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    Writing courses, free resources and webinars, and developmental editing Writing courses, free resources and webinars, and developmental editing
    • Home
    • Mentoring
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      • Venice Writing Retreat
      • Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend
      • Karoo Writing Retreat | Memoir & Fiction Getaway in South Africa
    • Courses
    • Resources
      • Free offerings for writers
      • Downloadable writing resources
      • Blog
    • About
      • About Us
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    Archives

    Tag Archives for: "writing inspiration"
     Curiosity-driven writing: How to use unexpected details effectively
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Richard Beynon's blog, Monday Motivation
    Posted July 8, 2024

    Curiosity-driven writing: How to use unexpected details effectively

    Have you ever found yourself lost in the depths of the internet, sliding down endless rabbit holes? What if I told you that these seemingly random detours could be the secret to unlocking your [...]

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     Lessons in creating authentic fiction from Salman Rushdie
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    By All About Writing
    In Writing Craft, Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted July 1, 2024

    Lessons in creating authentic fiction from Salman Rushdie

    Writers, are often told to ‘write what you know’, but what does that really mean when we’re creating fictional worlds? Richard’s recent subscribers only writing motivation mailer [...]

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     Six effective techniques to overcome writer’s block and boost creativity
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted June 24, 2024

    Six effective techniques to overcome writer’s block and boost creativity

    As writers, we often face a dilemma: we need to keep writing, but sometimes our creativity runs dry. That’s when taking a break isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity. But not all [...]

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     For Writers in a Rut: Jump-Start Your Motivation with These Tools
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted June 17, 2024

    For Writers in a Rut: Jump-Start Your Motivation with These Tools

    Writing is a journey full of ups and downs, triumphs and roadblocks. Even the most prolific authors have faced times when the words just won’t flow and self-doubt creeps in. If you’re [...]

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     Write Irresistible Characters: The #1 Way to Hook Readers
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Richard Beynon's blog, Monday Motivation
    Posted June 10, 2024

    Write Irresistible Characters: The #1 Way to Hook Readers

    Building a relationship with your reader Whether you’re writing a short story, a novel or a trilogy of space operas, what you want your reader to do, after they’ve turned the last page is sigh, [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: The quest for readers
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted June 3, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: The quest for readers

    During our trip to South Africa earlier this year, Trish and I made the long drive from Cape Town to Johannesburg over two days. We stopped over in a b&b on the outskirts of a little town in [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: Rocket Fuel for Your Writing
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Richard Beynon's blog, Monday Motivation
    Posted May 27, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: Rocket Fuel for Your Writing

    Rocket Fuel for Your Writing: Inspiration and Motivation for Writers by Richard Beynon contains a series of writing craft essays for authors and writers with additional notes and writing [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: A tangle of stories
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    By All About Writing
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted May 24, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: A tangle of stories

    In the final paragraph of his Origin of Species, Charles Darwin talks about the grandeur of nature in its many forms. He remarks on the fact that the complexity of something like an “entangled [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: Bird-watching on the River Great Ouse
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    By All About Writing
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted May 23, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: Bird-watching on the River Great Ouse

    Spring seems at last to have broken out in the United Kingdom. The last few days have seen hours of uninterrupted sunlight for what seems like the first time in months. As the weather improved, [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: The Gosling Symphony
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted May 6, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: The Gosling Symphony

    This is a story about a clutch of goose eggs, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the eternal struggle between hope and despair. You might remember my tale last year about the Canada geese that [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: Conflict, character and climax
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted April 29, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: Conflict, character and climax

    Here’s a three-finger exercise for you: what are the sinewy fibres that link conflict, character and climax? The question arose as I pondered my strategies for our latest foray into the wilds of [...]

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     Monday Writing Motivation: Keeping a close eye on literary conflict
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    By Richard Beynon
    In Monday Motivation, Richard Beynon's blog
    Posted April 22, 2024

    Monday Writing Motivation: Keeping a close eye on literary conflict

    I’ve been puzzling over a small challenge I’ve given myself: to turn a recent experience I’ve had into a short story. The nature of the experience is not in itself very important – although to me [...]

