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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

My 3 fave writing tips:

Hi from Leanne!:) I've begun blogging at www.babesinbookland.com with Cherry Adair, Traci Hall, Rhonda Pollero (Kelsey Roberts) and Karen Kendall. I imagine some of you may have missed my blogs there, so I'll begin posting one each week for you here. If you'd like to read a different blog post from me or see what one of the other babes has to say, then please mosey over to www.babesinbookland.com Also, if you've had difficulty viewing the babesinbookland website, it may be due to the new microsoft explorer, which unfortunately has lots of bugs in it. I got rid of the new one and went back to using the old and I now have no problems. Yay!:) Now for the BLOG!


My 3 fave writing tips:

Oooh, I like this subject and since I have difficulty staying on task, I’m happy to report that my #1 isn’t exactly writing-related.

#1 is using self-affirmations. It sounds like baloney, but the truth is we all use self-talk all the time. Think about it. How many times do you fuss at yourself for doing something wrong or put yourself down? Self-affirmation helps you use self-talk in a way that will help you get to where you want to be. In my case, where I want to be is published... and finishing my current book. If you want to know more about it, I put a little article about it on my website. If you want to know a WHOLE lot more about it, you can read a book by Shad Helmstetter.

#2 is the list of 20. This has saved my butt more times than I can count. You can use this one for writing and non-writing stuff. What you do is make a list of 20 possibilities, such as 20 possible scenes that demonstrate the conflict between your hero and she-ro. No editing allowed. The first ten on your list are often the tried and true, but then you start getting desperate and thinking outside the box. Often, somewhere in that second ten, you find an idea you can mutate.

#3 is asking my characters these key questions: What does my character most fear? What is my character’s secret wish? If I know these things, I know what drives my character, and I always know what is going to cause them the most pain and most joy.

Cheers to all!

xo,
Leanne
www.leannebanks.com