by Ali | Jun 20, 2024 | Creativity
What Can You Write About if You Don’t Have Any Ideas? This post was originally published in November 2018 and revised and updated in June 2024. Sometimes, you might want to write – but you don’t know what to write about. You’re out of ideas. Whether you’re...
by Ali | May 9, 2024 | Motivation
How to Write When … You Can’t Seem to Get Started This post is part of my ongoing “How to Write When…” series. Getting started is, for many of us, the hardest part of writing. Beginning a big project like a novel can be so daunting that writers put it off for...
by Ali | Jan 20, 2023 | Fiction
How to Start a Novel: Eight Options Plus Examples Writing the first scene of a novel is tricky. Perhaps you’ve been slowly developing an idea for weeks, months, or even years. You might have written pages of notes or created a full outline. And now you’ve opened up...
by Ali | May 30, 2022 | Motivation
Easier, Better Writing: Harnessing Inspiration and Motivation This post was first published in June 2015 and updated in May 2022. Inspiration. Motivation. What do those words mean to you? Some writers would have you believe you can’t write anything without them. Other...
by Ali | Apr 12, 2022 | Motivation
Staying Motivated to Finish a Novel … or Even a Short Story In the last Aliventures survey the subject of “motivation” came up quite a few times, and one reader specifically asked for a post about staying motivated to finish a short story or novel. I’ll be the first...
