make a wish and hope it's not your last

1.) Set the mood

Think about what makes your writing sessions productive. Do you need a cup of tea? Make one! (And grab yourself a glass of water while you’re at it. Writing is thirsty work and once you get up, you might not sit back down!) Does your desk need to be cleared off? Take a couple minutes to clear the clutter!

2.) Find your tools

Grab whatever you need to write. Grab your lucky pen and notebook, your laptop charger, a snack, everything you need. Put on your favorite playlist and take a seat. You’ve got some work to do.

Open your notebook or document to where you left off. Pull out your pen, pencil or keyboard and take a deep breath. Reread the last couple sentences. If you can’t continue from there or you just aren’t feeling the scene anymore, take a break to clear your mind, then see if you can go back and pick up where you left off.

3.) Clear your mind

Open to a blank page in your notebook or create a blank word document. Write everything that happened to you today up until this point. Did you have a lousy day? Write what made today so lousy. Have something you wish you could say to someone but don’t really want to? Write it here. Write about your crush. Write about that argument you and your sister got into. Use this time as a brain dump just to get some words on a page.

Maybe you have a story idea you want to write down before you forget or a snippet from a future scene? Jot it down and highlight or circle it. You don’t need to save this document, but if you wrote anything important, you might want to save that snippet.

4.) Pick a theme

Have you ever done a focused free write? Pick a theme. It can be an emotion, an item, a character or setting from your story; pick whatever strikes your fancy. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and in that time, write everything that comes to mind when you think about that theme.

You don’t need to use complete sentences. This can be a list, random words, feelings you associate with that, descriptions, how one of your characters would interact with this object, or anything else. The point here is to get some words on the page through association.

Can’t think of a theme? Check out @deepwaterwritingprompts or @writing-prompt-s for some writing prompts and try a similar exercize.

5.) Give your story another shot

Did you get into the groove? Did you feel like you can write? Great! Open back to your story and start up again. Even if you can’t finish that particular scene, throw in a couple enters or a page break and start writing a scene that you really want to write.

If you decide to skip ahead, try to write a couple of sentences of what happens between where you left off and where you start back up. This doesn’t need to be eloquent or beautiful or even full sentences. Just an idea of how your characters can get from point A to point B.

Here’s an example of something I’ve written when I didn’t want to finish the scene in Illusions of Hope:

Kreisla was right. Job boards full of listings. Red - salvage, blue - ROSE Corp., yellow - mining, green - bounties and missing persons.

Investigative journalism may not be a career path on Caldera, but an investigator/bounty hunter? might not be a bad idea. She found a job, some kid had skipped town on a debtor and was presumed to be in [NAME THIS GOD DAMN CITY ALREADY]. That couldn’t be too hard.

6.) Don’t give up

Maybe today just wasn’t a good day to write. That’s OKAY. You’re not going to be able to wake up every day and write 5,000 words. You might not even be able to wake up every day and write 1,667 words.

YOU ARE VALID no matter how many words you write in a session. YOU ARE VALID if you didn’t even open your word doc today. YOU ARE VALID if the words you wrote weren’t up to your standard.

No matter where you are in your writing process, your words don’t need to be perfect. You can always come back later to make revisions or rewrite entire scenes. The biggest fear I face when I’m looking a blank page is that the words I write won’t be perfect. The perfect first draft is a myth, just like the perfect final draft.

I believe in you. Don’t give up.

  “Useless… useless… good god, why would you even…?”

  As Beelzebub went on sorting through the shelf, one book after the other was tossed aside onto an already impressively big pile. The particular man they had once belonged to would likely be outraged to see his precious collection treated like expired chicken being pulled from a supermarket rack, but, perhaps to his own advantage, he was dead as dust and would never get the chance to file an official complaint any longer. The death of his… client had been sudden but not surprising for Beelzebub. Sadly it also meant that the other had not been capable to completely fulfill his end of the deal yet, soul and everything aside. It was up to the demon now to try and at least reap some of the remaining benefits of their contract.

  Given that the mortal’s interest in the occult had been obscene enough to be considered an outrage even in these godless days, Beelzebub had placed most of his hopes in the strange fundus of more or less arcane objects cluttering the old country house. Most of it was crap, fake leather covers bought at midnight on ebay or cheap copies of medieval texts that Beelzebub knew had actually been written by some obnoxious eccentric in the late 1800s. He had almost rummaged through all the tomes and pamphlets available on the first floor of the house, when a particular volume suddenly peaked his interest. A strange, sweet smell that neither came from the old paper nor the glue with which they had been bound together…

  He opened it.

What she didn’t expect was a voice. It echoed through the void and made the book awaken. Lida saw light, which meant it was time to check out who had stumbled upon her home. She reached towards the light, her body manifesting itself as a pale pink smoke oozing from the open pages. Once her body had fully formed in the room, Lida eyed the man that held the book.

“Well, you’re not the old man. Old, yes, but my instincts are screaming that you are no man. Who are you?”

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“Later, this is enough information to process as it is.” There would definitely be some adjustments to make, but he could figure it all out. He was mainly concerned with getting through life without Lida knowing every moment he was in trouble. Which, could be alot.

“As you noted before, the book is like a pet. It has been around long enough to become somewhat sentient. If you want to look up information you simply ask it and what you need will appear. It enjoys to be sat in sunlight, dry places, and where ever is closest to its owner. I suggest you keep it on your person or it will aggressively appear where you are. And yes it does bite and have a tendency to hit people over the head. Trust me.” She rolled her eyes, remembering how she found that out the hard way. “The book beckons me when you are in any type of discomfort, something as small as a paper cut or head cold and I’ll be dragged here. Oh last thing, would you prefer to create your room now or later?”