First Draft to Published

You’ve been working on your novel for months, maybe even years, and lately you feel more discouraged than ever. Perhaps it’s the disappointment of not having finished the book yet. Maybe you don’t know where to go next with your story. Or it’s possible that you’re just physically and emotional drained from all the time and effort you’ve poured into this dream. I’ve been there! Occasionally falling into a writing slump isn’t reason for alarm. What’s important is that you don’t stay there too long. Here are five tips for re-energizing yourself when you feel like giving up. ■ Read Inspirational Stories About Writing and Writers Take a writing break and read about successful writers who weathered the storm. Here are two excellent books to get you started: Knit Together: Discovery God’s Pattern for Your Life by Debbie Macomber. This book was such an inspiration to me. Macomber, a best selling writer with more than 100 million books in print, openly shares her story of writing rej...

It’s Manic Monday at Writing Daze and time to begin another week of finding or taking the time to write. Writing Daze had a chance to ask Gary Morgenstein, author of the political thriller Take Me Out to the Ballgame about his writing day. Gary is on virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book. Writing is 24/7. Every writer lives and breathes his craft every moment he’s awake, whether scribbling or not. The essential element of all writing is observing and processing and, well, spewing it all out in some altered form reflecting your creative DNA. Now this gets you into trouble in a number of ways. First of all, the preponderance of writers has “other” jobs. I don’t want to call them “real” jobs. So not only are we juggling writing with paying the rent, but we are also juggling writing with just how far we should go in writing about other people’s lives. There is the question, of course, how much a writer can borrow/steal/intrude from reality. I think a writer must always remember that the...