A Photo to Keep You Going

Photo courtesy of: http://www.falcbooks.com

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When you finally get your book published, it will appear on bookshelves everywhere and be assigned one of these.

But first, you need to have something worth reading. You need to write something worth publishing. You need to craft something worth buying.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Time to Review Your Notes!

It's time to do a little soul searching and merciless editing.

Go back to your notes and your exercises. Arrange everything chronologically, and read your work from the time that you started your writing exercises. Read your work carefully and note the following:

1) Your writing strengths. Do you write using a wide variety of words? Do your conversations sound real? Are your characters almost literally jumping off the page?

2) Your writing weaknesses. Is your vocabulary limited to the point of your work sounding repetitive? Are your conversations stilted? Do your characters feel two-dimensional or even one-dimensional?

3) Improvements in your writing: are your sentences becoming more simple, lucid, and readable? Is your grammar getting better? Are your characters and stories feeling more real?

4) And, the reverse: is there anything that you haven't improved on or gotten worse at?

Take note of all of these. You need to know what you need to work on, and you also need to have encouragment in the form of the good things that you already have and also worked to achieve.

Keep this list and be a better writer on a daily basis.

Good luck!

Here's Your Last Triad!

Your final triad exercise is an essay, and it will involve three things that you might want to keep in mind as you embark on your year of novel writing.

1. An old book on your bookshelf
2. The novel that you intend to write
3. A book that is comparable to the novel that you want to write.

How you will put all these together is up to you. You can compare the three different books, or you can vow to trump the other books and come up with a revolutionary literary piece.

When you are done, post your work in the Comments section. You have as many words as you need at your disposal, so feel free to write as much (or as little) as you please.

Good luck, and happy writing!

This is still NOT Your Last Unblocker

A lot of the exercises are going for their last run, but you will always need your unblocker to keep you in the race. You need to clear out your mental cobwebs and get yourself prepped and ready for your next round of writing.

Today's unblocker is your preparation for the next few months (days, weeks, or years) as you write your novel. Take a sheet of paper or open a blank document on your computer and use this as your prompt:

"I am going to start writing my novel soon."

Don't bother about grammar, spelling, punctuation, or syntax. Forget the rules and just write without stopping to think. Clear your mind by pushing all your frustrations, fears, and insecurities out. Don't stop until you're huffing, puffing, and too tired to proceed.

Your year of novel writing is about to begin.

Your Last What If

It's time for you to get your novel started, so it's also time to get rid of all your exercises and get working! Today's exercise is fairly simple. You only need to find a mirror and talk to yourself.

Now, don't be afraid. Find a place that has a mirror where you can be alone for at least 5 minutes. In this exercise, you will pretend that your novel has already been published.

"What if my novel was published and it made me famous?"

Pretend you're on a talk show. Talk about what you did to get your novel started, what you did to keep the momentum, and what you did, in detail, if possible. Be candid. Be funny. Think of the future.

Your novel will be finished and you might actually be famous because of it. Think of this exercise as practice.

Two Questions Before You Begin

This will be the last creative, mind-digging Complete It before you start off on your journey toward literary greatness (or at least before you start off your journey to a big literary exercise). Complete the two sentences below:

1. The thing I fear the most about writing my novel is ____________________.
2. The thing that excites me the most about writing my novel is _________________.

Examine what you fear the most and see how you can cancel it out what excites you. Moreover, find a way to feed on that excitement. Your reason for writing will change from month to month, perhaps even from hour to hour, depending on how well your novel writing is progressing. This exercise will appear several times, and it will help you examine how you are doing and what you may need to proceed further.

Good luck! It's almost time to get started!

The Usual First Sentence begins with...

Once upon a time...

Now, change it. You are about to start on your best journey: through your senses, your emotions, and your life. In the same way that you can't simply begin your life knowing everything, you can't start a novel with a first sentence.

Sounds weird?

Your first sentence has to draw people in, and make them want to read your work. Can you do that immediately without agonizing over it, and therefore crippling your chances of going forward? If you can, by all means, write your first sentence and go from there. If you can't, admit that you can write your first sentence later, and just write.

What do these two scenarios have in common? You just need to write. Whether your first sentence comes out all polished the first time, or you decide to write it when you're done with your novel, you simply have to write.

Go and make your mark on literature! Write!

Your Very Last Goo!

Are you ready to write your novel? Are you ready to get your head wrapped around ideas, your life wrapped around your characters, your thoughts wrapped around your story, and your past all unwrapped for the world to see?

