*Just Start Writing* Celebrates a Birthday!

Are stories swirling around? Are ideas to share whirling in your mind? Are you on a carousel, all colors and mirrors with unicorns and griffins and dragons to ride?

That carousel of ideas tempts you to step on and enjoy the ride—yet you hesitate to pass the gate and climb up and select a ride. It’s too wondrous, too dreamlike for any reality.

Just Start Writing is designed to convince you to buy that ticket, walk through the gate, spy out the animal you want to ride, and climb on. The carousel is real, not a wonderful dream.

“Wait,” you may say. “I’ve tried before. I’ve read writing guidebooks until my eyes glaze over. I joined a writing group. I scan Pinterest and read the links. Writing just—it looks overwhelming. It can’t be that easy.”

Writing is that easy.

Just pour those swirling ideas onto the page.

And you want this dream, don’t you? Hasn’t the dream of writing persisted? Don’t you keep jotting ideas down? Aren’t you investigating and exploring because you can’t release the dream?

That was me. I’ve wanted to be a published writer since the Dark Ages. A few years ago I became serious about my dream. I set a deadline to publish my first book in 2015—and I succeeded! Since then, I haven’t looked back. As M.A. Lee and my other two pseudonyms, I’ve published 30 titles, mostly fiction.

Now people ask, “How did you start writing?” and “How do you come up with all of those stories?”

Writers ask, “How do I start writing? and “Where do you get your ideas?”

See the difference in those questions? Most people don’t care about the process. Writers want the process so they can apply it to their own carousels of struggles.

That’s our first admission, you and me:  Writing can be a struggle. It’s easy, but it’s also a dizzy whirl.

If these questions are yours—How do I start writing? and Where do you get your ideas?—then Just Start Writing is for you.

 

*Discovering Characters* ~ Write Focus Podcast

Celebrate with Writers Ink! Discovering Characters is 3.

One of the hardest things to do in writing is to create characters that readers  will care about, that will make them have to read on. ~ Noah Luke

Discovering Characters is like investigating a house we want to buy.

No, I’m serious. Characters have an exterior façade that we comment upon as we drive past. Through the windows we catch glimpses of interior lives.

Even in cookie-cutter boxy cliques, characters have individual characteristics, just as the suburbia ranch houses have their garden plantings and the urban row houses have their painted doorways. These small touches create individual homes in neighborhoods.

Some characters enjoy the bright city lights. Some are loners, nestled against a national forest.  Characters, houses—each have individual personalities. Some are blingie, with the latest décor while others enjoy the comfort of yoga pants and old sneakers.

As writers, we capture these individual characters and save them from the cookie-cutter boxy stereotypes. We delve into interior rooms for glimpses of formative baggage. Finding their backstory is a search through attics and cellars, storage closets and garages. Characters hide their pain and fears, painting them over and adding distracting artwork.

Our job as writers is to find every detail of our characters then use snippets so our readers will see our characters as they drive through our books. We hint at the foundations while opening doors to their plans and purposes.

Discovering Characters is designed to help writers find the exteriors and interiors, public and private. We’ll dig around the foundations and climb to the roof. We’ll explore the open rooms and the storage closets. We’ll peek into rooms inhabited by such characters as diverse as Elizabeth and Darcy, the Iron Man, Aragorn and Frodo, Travis McGee, Medea, Macbeth, and Nanny McPhee.

Five areas comprise this guidebook. Just as characters—and houses—are individual, this info is individual. You won’t need every bit. Dip in and out, skim around. When you reach locked rooms, come back and explore to discover the keys to your characters.

  1. Starting Points ~ offering templates and character interviews
  2. Classifications ~ common and uncommon ways of discovering characters
  3. Relationships ~ couples, teams, allies, enemies, mentors, etc.
  4. Special Touches ~ progressions, transgressions, and transitions for character arcs
  5. Significant Lists ~ archetypal characters and much more

Discovering Characters, with 44,000-plus words, is the second book in the Discovering set, part of the Think like a Pro Writer series for writers new to the game as well as those wanting to up their game.

Click this link to take advantage of special summer savings.

Writer M.A. Lee has been indie-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 25 books published under her pseudonyms. Visit www.writersinkbooks.com to discover more information.

The Discovering series

Having an Epiphany about your writing?

Wanting guidance of all sorts?

The Discovering series offers help with

>> PLOT

>> CHARACTERS

>> SENTENCE CRAFT

>> BRANDING individual books, series, and your author persona

and

NOVEL WRITING.