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    🔍 Observation Challenge 🔍 This week's writi 🔍 Observation Challenge 🔍

This week's writing motivation newsletter involves a challenge. We invite you to join in, and then send us your creative piece. Maybe we should put together a blog of some of the submissions? What do you think? 

So here is your challenge: Take a break from your writing and go on a walk you do often: to the shops, round the park, the same route with the dog. This time, go looking for what has changed since you last did it. A new crack in the pavement. A tree that's started to turn. A shop sign that's faded. Write a paragraph about them and post it in the comments. We'd love to read what you found.

#creativewriting #writingcommunity #writingchallenge
    It’s the final step on our conversation on James It’s the final step on our conversation on James Webb Young’s ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas.’ 

Step 5:
Very cunningly, I’ve foreshadowed this final step. Fix it, dear Henry, fix it. Or, as James Clear, (author of Atomic Habits) in a blog on creativity had it: 'Put your idea out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.'

It's worth saying plainly: none of this is mystical. Young wasn't describing inspiration, he was describing digestion – you feed the mind raw material, let it marinate, and it comes back rearranged. The gap most writers get wrong is Step 3. We treat the walk, the weeding, the washing-up as time stolen from the work, when it's actually where the work is quietly getting done without the apparent involvement of our conscious minds.

So if you're stuck on a plot that won't cohere or a character who refuses to breathe, try trusting the method rather than the muse: load up on facts, worry them for a while, then go and do something that has nothing to do with writing at all. The idea that turns up afterwards won't arrive polished. That's fine. Fixing it was always Step 5, not Step 4.

#WritingCraft #WritingTips #AllAboutWriting #WritersOfInstagram #AmWriting #WritingMotivation #FictionWriting #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice
    We continue our conversation on James Webb Young’s ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas.’ His system involves five steps. Let’s look at number four.

Step 4:
Now allow your mind to reconsider the problem – the story that needs a great inciting incident; the character that simply isn’t gelling; the ending that is unsatisfactory – and you’ll find, nine times out of ten, that you do now have an idea. It might not be perfect, in fact it might feel quite rickety – but what you’ll do in Step 5, is fix it. Stay tuned for the last step!

#WritingCraft #WritingTips #AllAboutWriting #WritersOfInstagram #AmWriting #WritingMotivation #FictionWriting #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice
    We continue our conversation on James Webb Young’s ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas.’ His system involves five steps. Let’s look at number three.

Step 3:
Go and work in the garden, or spend an hour or two pottering about in your workshop, or go for a long walk in an area you’ve not visited before. In short, put the problem you’re trying to solve completely out of your mind and do something entirely different that fascinates and energises you.

#WritingCraft #WritingTips #AllAboutWriting #WritersOfInstagram #AmWriting #WritingMotivation #FictionWriting #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice
    We continue our conversation on James Webb Young’s ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas.’ His system involves five steps. Let’s look at number two.

Step 2:
Now massage all these facts, look at them from different angles. What surprises lurk in territory that might seem utterly familiar but contains shadowy corners? See what links exist between one fact and another. Whales and oil derricks? Balance sheets and the collapse of traditional shops? Astronomy and glass blowing? See what facts seem to resonate with each other.

#WritingCraft #WritingTips #AllAboutWriting #WritersOfInstagram #AmWriting #WritingMotivation #FictionWriting #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice
    Ever wondered where ideas come from – or how you Ever wondered where ideas come from – or how you can tap into a source of ideas around which to build your stories?
I’m not sure whether you’ve come across references to a man – James Webb Young – and his book, published in 1939 and only recently rediscovered by a self-help industry. It’s called A Technique for Producing Ideas. 

Why mention it? Because its 'system' was designed for application initially by young admen (Young was a copywriter for an advertising agency). And, browsing through the little book, it seemed to me very obvious that it is possible to apply his method to the generation of ideas for stories.