Sounds complicated, doesn't it? Here's some goo for you to see how much work you will need to do:

plot characters challenge/conflict
setting point of view grammar

These are only a few things that you will need to look at. Your plot, characters, and conflict all take place as your story moves, but you need to have a setting and a point of view from the very beginning, and these latter two elements need to remain constant. Your grammar has to be polished. Everything has to come together into a heap that is as beautiful as it is representative of the complexity of life.

Ready to write? You'll ready as you'll ever be, so start thinking of these elements and start getting your story off the ground! It's time to write a novel!

Does this last sentence sound familiar?

The End.

It's not "And they lived happily ever after," but an abrupt end that leaves your readers thinking about the future of your characters. It might be the closed end that finishes your characters' lives forever. In any case, it's an end, so how will you begin it?

It's time for you to work out a story. Write an outline, or a summary of your novel. Talk about the major characters, their motivations, their back stories, their wants and needs. Describe them if you can. Talk about how they deal with their problems, and then, bring a problem hurtling into their lives. Talk about how they pull through it. Add a problem if you like; add two; heck, add a hundred. Who survives? Who doesn't? What is your story about.

When you are done, tack on "The End" to the end of it. Get your story ready. It's time to start writing your novel.

One Last Orchestrated Search as a Writing Exercise

This is your last writing exercise using a search. After this, all searches will be for things in your novel, whether characters or lines of dialogue, punctuations or words. Because this is your last writing exercise, you also need to make it count!

In this orchestrated search, you only need to search through your memories. Cook up a memory mix this time: it's a memory that you never had, but it will have to involve people, places, and things that you remember. For instance, you could remember your best friend, your visit to Venice, and your cup of coffee. You could then write a story involving all three of them, even if your best friend has never been to Venice and/or despises coffee.

So, let's start the search! Scour through your memory and remember:

1. The first person who ever gave you a right and proper scolding
2. The last person to say hi or hello to you
3. Your lunch yesterday
4. The last place that you visited that made you never want to go home

Incorporate all these into a 1000-words-or-less story, with your own plot and the characters from your memory. They don't all have to be in one scene, and you don't have to make things happen over lunch. Find a way to creatively put everything together. When you are done, post your story in the Comments section, or provide a link to it.

Good luck in your last orchestrated search - and happy writing!

Let's Fantasize a Little Bit...

Authors pose for their novel bios. They can be dressed in a period costume, sitting on their favorite lawn chair while gazing into some far away dream, or simply staring at the camera and right at their reader. Your exercise consists in dreaming up your author bio and photo.

First, draw up a 100-200 word bio, which will appear in your novel. What are the things that are most important to you? What part of your identity are you willing to share? What do you want your readers to know? Save this bio and keep it in a place where you can access it easily, say, while working on your novel.

Second, set the timer on your camera and take your own pictures. This will take more than one try, and if you're way too amused with the exercise, you could spend the entire afternoon trying different poses out. Try out different clothes or costumes, and pose in different places with different expressions on your face. Upload your photos to your computer.

Pick out your best photo, find a way to resize it, and add it to your bio file. Now, your bio file is easily accessible, and it may look like a professional biography. Feel free to share it with your friends and ask them for suggestions on making it better.

Keep this file. It might serve as inspiration as you plod through the moors and thickets of the world of novel writing. You have something to aim for! Go for it!

Some Stuff's Out of the Way...

But that doesn't mean that the learning ends. In fact, this is your time to think of what reviewing books and movies has taught you. Think:

"What is the one lesson that I will take away from reviewing books and movies, and how can I apply it to my writing?"

Remember this one lesson as you finally start to write your novel!

Good luck, and happy meditating!

The Last Book Review: The Little Prince

The Little Prince is a slim volume that is rich in wisdom. On this very last book review, it is your job to read The Little Prince, and then go forth with encouragement as you embark on your own novel writing journey.

Review The Little Prince by concentrating on one of the stories or storylines within it. Do you relate to the rose? The Little Prince himself? The fox? Your job is not to decipher what the story means, but to disclose, in your review, what the storyline means to you.

Because this is a little more personal than all your other reviews, you do not have to post it. The key is to read the book and see how a few words can make all the difference. If you have that kind of power, you have it made!

Good luck as you begin your novel-writing journey!

The Last Movie Review: Take a Summer Blockbuster!

It's time to focus all that you've learned as a reviewer and apply it to your work, as a writer. This is your very last movie review, so make it count!

Summer blockbusters aren't exactly brain fodder, but they do cater to the senses. The visuals have to be stunning, the sounds have to be real, and everything has to be larger than life.

Pick a summer blockbuster, whether it's about the earth ending, aliens invading, or an adventure in the past. Review this movie on two levels:

1) As a feast for the senses: how did it appeal to you, and what did it make you feel? What have you learned about awakening the senses, and how can this help you write a better novel? The key here is not to cross genres, but to learn how some elements of art cross the boundaries of the medium used.

