How To Write a Novel

 

I stumbled upon an article while browsing for tips and tricks on writing, and thought it was really helpful. Writing can be intimidating, especially with a first draft. It’s so overwhelming, and hard to decide where to start. Some writers argue that you should start at the end of the novel. Some argue that you should begin with crafting your characters. I’m sort of in that place right now where I’m stuck with my writing, and this lays out a customizable formula for how to write your novel.

 

Here it is if you want to check it out!

The Origin of Words, etc.

There are a large portion of words that make sense.
Undergarments: articles of clothing that you wear under your garments.
Tablecloth: a cloth that you put on top of a table.
These words just make sense.
However, I would say that the greater portion of words don’t make sense.

My friend and I recently had a thoughtful conversation about the meaning of words. Now you may be thinking that the meaning of words could elicit a philosophical discussion to rival Socrates, Aristotle, and Confucius (*sarcasm).

However, this conversation basically consisted of us repeating the word “shoe” over and over again, saying, “the more you say it, the weirder it sounds! Shoe, shoe, shoe, shoe, shoe!” We discussed the thought process behind the term “shoe.”

The way we imagined it was as follows: “I don’t like walking outside, it hurts my feet. If only there was something I could make to protect my feet… I WILL CRAFT THEM AND I WILL CALL THEM SHOES.”

I highly doubt it was anything like that, but whatever.

The next word we covered was the imponderable et cetera. You may recognize its shorthand, “etc. The word et cetera is of Greek origin, meaning “and other things,” or “and so on.” That makes sense, because that’s exactly how et cetera is used. But I just wonder why that particular combination of letters to describe “there are more items on this list, but I don’t want to write them all.”

I’m sure there’s a logical reason, but sometimes speculating is more fun.

I imagine someone just sitting at their desk in ancient Greece, writing a letter. He probably has an incredible jaw line, an impressive beard rivaling that of Grizzly Adams, and is most likely donning a fashionable toga. Let’s call him Leonidas (because why not?). His letter would sound something like this… hypothetically:

“Dearest Isidora,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to share with you a story I recently read. It’s called The Odyssey. It was written by Homer, the guy who wrote The Iliad. There are a lot of cool gods and goddesses that make appearances in this story. It talks about Athena, Zeus, Poseidon..”

Leonidas has a thought.

He doesn’t want to list the rest of them. What could he write to indicate that there are additional deities mentioned in The Odyssey? He decides that he will just put “etc.” at the end, short for et cetera. He took the liberty of creating this word, because there should be a word that means, “there’s more, but I don’t really feel like listing the rest.”

Now Leonidas has this letter:

“Dearest Isidora,

I hope this letter finds you well. I wanted to share with you a story I recently read. It’s called The Odyssey. It was written by Homer, the guy who wrote The Iliad. There are a lot of cool gods and goddesses that make appearances in this story. It talks about Athena, Zeus, Poseidon, etc. I really suggest you give it a read! Until next time,

-Leonidas”

[Disclaimer: This post has little to no historical validity. I did not do well in my World Empires class. Also, Grizzly Adams was not an ancient Greek.]

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I was thinking that if you guys have any words that you find exceptionally weird, you could write your own account of how you believe the word came to be. If you choose to do so, tag this post – I want to read them! Thanks for checking out this post! 

Vending Machine For Writers

I think vending machines have a personal vendetta against me. It’s not something I noticed at a young age, but after countless incidents, I began to wonder if they were conspiring against me. 

When I was a kid, I would always make my grandpa hand over all his quarters so I could put them in the 25 cent machine. Gum balls, plastic rings, temporary tattoos, you know the drill. I was always convinced that I would get the exact color, flavor, or design that I wanted. Obviously this was not the case. Never once did I get the Barbie tattoo I so desired. Instead, I ended up with a drawer full of temporary tattoos of dragons, flames, and skulls. I was very girly, and wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than Mattel’s finest. And so began my lifelong battle against vending machines.

When I moved into my dorm last fall, I was happy to see a diverse array of vending options. There were lots of snacks, sodas, a machine with specialty drinks (Snapple, Vitamin Water, Starbucks Frappuchino, etc.) and best of all a refrigerated vending machine with yogurt, White Castle burgers, mini pizzas, muffins, and more. About a month into the school year, the refrigerated vending machine became neglected. Its supply dwindled until it was empty, and it was never refilled again for the remainder of the year.

