Writing tips and things

Hello All

It's not exactly a book review but today I'm going to post some writing tips in honor of the halfway point in NaNoWriMo, some of these I came up with on my own, through experience but others I found on the net, usually on Tumblr, I'm not going to lie. These tips also work for Essays and school assignments.

Writing Tips:

1. Try your hardest to stay off the internet and Social Networking sites - Now, I myself am not the best follower of this rule, right now being a prime example, in truth staying off the net while you're supposed to be writing doesn't always work, especially when you have to look something up online, well I have a solution to this,
Step 1: Switch off your internet connection, if you're on wireless
Step 2: Open a new word document or notepad or Wordpad, Appleworks, what have you and title it "Things to look up" or something like that
Step 3: While you write if you come across something that you need to look up, don't immediately hit Google, you'll get distracted, pull up the blank document you just opened and write down what it is that you need to look up
Step 4: Once that's written down go back to your project or assignment and write whatever it was that you were going to write
Step 5: Highlight it so you can find it again later, after you've looked up the thing.
Step 6: Keep working and once you're finished or at least finished for the day, go back through the document of things to Google and Google them, write down your findings next to the item
Step 7: Go and insert the correct information into your novel/project, but keep the file of things to look up, you never know what you'll need

2. If you're like me you like writing or working to music, my advice to you is to find music that's not too upbeat, like dance music, or not too distracting for you and just listen to it while you write, if you find yourself getting distracted change the music obviously

3. Read - I'm going to be honest here, some of my best inspiration comes directly from other works, character names, ideas for monsters that sort of thing, all the best authors do this, I'll do a post later comparing 2 of the greats. Don't just read your genre though, make time to read everything classics, contemporary novels, fantasy, detective fiction, true crime, horror, science fiction, all of it, even if it's just an article in National Geographic inspiration can come from anywhere and everywhere, you just have to know where to look.

4. Actually Write, whether it's a couple of pages every day or a half page, 100 words whatever, write something, if you're having an off day and the words are clunky and not all that great write it anyway, you can go back later and edit your work and change things

5. If you're having a really off day and none of your writing flows the way you want it to, set a low word count goal, once you've reached it, take a break! Surf the net, read, go for a walk, troll your favourite Social networks, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, what have you, when inspiration strikes you, go back to your work

6. Character names - I'm going to touch on characters now, if you need a name for a character, use Google, search for baby name websites, Shakespeare name websites what ever, I know, when I was writing my Mystery Novel, I still am but for NaNoWriMo I'm focusing on my Fantasy Novel, anyway, when I first got the idea to write my mystery novel I was watching Sherlock that amazing feat of Steven Moffat's starring the god among men and resident dragon with the magic eyes, Benedict Cumberbatch and our very own Bilbo Baggins, Martin Freeman, the episode was The Hounds of Baskerville and in the canon Conan Doyle the main character's name was Lord Henry Baskerville, tenant of Baskerville Hall so I thought, what's a better, more old fashioned, name than Henry, so I wanted to use that but I needed a girl's name, a woman's name, for my main character. So I thought, and thought and finally I settled on naming her after my mother, Evelyn (I explain why in either the dedication or the Acknowledgements) hence my 2 main characters were born. However, they still needed last names so I settled on Jones for Henry and Hart for Evelyn, unfortunately I was reminded that there was already a detective Hart in the TV series Heart to Hart, also, I realized late, some of you may have noticed that Henry Jones is Indiana's name in the Indiana Jones movies, so I swapped their last names and added a couple of letters to Evelyn's last name. If you're using Shakepeare names though, be careful.

7. Go on iTunes and look up podcasts on books and writing, personally I find that they're very useful, I've got the NPR Books podcast, The New York times book review, Books on the Nightstand and Books and Authors, one thing I will say though, listen to Welcome to NightVale but don't write with it playing in the background because it gets super distracting, because it can get really weird at parts. One podcast I will recommend that you listen/subscribe to is Wordplay: Helping Writers become Authors by K.M. Weiland, she gives writing tips and advice for getting agents and publishers to snap up your idea and the podcast is truly amazing, she also does a video supplement to it on her blog
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/ and her website, where you can learn more about he books is http://www.kmweiland.com/

So that's my very long post with writing tips and what have you. My followers and readers who are doing NaNoWriMo, good luck and happy writing! I'll do a book review/author comparison next so stay tuned!