2) As literature: all senses aside, how was the screenplay? How good was the story? what about the dialogue? The characters? How could the story, dialogue, and characters have been improved?

When you are done, post your multi-layer review online and provide a link to it in the comments section.

Good luck, happy watching, and happy writing!

It's All You: A Schizophrenic Triad

It's time for you to talk to yourself - and characterize yourself! One of the greatest powers of the best writers is in turning every single person in a novel into a character - a real, living, breathing, almost three-dimensional person that seems to rise out of the page and drag you into the story. exercise your characterization by making three kinds of people talk to each other:

1. You - as in YOU, right now.
2. The person that you want to be.
3. The worst version of you.

What will the three of you talk about? What are the three of you doing? Make sure that you have distinct characters. Write them out in about 1000 words, and make your own plot and story. When you are done, post your story in the Comments section, or provide a link to it.

Good luck, happy characterization, and happy writing!

Now, Break Down those Bricks!

You can think of your creativity as imprisoned: a little ball of light, a child full of wonder, a molecule of darkness. You can think of it as imprisoned in a house in your head, where it treads through halls that are as comfortable as they are crippling. You need to take out the comforts that hamper your creativity. You need to break down the bricks of your house!

Unblockers can help you remove cobwebs from your head, and they can help you unleash your creativity as well. Take the creativity out to play, have it to go to town for the day, or set it free for a little vacation before it returns to the hallowed, comfortable halls once again.

In this exercise, you will pretend that you are taking your creativity out of the house. You can be brutal and talk about breaking down the bricks. You can be gentle and coax your creativity out. Whatever the technique, your aim is not to write a story, but to blabber. Talk about your creative moments, make your creativity run loose, and start writing without worrying about grammar, syntax, or punctuation.

To help you, you can start your work with: "I want to be more creative...."

Good luck and happy unblocking!

"What if you had to talk to people in song?"

Some people chide Broadway for portraying an unreal world: one where people break into song and dance numbers spontaneously, one where nearly all conversations rhyme, and one where stories are brought forth and resolved in three hours or less.

But what if Broadway happened to YOU? What would your day of song and dance be like?

Write a short story with at least 1 song and detailing at least 1 dance number. This exercise will not only hone your poetry and movement description skills; it will also allow you to flex your muscles when it comes to integrating song and dance into your stories. Pick your plot and stories, and when you are done, post a link to your short story in your Comments section.

Good luck and happy writing!

A Vacation Complete It Exercise

Where do you most want to be right now? Allow your imagination to take you there, and be more aware of how a place can actually make you feel better. Could it be the fresh air drawing the insecurities out of you, the sunlight making you smile wider, the simple change of scenery serving as inspiration for a new novel?

Take a shot at the complete it exercise below:


1. The place that I most want to be in right now: ______________

2. A place that I would never want to visit: _________________

3. My ideal vacation would be in ________, where I can __________ and ___________ all day.

4. I like going to _________ because I get to _______ with _________.

5. My last vacation was at ________, and the thing I remember the most about it _____________.

6. If I could go to one place and stay there forever, it would be _________ because _____________.

7. I want to get away from ________________ and ___________ would be the ideal place to do that.

8. My house is ______________ and it needs ____________.

9. If only I could spend one night _________________!

10. I wouldn't want to be stuck in _______________.

A First Sentence for a New Season!

In many parts of the world, spring has come into fullest bloom. Bring forth the spring of your own writing by starting off with this sentence:

"The world began to die."

Yes, it's not exactly the happiest start - but here's your challenge. You need to make a HAPPY story, not a sad one. Your story has to end happily even with the sad start. You have only 1000 words or less, your choice of characters and plot, and your choice of setting. You only need to have a happy story.

This exercise should allow you to flex your writing muscles as you shift from a sad start to a happy ending - effortlessly. When you are done, post your work in the Comments section, or provide a link to it.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Some Spring Goo to Undo

It's time for you to disentangle and colorize your life! Work on the following goo by pairing up the objects in the first line with the colors in the second line. Do this for different combinations of objects and colors.

roses grass water
red green colorless

That is, your roses can be red, green, or colorless. Your grass can be the same color, and so can your water. Your goal is to write three stories, incorporating all three colors of the object into a plot developed in 1000 words or less. That is, you need to write three separate stories about red, green, and colorless roses; red, green, and colorless grass; and red, green, and colorless water. The roses, grass, or water can be central or incidental to the story. They must simply be there.

When you are done, post your best story in the Comments section, or provide a link to it.

Good luck, happy un-goo-ing, and happy writing!