I found solace in the regular snack machine that featured Doritos, fruit snacks, Cheetos, Skittles, and the like. Pretty much your standard snack machine. However, I quickly discovered a major flaw in this particular vending machine. I suppose it was an effort to provide more variety, but it posed a serious issue. Instead of nacho cheese Doritos being B7 and cool ranch being B8, the flavors were both in B7, alternating cool ranch and nacho cheese. I was particularly fond of the Combos. They’re delicious stuffed pretzels, with many flavor options for the filling. The nacho cheese Combos were the only ones I liked, but the machine offered cheddar cheese, pepperoni pizza, and jalapeño cheddar in addition to my beloved nacho cheese pretzel snacks. I was rarely lucky enough to find the nacho cheese Combos in the front.

I went downstairs around midnight one night to get a snack to carry me through the rest of a research paper. I swiped my meal card once. Pepperoni pizza. I swiped my meal card again. Cheddar cheese. I swiped my card once more. Pepperoni pizza again. This was followed by another bag of cheddar cheese Combos. I swiped my card AGAIN. Jalapeño cheddar. See, I wasn’t joking when I said that vending machines conspire against me. But once the jalapeño cheddar bag fell into the bottom of the machine, where a feast was quickly accumulating, I saw the nacho cheese combos in all their glory.

Finally! I swiped my card and carefully entered A4. The spiraling arm began to release my beloved snacks… Wait. It stopped. The nacho cheese Combos dangled from the A4 slot, but they didn’t fall within my reach. This is not a joke; this is my life in a nutshell. There were people in the lobby, so I didn’t want to violently shake the machine, demanding they release my flavored pretzel snacks. I saw that a bag of cheddar cheese Combos were next in queue. I kept my cool and swiped my card again, and entered A4. My nacho cheese Combos were released, followed closely by the exceptionally repulsive cheddar cheese Combos. I opened the bottom of the machine to retrieve my snacks. I struggled to push the flap back to extract my winnings, realizing that the trough where the snacks fell was full.

I was going to make a spectacle of myself, cradling 7 bags of pretzel snacks back to my room. Should I leave them? Someone left a snack that I was fortunate enough to discover once. I was excited until I discovered that it was an oatmeal raisin cookie, no doubt abandoned in a quest for a honey bun. What choice did I have? I grabbed the snacks and tried to make a clean escape. Of course the elevator was full of people. By the time I reached the 7th floor where I lived, I had given away the bags I didn’t want and rid myself of the less desirable flavors, left only with one bag of nacho cheese Combos. This became a regular occurrence in my quest for nacho cheese goodness.

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My first thought when I read The Daily Post’s prompt, Vending Wishes, was that I would create a vending machine that dispensed ideas. In theory, it would be groundbreaking. If you were experiencing writer’s block, all you would have to do was go to the vending machine for some inspiration.
Ideas for horror fiction in B8. Romance in F6. Crime drama in G3.
Then I remembered my struggles with vending machines.

Something would go wrong, no matter how simple it seems. I would likely spend 30 minutes in front of the idea vending machine, trying desperately to bust writer’s block and get that idea for a mind-blowing fantasy novel as I flooded the machine with unwanted ideas for comic strips, biographies, and children’s books. 

Alternate Creative Outlets

Tonight my friend told me she had a Pinterest craft she wanted to try out, and it turned out to be painting old wine bottles. We ended up having so much fun. It was a cool way to take a break from writing and do something that is still creative. My friend did a chevron pattern in our school colors (ASU black & gold for life) and mine was supposed to be a galaxy print.

Do any of you have any activities you like to do to give yourself a break from writing? Let me know!

“There’s No Job Security in Writing.”

You’re catching up with extended family at a Christmas get together. When you’re home for winter break, all your family members are asking, “how is school going?”

Then your aunt asks the question you’ve been dreading.

“What’s your major?”

You sigh, because you know it’s coming. “English,” I answer. I brace myself for what is sure to follow. I always hope there will be just a nod of approval, but that is never the case.