Discovering Your Novel  is a separate guidebook.

Discovering Your Writing bundles characters, plot, branding, and sentence craft into one 8 x 10 book. BEST DEAL HERE!

Check this out for more information.

View the book trailer here! 

The paperback of this writing craft bundle is coming soon!

Ebook is currently available.

 

Going Indie? Afraid about Formatting?

Many writers — veterans included — think Indie Publishing is hard because of Formatting the Manuscript.

I tell you now, Formatting is EASY compared to writing character dynamics and events that surprise the reader.

If you’ve ever wondered about formatting, MS basics and keyboard shortcuts, the essential documents of Front and Back Matter, and the essential Masterbook, time to stop wondering and start doing.

You can do it. I did it. Let’s celebrate  Indie Publishing together.

It’s the last Foundations week for Discovering Your Novel, the summer series for The Write Focus.

Listen at this link. 

Summer Series for The Write Focus

Summer Series ~ June / July / AugustDiscovering Your Novel

All summer our focus is the craft and process of writing.

M.A. Lee shares the various stages of Discovering Your Novel. We look at the Foundations, Visioning, Analysis, and Revision & pPublishing stages that bring a novel into the world.

The Focus for July ~ Envisioning

Time to Envision the whole story we want to tell. We need true clarity in our crystal ball. What do we envision?

7/7 ~ Envision the Plot >> the whole story, not the 7 main scenes. Plot Category with elements; exercises for writing improvement

7/14 ~  Envision the World >> Basic World, Stomping Grounds, Backstory, World Building nuts and bolts

7/21 ~ Envision Secondaries and More >> BFFs or not, foils and obstacles,  minions of evil

7/28 ~ Envision other Characters and Your Writing >> additional side characters, walk-ons and cameos; launch and novel openings, writers’ block and more.

The Focus for June ~ Foundations

6/1 ~ Introduction >> What makes writing successful? The discipline of  work, through persistence, completion, learning craft, and disciplined devotion

6/2 ~ Foundations A: Pick >> story / genre / protagonist / antagonist / tagline or theme

6/9 ~  Foundations B: Sketch >> story / the protagonist’s introduction / the antagonist’s introduction / the setting’s introduction / background

6/16 and 6/23 ~ Foundations C, in two parts: Know >>

Part 1: beginning / the protagonist’s dearest desire / ending/ greatest stress point / the protagonist’s nadir

Part 2: the protagonist’s zenith / early win by evil / final battle / early twist for the protagonist / the betrayal of the protagonist

6/30 ~ Foundations D: Build >> Set us the Manuscript’s foundation: for paperback and ebook / format / MS basics (how to type it), front matter / back matter / the masterbook

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus! Content copyright is 2021, Writers Ink Books.

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

Visit thewritefocus.blogspot.com for more information about The Write Focus.

Listen on your favorite podcast site:

My favorite podcast is Podbeanhttps://eden5695.podbean.com/

Then we have Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-write-focus/id1546738740%20

Spotify will let you listen to all the episodes without your doing a thing to select them. They may be a little out of order, though. 😉  https://open.spotify.com/show/4fMwknmfJhkJxQvaaLQ3Gm?si=0GFku2PbShWXiDhRp7JaDQ

YouTube direct link to the Discovering Your Novel playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7IjuIS4daWlkiT4jRvRmnUM

Visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com for show notes about the entire Write Focus podcast. Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com for comments, questions, and speculations.
  • Summer Series :: writing craft
  • April into May focus :: Write a Book in a Month / Writing Challenge and Result
  • Winter series :: Think like a Pro
  • November 2020 :: What’s in a Name
  • Write the Novel / Edit, Proof, Publish
  • What’s Horrifying for Writers (Halloween week)
  • Newbie Mistakes and Notta Mistakes, including the inaugural episode on Oct. 6, 2020.

 

The Write Focus ~ What’s In a Name, 3 parts

What’s In a Name, part 1 ~ How creatives develop names for their businesses along with brainstorming techniques

Listen: Follow the podcast at this linkAired November 11.

Transcript Here.

What’s In a Name, part 2 ~ Pen Names / Select and Maintain

Use the Link under part 1. This episode aired Nov. 18

Transcript Here.

What’s In a Name, part 3 ~ Names for Characters and Titles of Books/Series.

Use the Link under part 1. This episode aired Nov. 25.

Transcript Here.

Coming Up: We’re BookCasting with Think like a Pro.

Or is it Booktubing? Bookpodding? What do we call it?

IDK. We’re doing it, though!