Fiction therapy

Achieve Your Writing Goals

July 9, 2019 By Jim Dempsey 7 Comments

There are times when writing is easy, when you get through that daily word count without too much effort. And there are times when the final goal – that moment when you can type The End – seems very far away. There will be days when you think it will be impossible to reach, and it seems so much easier to check Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or even clean the house.

When you get to that point, however, there’s a better way to procrastinate. Follow this quick and simple process to overcome your writing barriers. [Read more…]

Stories that Liberate

June 28, 2019 By John J Kelley 18 Comments

Fifty years ago, when I was but a toddler in a bayou town along the Florida Panhandle, an uprising at a nondescript Manhattan bar changed my life. On Jun 28, 1969, patrons of Stonewall Inn, a hangout for some of the city’s most marginalized populations did the unexpected, striking back rather than complying when police […]

How to Respond to Criticism

June 11, 2019 By Jim Dempsey 17 Comments

Last time, I looked at how to deal with your own inner critic, and this month it seems appropriate and timely to look at external criticism. Any kind of feedback on your writing—whether good or bad—can be useful, but the negative stuff can hit hard, causing a burst of emotions within you. What’s the best […]

Lessons From a Revision

May 27, 2019 By Julia Munroe Martin 17 Comments

Which do you enjoy more . . . revising or writing (first-drafting)? Just like the universal plotter vs. pantser question, this is one of the most enduring discussions among writers I know. Maybe you’re in one camp more than the other? Or maybe you’re somewhere in between. Until recently, and without hesitation, I’d have answered […]

Tune out your self-doubt—Fiction Therapy

May 14, 2019 By Jim Dempsey 16 Comments

Best-selling thriller writer, Ian Rankin, has been writing professionally since the mid-1980s. He’s written close to 30 novels. He pretty much writes a book a year. But, at a certain point in his drafting process, usually somewhere at the end of the first month, he is struck by, what he calls, ‘the fear.’ He is […]

So You Think You Can Write?

April 10, 2019 By Sarah Callender 23 Comments

Early in the fall of 1994, I had a terrible realization: I did not know how to write. This was problematic as I, fresh out of college, had been hired to teach high school English. In other words, I was supposed to teach something I couldn’t do myself. But how had I never realized I […]

Discover Your Characters’ Goals

April 9, 2019 By Jim Dempsey 3 Comments

Working out what your characters’ goals are will help you plan your plotline and develop engaging, motivated characters your readers will love to follow. Your characters need goals to get them to the next page, and then the next, and on until the end. They need to be going somewhere, trying to achieve something. That […]

The Quest for Your Muse

April 2, 2019 By Nancy Johnson 24 Comments

I think my muse wants to kill me. It can’t be contained or put on a schedule. It’s often unpredictable. I know writers who get their best ideas in the shower. Not me. My muse usually shows up when I’m driving in rush hour traffic on Chicago’s Kennedy and Edens expressways. With cars squeezing into […]

No, Really, Why Do You Write?

March 28, 2019 By Heather Webb 61 Comments

A friend of mine recently asked me why I write. She found she couldn’t answer the question herself, not anymore. She’d lost the love, and she was hoping something I’d say, as well as the other writers around her, would trigger an awakening in her. She wanted to find her path back to the career […]

How to Find Inspiration—Fiction Therapy

March 12, 2019 By Jim Dempsey 10 Comments

Whether you’re wondering what happens next in your story, want to write your first novel, or are about to start on the next instalment of your long-running series, there are always times when you’ll need inspiration. And it is often surprisingly close by. ‘Be observant,’ said the dramatist, Lajos Egri, ‘and you will be forced […]