Welcome to round two of The Writer's Toolbox: so you can get on with your craft!
*Be sure to read to the end, I have an exciting announcement!
Thanks for stopping by, if you missed v.1 of the series, you can catch up HERE. My hope is that this ongoing series would be an inspiration + encouragement to you, should you find yourself a curator of words. Whether you blog, write love notes to your sweetie or are working your way through a manuscript - my goal is to share simple things, tools, articles, (and talented people) who are helping me on my own writing journey!
1. STORY GENIUS
Story Genius is a book recommended to me by a fellow writer friend. Written by Lisa Cron, the tag line is: How to use brain science to go beyond outlining and writing a riveting novel. But what really grabbed me was this, "Before you waste three years writing 327 pages that go nowhere". Yikes. That grabbed me (be sure to scroll to the end of this post to hear my announcement + why that last line really got me).
As I read, I pulled out a notebook and began to work through the prompts. I can't believe how much it uncovered about my own book in progress. Truly, I reached in and grabbed ahold of things I hadn't realized were in there. I am so glad I put in the time to read this, as I move forward on what's ahead (again, read more below). One more thing, Story Genius, in my opinion, will work for either fiction OR memoir. I am writing memoir, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked with my genre.
2. The Color Thesaurus
I reference this color chart quite often. I love the creativity of language, how we can paint a picture with the words we speak and write. Being able to bring your audience into your narrative is a wild and wonderful adventure, and I truly believe that happens when you are able to tell a story using descriptive imagery.
3. Chad Allen
Chad Allen is an editorial director for Baker Books. I heard him speak in a webinar through Hope*Writers recently and appreciated his insight and knowledge. He recently wrote this post, called See How Easily You Can Structure Your Book With This Method. I was so excited to work with the article, filling in the blanks myself. Chad says this, "I’m going to share a question and a process for helping you access your best content and structure it into book form." and he does just that. It's amazing how a few simple questions can really guide you into the direction of your book.
EXCITING NEWS IF YOU LOVE TO WRITE
I've always been an open book, and I love sharing with others about new things I'm learning and discovering, lessons learned the hard (and sometimes easy) way, and generally just being able to guide people as I've been blessed to have been guided.
So I decided to start an exclusive monthly newsletter, Behind the Writer's Toolbox, sharing all the details of my own journey in writing. I've not talked of this publicly, but after finishing 70k words of my manuscript, I've decided to begin again. That's right, I'm starting over. And I'd love to share with you why.
If you're interested in tagging along as I walk the road to publishing, I would be so glad to have you! I have some exciting plans in the works for the newsletter and you my friends, who will join me. In fact, the first Behind the Writer's Toolbox (coming soon), will include a template I created for myself, that I'd like to give to you as well!
If this tickles your fancy, join me! I'd love to have you. Sign up below.
In case you missed the first in the series of
Writer's Toolbox, you can check it out here!
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