“What are you planning on doing with that major? Are you going to be a teacher?”
(There was a whole day of my life, when I was in 7th grade, that I wanted to be a teacher. After serving as a student assistant to a 3rd grade teacher for one hour a day for one semester, that notion had vanished. If you don’t think teachers are underpaid, I highly recommend sitting in on a classroom for a day.)

“No, I want to be a writer…”

They just look at you for a moment, trying to formulate their response as best they can. If they’re trying to be polite, their response is usually something along the lines of, “wow, that’s a tough industry.” At a glance you may think that they’re admiring your determination, but they’re silently evaluating your audacious, risky career choice.
The bolder, less polite family members may give you something like this: “A writer? Hm, not much job security in that. Good luck, though.”

Sigh.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here, really. I love my family and I know they mean well, but are they expecting their comments to give me some sort of revelation? It’s as if they’re expecting me to have an epiphany right before their eyes as I shout, “by George, you’re right! I need to get started on a med school application ASAP!”

I mean, technically they are right. There isn’t a lot of job security as a writer, or any job in the entertainment industry for that matter. However, there are a few things about writing that only writers will understand. And it is precisely these things that make being a writer worthwhile.

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As a doctor, you would be taught about diseases, symptoms, diagnoses, procedures and treatments. The majority of a doctor’s arsenal of knowledge is learned.
Imagine if your doctor said, “I believe that your memory loss and seizures are occurring because you have a brain tumor. I haven’t been to medical school, so I’m not exactly sure how to interpret your MRI to pinpoint the location of the mass, but if you let me cut open your head and get a better look at your frontal lobe, I’m sure I’ll find it eventually.”

I think I’ll get a second opinion, but thanks anyway, Doc.

Medicine is a science; I believe that writing is an innate ability.

Sure, you can learn to diagram sentences, how to spell, and how to properly punctuate your writing. All that is very important, but if any of you are writers, I would be willing to bet that you’ve always been somewhat inclined to it; it comes easier to you than the kids who prospered in Geometry, while you struggled to understand Pythagorean Theorem.
(Maybe you were good at both writing and math, but I like to assume that the world is not that unfair.
-Sincerely, I have never made an A in math.)

I’m not saying that formalized training isn’t important as a writer, because it is. Practice, guidance, constructive criticism and encouragement help writers’ skills to flourish. However, I can’t think of a way to teach someone to be creative. There’s no book to memorize that holds the key to imagination. There’s no formula that will give you creativity when you solve for x. Creativity is 100% your own, and that’s what makes it so special. If you were blessed with creativity, cherish it. Use it. It was given to you for a reason.

Writers and non-writers can both agree that writing is not a job. 
To writers, though, the reason we don’t consider it a job is because it’s simply doing what we love. It was a little known talent that fell into our laps. With a little practice, it turned into a hobby. With experience, it turned into an addiction.

If you’re truly a writer, writing does become a sort of addiction. The good kind, mostly.
The more you write, the more your fingers ache to reconnect with the keys the minute you walk away.
Some days it makes you feel hopeless. You sit down and nothing happens. You try to write, because you know you can, but it’s all garbage. You walk away clouded with frustration. Better luck next time.
Other days, the days that writers live for, words flow from your fingertips like blood from a vein. You get lost in your writing. Sometimes I feel as if it traveled from my mind to the page so quickly I wasn’t even fully aware of what I was writing. However, you know better than to stop. Finally you’ve emptied your heart, mind, and soul onto the paper. You step back to read what you’ve written. Sure, there are some spelling errors, you’re missing a few commas, and since your protagonist does not yet have a name, all the places where his or her name should be is the name of your favorite pet. It’s exactly what you wanted. You keep re-reading it, adding apostrophes and quotation marks as you go. You’ve read through it close to fifteen times now, but you don’t mind.
This is what I wish I could convey to all those people concerned with a writer’s job security.

If writing is important to you, then you understand the little things like that, which make writing worthwhile. All the stress over a title, creating the perfect characters, and crafting a story that is worthy of them. When it comes down to it, none of that matters. When you look at a finished product, I guarantee you won’t feel bitter about all the problems you had creating it. You will feel accomplished and infinitely proud. And let’s face it, it’s something that non-writers will never understand.