Here are his five steps, with a little of my commentary woven round them:

Step 1:
First, gather material. This might sound odd if you’re writing fiction, but actually even the most outrageously fictional confection is full of factual material. You might have chosen to set your story in a specific location. Even if you think you know it well, you’d be well-served to dig out a map of the place, find out why the church is called St Clements, whether any controversy attaches to the demolition of the old brewery …

If your story concerns a particular subject – weaving, say; or fishing; or accountancy; or astronomy – then, naturally, your research will focus on it. But don’t forget that a very much wider focus can also help enormously. Your character might work on an off-shore oil derrick – but you might, when investigating deep sea oil drilling, find yourself reading material about marine fossils, or the Gulf Stream, or famous wrecks … Don’t curb your curiosity.

#WritingCraft #WritingTips #AllAboutWriting #WritersOfInstagram #AmWriting #WritingMotivation #FictionWriting #WritingCommunity #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice
    ✍️✍️What exactly is the Power of Writing c ✍️✍️What exactly is the Power of Writing course? ✍️✍️

The Power of Writing takes you to the heart of creative writing. Over just four online modules, the course introduces you to a handful of creative writing’s essential skills.

The Power of Writing course is designed to introduce you to the key skills of creative writing – and help you use these skills in your own writing. 

We’ve wrapped the theory around a series of practical writing exercises in four modules. The course will: 

 ✍️Help you to write confidently without constantly censoring yourself. 
 ✍️Give you tools to develop your unique writing voice. 
 ✍️Introduce you to disciplines that will continue to help you to write fluently long after the course is done. 
 ✍️Give you tools that will help you write more vividly. 
 ✍️Show you how to think more creatively and communicate this in your writing. 
 ✍️Help you get more out of books by reading actively. 

‘I have been writing for a number of years but every so often, I like to sharpen the saw. Your course is so valuable in this regard.’ – Hendie Grobbelaar

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the modules… I loved the fact that the modules are balanced. The first two do not require specific writing techniques, but exposes thoughts and observations. The last two modules start exploring the how of transforming ideas/happenings into something that works on paper.’ – Melanie du Plessis, Centurion

‘I enjoyed the introduction to each assignment, explaining what is needed with examples, especially for an online course.’ –Alma van As, Welobie

‘My experience was positive. I enjoyed the challenge… It was great focusing on writing rather than the content that one does in the daily drudge of communicating. I liked writing for the pleasure rather than rushing through the normal communications of the day – bit like “stopping to smell the roses”.’ – Charles Nesbitt, Somerset West

Sign up online: https://allaboutwritingcourses.com/product/power-of-writing-course/
    In this week's writing motivation, Richard invites In this week's writing motivation, Richard invites us to just write three good sentences. Can you avoid the trappings of being a writer and put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard? 

Read the full piece in our Link in Bio and if you don't subscribe already, sign up via the same links.

#AllAboutWriting #allaboutwritingcourses
    "I do try to make Tannie Maria different from myse "I do try to make Tannie Maria different from myself. However, as I have become softer and plumper, I guess I’m becoming more like her. But that wasn’t my plan. Where we do overlap is in our love for the Karoo." - Sally Andrew, author of the Tannie Maria mysteries.

It was a real pleasure to host the unassuming author of the Tannie Maria mysteries, Sally Andrew, on our monthly webinar. She had much advice for would-be writers, imparted in her generous, down-to-earth style, always infused with her quirky humour. We chatted about place, about characters and about planning and writing practice. She finds it important to keep her characters as different from herself as possible. I guess I’m the same. It’s not something I’ve ever particularly striven for, yet most of my adult characters are quite different from me, in personality, preoccupations and the way they present to the world. Yet, nonetheless, I always draw on myself to some extent. I try to embody them and, for that brief period of writing, become them. In that way, I draw on what is different from me, yet still to be found, real or imagined, somewhere within me. - Jo-Anne Richards, All About Writing

Watch the replay now available at www.allaboutwritingcourses.com or visit our link in bio

#allaboutwriting #writingwebinar
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