The Writers’ Year - improve your writing in 12 months
Keep a diary this month and put in an entry every day. Talk about what happened during your day but also your goals and expectations for the year ahead, and beyond. If you already keep a diary, try a second one from the point of view of a fictional character. This is a great way to get into the habit of making time for writing, and learning to write every day. Experiment with what time of day you find writing easiest, writing by hand or on a laptop, in silence or to music, and use this month to create your favoured writing habitat. Invest in desk lamps and stationary if you haven’t done so already, and get a calendar to plot all of the year’s writing challenges so you can tick off your achievements as you go.
February – Kick-starting your Portfolio
The year is well under-way and hopefully you’ll be full of ideas and motivation to get your writing year really started! Now is a great time to designate yourself a folder, or box, or drawer, for your writing, and you’ll want to start filling it up as soon as possible.
Now is the time you can finally get your teeth into all the prompts you’ve been scrolling through and all the semi-clear ideas you’ve had rolling around your head. Aim to add a new piece of writing to your collection every day. Descriptive pieces are a great way to do this, and a great way to practice all the writers’ rules you’ve been hearing about: SMAPO, five-sense description, and “show me, don’t tell me” are all great exercises to start with. But you should also practice action sequences, or use your own memories as inspiration for short stories. Practice writing in the past, present and future tense, and in first, second and third person narrative. There are loads of resources for creative writing exercises out there, so try as many as you can and learn what works for you.
You might also find that this is the month you begin to discover how frustrating writing can be. Whenever you find yourself with no inspiration, or hating the work you’re producing, just keep going. Don’t throw anything away. Even if you’re ashamed of it, you can use it to see how far you’ve come later. Keep everything in your portfolio, and enjoy watching it grow.
This is where we really start to get creative! But it means taking a step back from filling your portfolio and investing in developing your ideas for use in the rest of the coming year. A lot of this will depend on what genre of fiction you intend to write. If you’re into otherworld fantasy, you’ll have lot of work on your hands this month!
Leaving plot aside for now, any of your coming stories are going to need a couple of key ingredients: character and setting. Try alternating focus on character one day/week, then setting the next.
For your characters, start by building a bank of names - male/female, first/surnames, look for different language roots or their popularity in different historical times. You’ll probably want to start with physical appearances, but give your characters real depth with interesting backstories that influence their habits, goals and relationships. Think of villains as well as potential protagonists. Try one-off characters, but also families or teams or housemates. Don’t forget that your characters don’t necessarily have to be normal humans on twenty-first century earth.
Your settings can be further broken down into macro- and micro-environments. If you’d like to set your stories in other worlds, you’ll spend a lot of time designing your macro-environment. Draw your maps, name your provinces and give their inhabitants different cultures and histories. If you’re likely to write more about characters in the world we already know, you might still find it helpful to design your own cities or islands, but will want to spend more of this month on micro-environments. This largely means architecture – try drawing up floor plans for houses, palaces, schools. Think about what will relate to stories in the future, what these places will mean to your characters and
By the end of this month, you’ll have a wealth of worlds and settings to use in your writing, as well as deep, relatable characters to live in them.
Even if you’ve never explored with poetry before, have a month of playing around with rhythm. Try out writing haikus, limericks, and sonnets. Read famous poems and study their rhythm and rhyme structures. Try the same for some of your favourite song lyrics. You’ll soon learn all the intricate rules of poetry writing, and once you’ve learned them, then you can break them. Explore as much as you can with different styles to find out exactly what works for you. Don’t forget you can use poetry to tell full-length stories as well as shorter descriptive, romantic, or social commentary pieces. Research whether any poetry slam events are held near you and make an effort to attend them.
Get at least ten short stories written this month. Give yourself three days for each story – one to plan, one to write, one to revise. Aim to make your stories at least 1000 - 5000 words each, but if you’re running out of time, remember that you can make a big impact with just a few sentences. Remember this is a story, not a descriptive piece. That means you need a firmly distinguishable beginning, middle, and end. Think about what your short story is trying to say, what lessons it is trying to teach. If you’re stuck for ideas, try revisiting some of your characters or settings from your work in March.
Take a full month away from writing, and instead put all your time into reading this month. Read as much as you can, as widely as you can. And not just novels – try short stories, biographies, poetry, and non-fiction too. Don’t forget to read like an author and keep a notebook of particular words, phrases, and literary techniques that you like so that you can use them in your own work in future.
For many of us this will mean Camp NaNo, but for those who chose not to take part, use this month to set your own personal goals. Catch up on what you’ve missed so far this year, or set yourself a 31 Day Challenge. Remotivate yourself – we’re half way through the year already!
August – Doing it in Public Month
This month is all about sharing! Write outside of your normal writing environment – climb a hill or go to the woods or the beach, become that weirdo with the typewriter in the coffee shop! Get to know your local bookshop even better and make a habit of working in the library. Try out different writers’ social media, and find yourself a writing buddy. Publish what you write online, or better yet – get your friends and family to read your work! Even if you don’t want them to read your work, let people closest to you know that you’re a writer now. Look for local writing groups in your area and attend a meet up. If you can’t find any existing groups, start one.
September – Grammar and Vocabulary Month.
For many writers it’s one of the most frustrating topics, but being grammatically correct is essential to your long-term writing goals. By now you’ll probably have noticed your flaws and weaknesses in your writing as well as your strengths, so focus on these. If you get there/their/they’re mixed up, practice them! If your spelling leaves a lot to be desired, come up with mnemonics. If you’re not certain when to use parentheses, or start new paragraphs, or how to punctuate dialogue, practice it. If you’re reading this thinking “I already know everything”, you’re probably wrong. There are some wonderful online resources full of grammar exercises so spend some time every day on these.
You can use this month to broaden your vocabulary too. If you’ve had a successful reading month, you’ll already have a small bank of rare and interesting words you’ve come across in your reading. Actively look for more interesting words to fill your own writing dictionary with, and practice using them in sentences or short pieces of writing.
Now were going to get to grips with longer stories. If you’ve taking part in Nanowrimo, consider this your preparation! Plotting a full length novel is different to plotting short stories. Spend the first full week of this month researching the methods of outlining a novel. There are a number of different techniques, but most can be broken down into two or three major plot points leading to a final resolution. You’ll find it helpful to study some of your favourite books and see how those authors have weaved their plot through their chapters. Draw tables and diagrams, learn the patterns.
For each of the remaining three weeks, plot a novel. You can use an idea from earlier this year, or something brand new. Decide your beginning, schedule in your major plot points, and finally your resolution. It might change dramatically once you actually begin writing your novels, but aim to have a complete chapter /scene breakdown by the end of each week.
November – National Novel Writing Month
November is NaNoWriMo! 0 to 50k words in 30 days! Get over to nanowrimo.org and sign up! The community is incredibly welcoming and you’ll find all kinds of resources and ways to track your novel’s progress. If “writing a book” has been on your “to-do” list for as long as you can remember, then you can finally achieve it this year!
This month is yours to do with as you wish. After Nanowrimo, you might never want to see another word document again, or you might have enough momentum to aim for 50k-word sequel this month. Catch up on anything you skipped throughout the year, redraft your earlier work, or start something completely new with all the skills you’ve learned. Why not write an advent of festive short stories, or think about giving your poetry as a gift at Christmas?
And mostly – celebrate. If you’ve stuck with this project all year then that’s an incredible achievement! Let your friends and family congratulate you, take pride in all the work you’ve done this year, and be ready to do it all over again next year!
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