5 Ways To Get Your Writing Rolling
As a writer, I’ve found myself multiple times dealing with writer’s blockages or difficulty to keep writing a whole novel. That’s because I’m used to writing short stories most of the time, or even one-shots (and the book I have called Love Through Words is a little self-published poem book which more or less had been easy for me to write).
Writing is not as easy as people make it seem. It has structure, a beginning, and an end, and in fact, it also has a lot of planning to do if you want to create a great book without holes in every chapter.
There are a few steps that have helped me with my writing that I want to share with all of you and that hopefully, you’ll find helpful too.
Step 1: Know what you’re comfortable writing
And get out of it, even if it’s for a bit.
Yes, you can stay on it, write about your old, drama-romance in the purest Prude and Prejudice way if you want (because hey, there’s nothing wrong with that!) but getting out of your comfort zone is actually helpful. This will help you grow as a writer. Take notes about what you like to write and what you don’t, and try it. Maybe you don’t like writing sci-fi but you’re a pro at it, why not!? Experiment, experiment, experiment.
Step 2: Music, movies, and tv shows are your best friends
Let’s say you’re writing a horror novel. The murderer has captured the victim, and it’s now in the basement of the murderer’s secret place ready to torture them, probably kill them, and have a little conversation/dialogue with them, but you’re stuck and don’t know what to do or how to start. What are you going to do? Maybe… You could listen to Saw BSO or lo-fi playlists on Spotify to help you focus? Or you could watch SE7EN for the dialogue, or you could take notes from the Netflix series You. Music, movies, and tv shows are your best friends.
Step 3: Be your own voice
Yes, reading other authors and seeing their writing style is helpful too, but you need to find yours. As I explained in the first article I wrote here “Let Writing Be Your Own Voice”, you can use it to be critical, to write about a helpless love, or to judge in an essay how fatphobia is still a thing in 2022. Write about what makes you happy, but make it in a way that can catch other people in too.
Step 4: Prompts generators are not your enemy
I know that people could have mixed feelings when it comes to this.
BUT WHY?
Prompts generators can be so helpful when you want to write something short and sweet and don’t know where to start. My personal favorite is this one which more or less has helped me through a few ideas I’ve posted on a forum I’ve been for years. And this leads me directly to the last step.
Step 5: Practice, social media, and forums go hand in hand
Even if you don’t like it, it’s true. It happens, that’s life. Keep writing down every idea you have, participate in challenges and sign up in forums, create a blog to share your writings, or try to send them to newspapers/magazines that accept writings and create a social media account (personally I recommend Twitter because that’s what I use the most but of course, it’s your choice). Be consistent, and remember that perseverance goes a long way too.
Make yourself known. And don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a contract right away. Baby steps are the way to success, and your time will come.
