Month: October 2010

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10 Ways To Prepare For National Novel Writing Month

October 21, 2010 jcladyluv

National Novel Writing Month is quickly approaching and there isn’t much time left to prepare. If you are a little stumped on how to kick it into high gear for the month of November then here are a few tips to get you started.

1) Register to participate in National Novel Writing Month by going on their website at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ and begin brainstorming ideas for your novel. (Develop a plot that you feel you have a viable story to tell)

2) Finalize your idea and begin working on your character sketches. (This is when you give your characters a background story, how they grew up, what they look like, etc.)

3) Now that you have your idea settled and have visualized and created your characters, sketch out your setting. (Put your story in a place, be it fictional or otherwise. If it’s a fictional setting you are going to need to create your own atmosphere and town and street names. It might be best to create a map of your city and town. If it is a real place than this is when your research comes into play)

4) Conduct all of the research that is necessary for your story and for creating your setting. (This includes places and the culture of them, occupations of your characters, and mental or psychological disorders that your characters might have, police procedures if you are writing a detective story, forensic science if you are writing a murder mystery, etc.)

5) Begin drafting your novel outline.

6) After you have finished the first draft of your outline, go over it, change anything that you want to change and do any further research that you deem necessary.

7) Rewrite, or rather type up, your final draft of your novel outline along with character and setting sketches. Print out the outline and sketches.

8) Begin mapping out your schedule for how you are going to fit in your writing for the month of November.

9) Begin letting everyone around you know that you are going to be busy for the month of November writing your novel.

10) On November 1^st begin writing your novel.

Now it is not easy to create an outline so don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can put this off up until the very last minute. There is a lot of thought, and time that goes into planning out your story and getting the research done for it that is necessary. However, if the way you work best is to just wing it and jump into the novel writing process without knowing what is going to come next, then by all means dive right on it. Hope you all have great success at your potential novels and try and have fun while you write. Until next time….Happy NanoWrimo

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm
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Trial + Error + Dedication = Endurance

October 19, 2010 jcladyluv

“A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.”

Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.
Author: William Barclay

When you’re working out in the gym you are constantly hearing the word endurance. Whether it is pertaining to a person’s level of intensity of exercise or it is in reference to a person’s impressive workout routine that they are faithful to. It is a word that holds a lot of meaning but I don’t just restrict that word to only the physical aspects of working out. Endurance is what we all need a great deal of to make it through any aspect of life.

There is a lot that can be taken from the people you see working out in the gym. They are dedicated, and faithful; they are consistent and patient; they are passionate and resilient. In the gym it is not all about the strength that you have physically so much as it is about your mental strength. That same level of endurance that we see people apply in the gym everyday is the very same level that we should strive to apply in our day to day lives.

We all experience our own set of obstacles in life. After all, isn’t life mostly trial and error? We try things and if they don’t work then they were mistakes made that we just work hard not to repeat again. However, we tend to forget that even in our errors, there are lessons to be learned that only prepare us for the triumph that is just around the corner.

I think that we focus so much on what we might have done wrong that we don’t revel in the joy that sometimes comes from our pain. All things done in error are not necessarily mistakes because everything happens for a reason. We all end up where we are meant to be, even if we took the long hard road to get there.

Endurance is a strong and powerful word. It is not just about the physical act of getting through something but also the mental components as well. It is about remaining patient yet consistent, dedicated while faithful, and resilient as well as passionate. It is about applying every fiber of your being to what you know you were called by God to do. It is about not making excuses for falling down but the essential act of getting back up. It is about knowing that the obstacles that you face in life are what have made you as strong as you are today. Endurance is about having the faith in God and trusting that the will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

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www.authorsden.com/jimmettacarpenter

Shadow of a Doubt

October 14, 2010 jcladyluv

Ever wake up one day and wonder where exactly is your life going? Why aren’t you any closer to accomplishing your dreams and succeeding at what you want? Why do you keep listening to that voice inside your head telling you to doubt everything you thought you were good at and to let all your dreams die with that doubt? There aren’t any easy answers to those questions and sometimes realizing that you haven’t done all that you could do to reach those goals is the nice kick that you need to get yourself back in high gear again. So many times we let our dreams just die when we’ve become stuck and think that we’ll be in a rut forever. We settle into a feeling of despair and let our life just sink into the quicksand so deep it’s almost too late to pull it out. Call it a mid-life crisis or just hitting “rock bottom” but no matter what we choose to call it we can not let it stop us from rescuing our dreams from that doubt.

After realizing that my own worst enemy is my procrastination, lack of patience and of course that reliable self doubt you would think that I would be able to do something about the quicksand that my life seems to be sinking into but it is always harder to fix your own problem with your creativity. As a writer I find that I doubt my talent and whether or not I can accomplish my goals almost every day and three times a day when those moments of “writer’s block” intervenes and I can’t seem to get anything done. I have wanted to call it quits with writing so many times and just submit to not being a good writer but I can’t do that. More importantly I won’t do that. I’ll admit that I had hoped to have a lot more done by now and that I thought I would at least be on my path to the bestseller’s list but that isn’t how things seem to be going. I just have to accept that it will take a little bit longer than I would’ve liked it to but it can be done. That’s not to say that I won’t have those moments of wanting to throw in the towel again but I just have to get past that and keep moving forward.

A little self doubt isn’t necessarily a bad thing because honestly sometimes doubt is as much a part of the writing process or anything else you might want to do. Without extending yourself past your comfort zone you would never continue to grow in your endeavors but when the doubt takes over and turns into self-sabotage it then becomes one of the top things on the list of reasons why you don’t succeed. You have to cast out your doubt with determination. You have to somehow ignore that voice that’s taking away your confidence and whispering to you telling you that you can’t achieve whatever it is that you want. You have to have enough faith in yourself and in your talent, whatever it may be, that you can banish that voice of doubt that is allowing your dreams to just slip away and finally get past the point of just being “stuck”.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310