Leave me a comment and let me know how you guys deal with negative influence about writing, and what makes it all worthwhile to you! 
Thanks for reading!

Favorite Fairy Tales

“Aren’t you too old for Disney World?“

I was 13 years old the first time I had my heart broken. It happened when my grandma spoke those words to me. Too old for Disney World? Is that even possible? Even if it is, I thought I had at least 4 more summers of Splash Mountain, The Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World. The thoughts of never again being able to sit in one of the Mad Hatter’s spinning teacups was completely devastating.

Spoiler Alert: At 19 years old, I still wholeheartedly believe that Disney World truly is the happiest place on Earth.

I hate to hear people say things like, “aren’t you too old for that?” I don’t think there should be an expiration date on things you love and enjoy. In fact, I think there are a lot of things from childhood that stay in our lives forever. It’s nostalgic and you can’t help but smile thinking about the “little things” that you cherished from growing up. Most of my favorite memories occurred in the first ten years of my life.

With that being said, I still love fairy tales. I always have. I don’t know what it is about them, but I adore fairy tales. There has been a recent wave of popular TV shows centered around fairy tales including Grimm, Once Upon a Time, and Beauty & the Beast. Hollywood has been churning out scores of movies based on fairy tales for years. The best among these, in my opinion, include Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, and of course Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I haven’t been to see Maleficent yet, but I have every intention of doing so.

I’m sure most of you have seen a Hollywood movie or TV series based on a fairy tale, and perhaps even read one of the original stories. Many of the stories, in their original form, are actually quite dark. In the original version of Cinderella, one of the evil stepsisters cuts off one of her toes in order to make the shoe fit her. The Grimm Brothers, who are responsible for many of the fairy tales that you know and love, have written over 200 stories – You can read a lot of the stories here.

One of my favorite stories from Grimm’s Fairy Tales is called Godfather Death. I encourage you guys to read this one. I should warn you, this one is a fairly dark story, if you didn’t gather that from the title. I hope you guys enjoy this story as much as I do. I had actually started writing a story based around this Grimm fairy tale a while back. Unsurprisingly, it has been filed away with countless other stories I have begun with every intention of finishing, but have yet to do so.

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So now I ask: Are you a fan of fairy tales? Do you prefer the original stories or the refashioned tellings that you can see on the big screen? Which stories are your favorite, and which are your least favorite? Leave a comment and let me know! Thank you for reading!

Write It Out: Busting Writer’s Block & Creating Your Own Inspiration

Every time I hear any promise of alleviation when it comes to writer’s block, I am immediately overcome with excitement, determined I have found the cure. Each and every time this happens, I am disappointed to find that I have not, in fact, discovered a groundbreaking tactic for overcoming the dreaded writer’s block. Some are more helpful than others, but when you find a technique that improves your writing or motivation, that’s a win in my book.

In a recent post, I explained the dynamics of writer’s block and other struggles that we, as writers, face. Well, I’m here to offer you a solution. Okay, there is no solution for writer’s block… But sitting around waiting for inspiration is for the weak! Go find inspiration, don’t wait for it to come to you. This post will help you learn to generate your own inspiration; it will give you new ideas, improve the ones you have, and eliminate the ones you don’t need.

The technique I am going to share with you all is inspired by two parts. One is a great post I stumbled upon called Squirrels and Killing My Inner Editor. Give this post a read, because it’s awesome. The writer of this post shared a tool that she found to be useful.

This wonderful tool is called Scrawl. Once you open Scrawl, you’ll be faced with a message telling you to “write something!” Scrawl encourages unfiltered writing; it allows you to set a writing timer, and if you stop typing for ___ amount of seconds, Scrawl will, ahem, redirect your attention back to your writing (read: make sure your volume is set to a level that won’t burst your eardrums.) You can also instruct Scrawl to keep you from deleting anything you’ve written. Explore the options, see what is most helpful to you.

In writing my morning pages as Julia Cameron instructs, I have discovered how helpful unfiltered writing can be. Essentially as I’m writing, I’m just thinking out loud. I was facing a bad case of writer’s block working while working on my novel, so I turned to my morning pages. I had a conversation with the journal. I bounced ideas off of the journal. It was a huge help. Sometimes just thinking about it isn’t enough, but trying to formally organize your plot is a little too overwhelming. As you’re writing it, you will probably feel as if you’re accomplishing nothing, but give it time.

