog is for: Recording progress, making me realise the good stuff I’ve done, and keeping me typing a little bit more! Great!