Hey guys, Morgan here and it is now August!......... ALREADY. Now I know what you must be thinking- “AUGUST?!? But that means… OH NO. School’s just around the corner! But I don’t want summer to end! I’m not ready!!!” Calm DOWN, it’s not as big of a deal as you make it out to be! Okay, well maybe it is. School starting? Summer ending? Cold coming? Ouch. But don’t let all those Back-to-School blues get ya down! This month instead of making excuses to skip your weekly writing quota, start making excuses to EXCEED your weekly writing quota! How do you expect us to do all that you say? Easier said than done you say? POPPYCOCK I SAY! (yep, poppycock. I’m feeling pretty old-timey today! :D ) This month, start up an account on ‘Camp NaNoWriMo’ which is an online writing competition that us moderators just can’t get enough of! Set a goal and start writing. THAT EASY! Now if you’re currently a member of the site, you probably already know about regular old ‘YWP NaNoWriMo’ and ‘NaNoWriMo (for Adults)’. Camp NaNoWriMo is basically the same thing, just at a different time (in this case, two months during summer vacation) and with up-and-coming school year, I think now is a better time than ever to step up your progress levels and finish up any last-minute writing projects before you get thrown into the school year and swamped with homework. Trust me, you’ll regret it if you don’t!

Here’s the link to Camp NaNoWriMo:

http://campnanowrimo.org/ 

Here’s the link to my Camp NaNoWriMo account:

http://campnanowrimo.org/campers/morgansboss 

Have a nice August!

Tootles, (See? Tootles! Told you I was going old-fashioned today)

Hey guys- Morgan here again, now back with yet another YouTuber Sunday post! I'll keep it short THIS time... (don't worry, Ill harp on yall next time...) But I just want to gloat for a few seconds... See the guy in the Youtube video I have below? Yeah, I just found this video a few minutes ago and I couldn't have been happier! Please notice that he is, indeed, a REAL PUBLISHED WRITER, and guess what he's talking about?  The BEST WRITING ADVICE he'd EVER recieved! And what is it??? A WEEKLY WRITING GOAL!!! Trust me people- this WORKS! Use the WWG, and start up that 'Dont Break the Chain' Calander... I'm telling you, this stuff works! If it's good enough for him, a REAL PUBLISHED writer, than it's most certaintly good enough for you. So keep with it and stay firm to your schedgual and you'll eventually go far! :)

Sup Guys? Morgan here again with more of those writing-inspiration-tip-thinggys! Last time I told you about ‘Don’t Break the Chain!’ which I find to be a great and thoroughly efficient way to keep authors on track and writing consistently over a long period of time. But there ARE a few problems with that approach. In some cases, like mine, you go on to write with the ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ attitude and then only end up putting in a few useable sentences after a bad case of writers block. I mean, it’s better than nothing though… right? WRONG. Not writing consecutively over a period of time is one of the WORST habits you can develop as an aspiring author. What happens if you actually FINISH that first-in-series novel you’ve been working on for the last FOUR years? And then, with major luck, actually PUBLISH it? When you start on the second one in your series, do you feel comfortable making your readers wait ANOTHER four years for you to finish that next book? Hmm… Not exactly, but what can you do? That’s just the way you write. NO! Stop the excuses. Personally if I was reading a book, and it took FOUR WHOLE YEARS for the next one to come out, I wouldn’t really be very interested in it anymore, no matter HOW good the story is. A good solution to this HORRIBLE habit is to set up a Weekly Writing Goal to go along with your Don’t Break the Chain calendar. When putting together your WWG, keep in mind that it’s better to aim LOW and end HIGH than aim HIGH and end LOW. For example my weekly writing goal is about a half a chapter each week. Doesn’t seem very big does it? That’s because it’s not! No matter how long you imagine a chapter to be in your mind, you can always finish a full one in between two or three sittings. Really a half of a chapter wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to a couple hours at most in order to complete. The reason why I set mine so low though, is because of the weeks when I’m out of town or super busy. It’s a heck of a lot better to be able to say that you exceed your WWG (weekly writing goal) that was low, than to miss one that was high. And then after that, when you get more used to scheduling time around your daily writing sessions, raise the bar a bit. Make it harder as you get better, and soon you’ll be writing WHOLE chapters in single sittings.

Here’s a link to a counter you can re-set each week to show how close you are to reaching your WWG:

Hope this helps you with any of the efficiency problems you may or may not be having,
-Morgan-

 

 

Hope this is helpful!

Love,

Hi! Morgan here, with the first official writing-help post on the Reader Writers Notebook blog! 

This post, I'd like to talk to you about a little inspiration-thing that I learned from one of my personal favorite Youtube Vloggers, Charlie McDonnell, which was developed by Jerry Seinfeld. In the video below, he says, "If you have a thing you need to do, and you need to do it all the time..." Which basically includes writing! Now one of MY greatest issues with writing is actually finding the TIME to write and finish the story I'm working on. With this idea, 'Don't Break the Chain' can really help anybody out there with any similar issues. Charlie does quite well to explain the basic idea of the project, which I'm actually beginning to put into action myself in everyday life. I'd encourage all of you to watch the video, listen to his amazing British accent, and then start your own chain using the link I've provided at the bottom of this post to dontbreakthechain.com which is an online calender you can use to start your own chain and be inspired to set yourself a requirement and finish that story on time!

http://dontbreakthechain.com/ 

Hope you found this helpful and post any questions or comments bellow,
-Morgan-