I find it most beneficial to begin with the absolute basics of your story. Start with a less details. As you ease into the part of the story that you’re stuck on, start giving more details. Every possible path the story could take, write it down. For example: your main character has just been offered a job in New York City to work for a fashion magazine. Does she give in to her controlling boyfriend’s urging and stay in rural Oklahoma? Does she break up with him and accept her dream job? If she stays in Oklahoma, will their relationship even last? If she moves to New York, will she find love in the city? Will her dream job turn out to be a nightmare, leaving her wondering why she ever left her hometown? How would each of these outcomes play out? How would they affect your story? Write it all down. It may seem redundant, but you never know what will inspire you, so try not to take shortcuts. If it would be more beneficial for you to draw instead of, or in addition to writing, I don’t see any reason why you can’t. Doodle away! Finish out your 3 daily morning pages, and then look back over them. It should look a little bit like this:

So I’m stuck figuring out where my main character, Peter Parker, is going to turn now. Now that he’s been bitten by a mutated turtle, he might not be able to run as fast as before. Maybe I should change it to a more lethal, intimidating animal. What about a raccoon? That could work. Peter gets rabies and turns into a raccoon. Hmm.. There has to be something better. If I was Mary Jane Watson, I totally wouldn’t be cool with my boyfriend turning into a raccoon. What about a spider? A radioactive spider. That’s it! Peter Parker by day, Spider-Man by night!

It doesn’t have to be neat. It doesn’t have to have correct spelling or proper punctuation. I encourage you to write in pen, so you’re not tempted to erase. Don’t over-think this! My reason for incorporating Scrawl into this post, is for those of you who would prefer to type your morning pages, as opposed to writing them in a journal. It’s up to you. Scrawl is a really useful resource regardless, don’t limit yourself to using it only for this exercise.

Side note: The website where you can find Scrawl has some other helpful tools. Know Thyself is a character building exercise; the computer asks you a series of rapid fire questions about your characters; answer as fast as you can. When you complete the questions, the website compiles a character profile from your answers. Even if you think you know your characters inside and out, it really makes you think. Try it out!

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To anyone who has previously used these methods, or decides to try it after reading this post, let me know what you think. Is there something else that works better for you? Don’t hesitate to share! I’m sure I am not the only one who wants to collect as many tips and tricks as possible. Thanks for reading!

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

When I read today’s topic from The Daily Post, countless ideas flooded my mind. If I could be any celebrity for one day, who would it be?

My first thought was whatever supermodel was fortunate enough to be currently dating Leonardo DiCaprio. No, that would be a waste of the day. (I’ll come back for you, Leo.)

After that notion faded, my mind came to a few of my favorite directors. Frank Darabont (The Mist, The Green Mile), Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight), or Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist). I can’t imagine what fifteen minutes inside the mind of any one of these men would be like. Maybe it would inspire a new way of thinking that would skyrocket me to fame, my name mentioned with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino. I kind of envision me just walking around in their minds as if they were museums. I would see all the fantastic ideas they had already claimed as their own, without thinking of any for myself.

Okay, maybe I’ll be an actress. Working under the direction of one of the greatest directors to ever life has to be inspiring, right? My favorite actress is definitely Kathy Bates. If you haven’t seen the movie Misery, watch it and tell me she isn’t the most incredible actress to ever walk the earth. Or maybe I could play a Victorian era goddess compliments of Keira Knightley. Can I go back in time to be Christian Bale in American Psycho? I have the Huey Lewis & The News scene memorized, I would blow everyone away. Then again, I feel like there is never a day that being Bruce Willis is a bad idea. That could work. I can do Die Hard. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Will Smith, Sandra Bullock and Emma Watson are also among my favorites. Or I could be Bethenny Frankel from The Real Housewives of New York. (The last one is a joke.)

Then the answer came to me.

The most brilliant writer to ever put pen to paper (or fingers to keys). Horror maven, Mr. Stephen King. The man responsible for The Shining, It, Carrie, The Mist, Misery, The Green Mile.. Shall I continue? Clearly this man’s imagination is a gold mine. If I could think like Stephen King, there was nothing I couldn’t do. Although, I wouldn’t just want to inhabit his body and live as him for a day. Can I just sit in a dark corner of his flourishing mind and see how his imagination works?

