Writing Tips: Take Advantage of Your Local Bookstore!

Barnes & Noble (and bookstores in general) has always been one of my top spots for finding inspiration. Nothing delights me more than perusing the shelves for the next life-changing novel! Aside from being a place of inspiration and just overall fun, your local bookstore can also prove to be a place of research. It may seem like an obvious tip, but you should focus your attention on reading books within the same genre as the one you are writing. Choose the kinds of books you think may be similar to yours or the type you wish to write. Identify the common themes and characteristics of the books in a specific genre. This will give you a sense of the general format of the stories currently popular in that area of the market. While this isn’t to say that you should tailor your novel to fit the exact layout of those on the shelves, it will give you a better idea of what genre your novel fits into the best. Literary agents, and furthermore, publishers, will usually buy a manuscript if it can be easily placed under a single genre because it will make them more marketable. So, make a trip to your local bookstore and peruse away!

Why a Writer?

So, one of the questions I have been asked various times, is why exactly do I want to be a writer? To those people who don’t share a love of creative writing this urge to sit down and begin jotting down words of a story may seem somewhat of a mystery, and even now I can say the draw I feel towards this process is not entirely explicable to myself.

I suppose the best way I could explain why I write is this; I love stories, all kinds of stories, but especially the fantastic and magical. I love the way words can coalesce to form images, to form scenes of stories in worlds both real and imagined. A combination of words printed on a page when arranged in the right manner have the power to transport you out of your own reality—away from your problems, your failures, your sorrows—to one that is entirely new. And yet…the best stories, the ones that you remember, no matter how fantastical they may be , mirror our own realities in a way that touches us, that resonates with our conscience to make us feel.

Why do I wish to be a writer? What do I hope to achieve?

I want to give people stories that will allow them to escape from their everyday troubles. I want to create stories that will change people’s lives. Stories that will inspire them to reach for their own dreams, that will make them believe that anything is possible to achieve.

I suppose you could say that I write to inspire others.

I write to save dreams.

 

To any other writers out there, I pose the same question to you. Why do you write?

 

A New Year for Writing

After taking a break for the holidays, I just started working on my book again, and I’m so excited to get back to it! I’m currently trying to push through and finish my first draft so I can begin revising and fixing things. One difficulty I always have after not writing regularly for some time is getting back into the schedule of typing a certain amount everyday. I’ve found that it takes me around a whole week of writing consecutively each day to really bring me back into the mindset my characters and the world in which they inhabit. So, here’s to beginning a hopefully great year for writing and blogging!

Any additional thoughts? My question to my fellow aspiring novelists out there is do you have any special preparation before beginning your own writing or do you prefer to simply dive in?

 

First Post

Hello, everyone! I’m so excited to start my new blog. So, if you clicked on the About me link on the menu, you will know that I am an aspiring fantasy novel writer. I am currently working on my third book, which I hope to publish some day. I will be using this website to share anything I find that inspires my imagination as well as my general love of reading and writing. Please subscribe and follow!