Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Writing is an inherently lonely activity, or so I’ve often been told. To be a writer, you have to seclude yourself from the world, find someplace peaceful and quiet where you can concentrate, and stay there for hours upon end. Except it doesn’t have to be that way.

Yes, a part of the writer’s process is that alone time, but another important part is getting feedback from beta readers. I am fortunate enough to have friends who believe in what I’m doing, who want to encourage me, and who understand that the best way to help is to give me their brutally honest opinions of my work.

Some of these friends are fellow writers, but most are not. That doesn’t make their feedback any less valuable. In fact, I have learned that the more friends I make, the more people I include in my process, the more diverse range of perspectives I have involved in my work, the better my writing becomes.

Editing parties have become one of my favorite writing exercises. I invite several friends over for dinner, and we read a work in progress out lout. This is beneficial for three reasons:

1. As I’m sure you already know, reading aloud helps you catch errors you might otherwise miss.
2. When we’re finished, my friends can give me feedback while the story is still fresh in their minds, and we can brainstorm options to make the story better.
3. Before we finish, I get to see my friends react to the story in real time. I see them grimace in confusion at a poorly written sentence or flip back a page because they think they must have missed something.

But perhaps the most important thing about editing parties is that my writing process no longer feels so lonely. Despite what other people may say, writing does not have to be an inherently lonely activity.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Most of the writing rules you hear aren’t true. Don’t edit anything until you’ve completed your first draft. Always avoid the passive voice, the verb to be, and adverbs. If you can’t write X number of words each day (even on Christmas), you shouldn’t call yourself a writer.

All of that is absolute rubbish. Granted, some of it has a kernel of truth, but people take these rules too far, preaching them as Writing Commandments, eternal and inviolable. They forget that real writers need to be flexible and that what works for some people might not work for everyone.

THE BAD ADVICE I LISTENED TO

I know all this, yet there is one piece of advice I have clung to for far too long: you must post something on your blog at least once a week (preferably twice). Otherwise, your readers will lose interest and go away. Forever.

I guess my stats have probably dropped since I took my three week blogging break, but that’s a sacrifice I had to make. In the last year, I’ve been writing some of the best material in my whole life, but I could not remember why I was doing this in the first place.

I mean that literally. I literally could not remember why I’d decided to be a writer, though I felt pretty sure I had a good and noble reason for it when I started. I’d become obsessed with stats and schedules and getting likes and comments and hopefully someday earning an income as a writer… but I couldn’t remember the point of writing.

So I stopped.

HOW I FIXED MY MISTAKE

I spent some time away from writing. I did a little traveling (San Francisco is gorgeous). I reconnected with some of my favorite books (don’t give up, Frodo!). Sooner than I expected, I got excited about writing again, and then there was no stopping me. I’d found my reason for writing. I’d remembered. That reason is a little too personal to share on the Internet, but trust me: it’s a good one. And now I’ve created a little reminder for myself just in case I ever forget again.

Going forward, I still believe it’s important to post something at least once a week (preferably twice), but that rule now comes with a caveat: take a blogging break every once in awhile, keep in touch with your reason for writing, and don’t ever take your stats too seriously.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh.  It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement.  Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

For today’s IWSG, I want to revisit something I wrote over a year ago comparing the life of a writer to running the space program.  I have found the analogy to be increasingly apt the farther down the writer’s path I go.

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By now, fellow writers, you must have realized how being a writer is similar to running the space program.  Oh, you didn’t?  Let me explain.

• Much like NASA scientists, most writers have unrealistic concepts about money, making it impossible to write a budget or manage the financial side of the writing business.
• Writers set deadlines that sound reasonable, provide plenty of time to check and double check our work, and ensure our story/spaceship is at peak performance, but somehow we always end up behind schedule.  Maybe it’s due to the weather, maybe it’s due to technological snafus, or maybe it’s because we spend too much time “working” on Angry Birds: Space and lose track of the other stuff we’re supposed to be doing.
• Just as getting accurate data about the hydrocarbon content of Martian soil may not sound exciting to the general public, some people may not realize how important one book sale, one new contact, one re-tweet, or one positive review on Amazon can be.  Sure, it’s not the same as landing on the Moon, but every small achievement gets us just a little tiny bit closer to our ultimate goal, and those small achievement are always worth celebrating.
• There will always be someone who thinks this (the space program or the life of a writer) is a waste of time and money.  Those people are frustrating, but we have to try to ignore them.  If they don’t understand the value of such bold and ambitious endeavors, they probably never will.

So whatever kind of writing you may be doing or whatever dreams you may have, remember to keep shooting for the stars.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Michelle Joelle, author of the blog Soliloquies, recently wrote a post about what’s in her pensieve. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Harry Potter, a pensieve is a large cauldron in which you can deposit thoughts, ideas, or memories, which then take on the appearance of a weird, sparkling liquid. Dip your head in this liquid, and it will let you relive the past and help you sort through your thoughts.

So today, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’ve put into my pensieve.

• Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths of Language Usage: I recently completed this lecture series from the Great Courses on how the English language actually works (as opposed to the blackboard grammar we were forced to learn in school). I’ve purchased several lecture series from the Great Courses before to help with my research, but this one was by far the most useful. It opened my eyes to how beautiful English is despite its purported faults.
• Kerbal Space Program: I write science fiction. That means I need to know something about space travel, and the educational video game Kerbal Space Program is teaching me everything I need to know. So far, I’ve learned how to design a basic rocket and achieve orbit. Next, I’m heading for the Moon. Each lesson the Kerbals teach me goes straight into my pensieve to help shape my next Sci-Fi story.
• Royalty Free Music: The point of royalty free music is to allow people to include it in their audio/video projects without having to worry about paying royalties to the original musicians. I listen to it because it’s created to evoke specific moods, so it makes the perfect soundtrack for writing time. I’m particularly fond of Kevin MacLeod (and I couldn’t help but notice some of his work is in Kerbal Space Program!)

A few other random things have fallen into my pensieve as well: an adorable, plush piglet, a certain friend’s wedding, the Thesaurus Rex app I just downloaded on my phone… The next time I immerse my head in that cauldron of sparkly liquids, I look forward to seeing what story might have blended together from all this stuff.

So what do you have in your pensieve right now?

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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A few years ago, I was at a party with some fellow writers. A certain someone who wrote historical fiction made a comment about how important it is for writers to do their research, to make sure they get all their facts straight, “unless you write science fiction, of course,” he added with slight nod toward me.

I’ve heard this assumption before, and I’ve heard it since. I’ve heard it in writing seminars, I’ve read it on blogs, and I’ve encountered it in many casual conversations with other writers. Writers must do their research, but fantasy and science fiction writers get a pass. After all, they write about stuff that’s totally made up!

I mean, fantasy writers obviously have no need for research. They don’t need to know about different kinds of swords or armor. They certainly don’t need to know anything about farming, horseback riding, or medieval architecture, and I can’t think of any reason why they’d need to study military strategy. No, fantasy writers have it easy. No research required whatsoever.

As for science fiction writers like myself, why we have it even easier! Outer space is a land of pure imagination. Space travel requires zero understanding of Newton’s laws. As a Sci-Fi writer, I will never… not even once… need to know the difference between hydrogen and helium, between dark matter and dark energy, or between special and general relativity. Nope. Science fiction is 100% research free. It’s a good thing too because that relativity stuff is complicated. Have you seen all the math involved?

This historical fiction guy went on to explain that “world building” is what fantasy and science fiction writers do instead of research. “Listen, jerk,” I said, “that’s something I do on top of my research, not instead of it.” Okay, I didn’t actually have the nerve to say that, but I wanted to. I really wanted to.

So please, fellow writers, please do not belittle us fantasy and science fiction authors. We have to do research just as much as anyone else.

End rant.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh.  It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement.  Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Bear with me on this.  Today’s post may seem really sciency at first, but I promise it is about writing.

Scientists are currently working on a new kind of computer called a quantum computer.  In fact, there’s a company based in British Columbia called D-Wave that claims they’ve already started selling these special, new computers (for several million dollars a pop), though there’s ongoing controversy about whether or not D-Waves product is truly “quantum.”

What makes these quantum computers so special is that they take advantage of the weird science of quantum mechanics.  Rather than recording data as a series of zeros and ones, a quantum computer uses a series of qubits (or Q-bits) to store data as zero, one, or zero and one at the same time.  The advantage of this is it allows quantum computers to skip steps in complex calculations, making those calculations much faster.

What does this have to do with writing?  I’ll tell you.  You and I, my fellow insecure writer, are not quantum computers.  We’re more like the regular kind.  Yes, there is something weird and almost quantumly magical about creativity and inspiration and the Muse, but writing itself is a long, often tedious process, and we don’t get to skip steps.

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh.  It’s a way for insecure writers like myself give each other advice and encouragement.  Click here to see a full list of participating blogs.

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Being a writer is hard, frustrating work.  We have a lot of sleepless nights, we agonize over the proper use of the comma and semicolon, and we spend hours paging through dictionaries and thesauri looking for just the right word to describe how our main character is feeling.  But sometimes, in moments of writerly insecurity, we might wonder why we do this.  What good is all this writing for?  How is the world a better place because of what we writers do?  A recent scientific study may provide an answer.

Researchers at Emory University claim that reading a novel increases the connectivity between different parts of a reader’s brain.  The researchers had nineteen test subjects read the same book, a novelization of the destruction of Pompeii, and monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine.  Each night, the test subjects would read a specified number of chapters; then, in the morning, they’d report for their MRIs.  The results not only showed changes in brain activity while reading but for several days afterward.

Now it’s worth noting that the experiment has a few problems.  There were only nineteen test subjects, which hardly constitutes a fair sampling of the total population.  There was no control group, meaning we can’t say for certain what other factors might have contributed to the changes in brain activity the researchers observed.  There are also concerns about the “resting state MRI” technique used to collect data for the experiment.

Clearly more research is required, but if I may hazard a purely unscientific guess, I’d say reading does improve brain activity, and it probably does have the long-term effects the researchers at Emory suggest that they’ve found.  I’d even speculate that it doesn’t matter what you read, so long as you read something.  Whether your choice is War and Peace or 50 Shades of Grey, you will experience an increase in brain connectivity that will last for at least several days after you finish reading.

If reading really does improve brain connectivity, just imagine how much smarter the whole world would be if we all read one book per week.  That’s what our writing is good for.  That’s how writers like us help make the world a better place.  The service we provide is not merely a few hundred pages worth of entertainment.  We are giving people a tool that, according to at least one scientific study, creates fundamental changes in people’s brain function.

P.S.: Click here to see the original scientific paper on this subject.