Come to think of it, Stephen King’s mind is a celebrity in itself. That is who I would be. A fly on the wall in the mind of the Master of the Macabre, himself.

Writer’s Block, Flighting Idea Syndrome and Other Pleasantries

I imagine that many bloggers would consider themselves writers. I haven’t posted any of my real writing on here, but I suppose that writing a blog post is similar to writing a story (be it a short story, a novel, a poem, etc.)

I consider myself a writer but, as I’ve said before, it’s less than a profession but more than a hobby. However, I, like most writers, often encounter problems while writing. We’re all familiar with writer’s block. I refuse to believe there is a writer who has never experienced writer’s block. That writer does not exist.

I, myself, suffer from what I have dubbed “Flighting Idea Syndrome.” Many of you may also suffer from this debilitating disease without even knowing it. Flighting Idea Syndrome (FIS) can be characterized by the sufferer exhibiting symptoms similar to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). You can never stick with one idea for very long. Before you’ve had a chance to accomplish much of anything, a new, superior idea has infiltrated your mind. There’s no going back.

Maybe you know the feeling: You come up with a brand new idea. It’s like a present. It reminds me of the Dancin’ Debbie doll I got from my parents for Christmas when I was 6. I kept seeing Debbie on TV, and I had been begging for one of my own. I just knew I was getting it and I couldn’t wait. Then, on that fateful Christmas morning, there it was. Dancin’ Debbie in all her glory. I feverishly unwrapped the package, while I sent my mom to look for AA batteries. I finally had a Dancin’ Debbie doll. I immediately discarded the instructions and took Debbie’s assembly into my questionably capable hands. Debbie was ready to dance.

Normally, one of two things happens at this stage of the story.

Option 1: Dancin’ Debbie is an immediate disappointment. I should’ve gotten the Powderpuff Girls wristwatch. Luckily my birthday is soon.
Option 2: Dancin’ Debbie makes all my dreams come true. She is everything I ever dreamed of and more. 2 days later, I’m really tired of hearing Debbie say, “c’mon, lets groove!”

[Spoiler Alert: As for Dancin’ Debbie, she reached the same fate as many a toy… That’s right. Option 2. But I got a Powderpuff Girls watch and a Totally Hair Barbie for my birthday.]

Now I’ll rephrase these options in terms of writing:

Option 1: You think you have a really great idea. You sit down to write. You stare at the wall for 15 minutes, then you finally put pen to paper. You begin writing your name, surrounding it with hearts, swirls, and lots of fun doodles. Okay, obviously this is distracting. You should use your laptop. You know, your laptop. The place where Facebook lives. And Pinterest. And the most deadly distraction of them all: Netflix. After binge watching an entire season of Scandal, you’re feeling inspired. That blank page is really daunting. What was your idea again? Oh, yeah. Would you look at the time? It’s half past “you’re hungry.” Okay, you go get a hot pocket, and then you will write for 1 hour. No excuses. Should you get a ham and cheese hot pocket or should you go for meatball and mozzarella? Is that even a question? Obviously ham and cheese. Good thing it only takes a hot pocket two minutes to cook! You’re ready to start writing. Go ahead and set a timer. One hour. Yes, here we go. Yep, it’s happening. You are writing. Pens and paper and words, it’s all happening right before your very eyes. Your idea isn’t flourishing as you’d expected. Come to think of it, your idea is kind of lame. Really, though. Sigh. You finally get the mindset to sit down and do something with your life. You choose that moment to determine that your idea is actually crap. You should’ve used the two minutes your hot pocket was cooking to perfection to make sure your idea didn’t suck. And if you decided that it did, you could cook another hot pocket and come up with a better idea while that one cooks. But you didn’t. Your paper now looks like this:

(That’s writer’s block with a side of procrastination. Back to the drawing board.)

Option 2: There you are, minding your own business when it happens. You have an epiphany. This beautiful idea is allowing you inside its imaginative world. You’ve never seen anything like it! You begin writing feverishly. This is it. You expand on your idea, everything is falling together quite nicely. You’re already envisioning how your photo will look above the title “New York Times Best Selling Author.” All of a sudden you’re paralyzed. An idea, a brand new idea, has overtaken you. You have been taken prisoner by the new idea. You tell your old idea that you’ll write when you can, and you’re whisked away by your brand new idea. You’ve put your memories of your old idea into the darkest recesses of your mind, and you are completely smitten with your new idea. Your brand new idea loves you back, but it has this feeling that you’re not devoted to it; you’ll abandon it the second that another shiny, new idea makes its way into your sights. Sure enough, your new idea was right. Idea #2 is left broken-hearted, attending therapy sessions every other Wednesday to cope with losing you. Your idea still loves you but, emotionally, this is pretty much where you are at this point in your relationship with idea #2:

You decide to go online to search for new ideas to meet. IdeaMingle.com. Hmm. Maybe you’ll check this page out. Success stories, yes! Stacey, 29 writes: “My idea and I have been together for 3 years, thanks to IdeaMingle.com!” Marshall, 42 also shares his experience: “I owe everything to IdeaMingle.com! My idea and I have been together for 6 novels now. We’re even expecting a novella next month! Thanks IdeaMingle!” Your eyes grow wide with excitement, as you imagine what your own success story will look like. You and your idea on your anniversary, still very much in love, with your 2 beautiful novels. Well if Stacey and Marshall did it, so should you! You create a profile and begin browsing. Before you know it, you have 14 idea matches! You’re meeting #6 for coffee on Thursday at 5:00. #9 is taking you to see a play tomorrow night. #13 canceled on you. Schedule conflicts. But it’s okay, because you have #2, who took you out last night to wine and dine its way into your next novel.

If you haven’t figured out, this is option 2. A severe case of Flighting Idea Syndrome. You would think a lot of ideas would be great, so many to choose from, but it’s clearly stressing you out. You can’t devote your attention to one single idea; instead you’re dividing yourself between them, and now no one’s happy.

Both of these conditions are incredibly hard to overcome. Which is why I come to you all for advice. Have any of you ever dealt with either of these issues? (AKA you have or you’re a liar.) If so, comment and let me know! Tell me what helped you overcome writer’s block or FIS. Thanks for reading.

The Story Of My Name

Since one of the “5 Posts to Write Right Now” according to The Daily Post was the story of your name, I decided I would share mine.

There was no particular reason my parents chose Mikaela over their other choices – Madison, Megan, and Nicki. Well, except for my uncle convincing my mom that Nicki sounded like a stripper name.

As most of you are probably aware, there are a few different spellings of my name. I’ve seen Michaela, Mikayla, Makayla, Mckayla, and plenty more. I know many of the alternate spellings, because mine is often mistaken for one of them. Seeing “To: Makayla, From: Extended Family Member” at Christmas is something I’ve grown accustomed to. When a substitute teacher pauses when calling roll, I just say, “it’s Mikaela, and I’m here.” A typical trip to Starbucks looks a little something like this:

Me: “May I have a tall iced vanilla macchiato please?”
Employee: “That’ll be $3.66. May I have a name for your order?”
Me: “Mikaela.”
Employee: “Is that spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L-A?”
Me: “Sure, why not?”

Mikaela is the phonetic spelling of the name in Spanish. Seeing as it is the phonetic spelling, you would think people wouldn’t have a hard time pronouncing it.

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The towns that my parents grew up in were about an hour apart (my mom’s college roommate was dating my dad’s twin brother, that’s how they met.) When they got married, they had to decide where to put down their roots as a family. They ended up choosing my mom’s hometown, but not after buying a piece of land where my dad grew up.

Later, they decided to sell the piece of land, but not before naming the road after me, and that’s where I got the photo above.

Even though I have lived my whole life as a member of the No Keychain Club (meaning that they don’t make keychains with my name on it) I still love my name. Around 4th grade, I regrettably entered a phase where my friends called me Miki (and sang “Hey, Mickey!” by Toni Basil every time I entered a room) but that has thankfully passed. It’s been shortened to Mik, and that is only used by a select few. Most of my nicknames have absolutely nothing to do with my real name. One of those nicknames has gained me limited access to the keychain club. My car keys proudly sport a “PHIL” keychain that my best friend gave me for my sixteenth birthday, but that name is another story in itself.