The Real+Good Writer's Guide to Preptober

Fall brings cozy sweaters and yummy coffee, the perfect combination to cuddle up with words. It also brings NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where writers from all around the world compete with themselves to write 50,000 new words on their novel in 30 short days. It's a writing marathon that requires commitment, energy, and dedication to your story. To successfully prepare for NaNoWriMo, the writing community has also created Preptober. A portmanteau of prepare and October, this month-long retreat gives you the time to plan your story, create your characters, write an outline, and manage your obligations outside of writing so you can focus and succeed during your writing marathon. Learn all about Preptober and get the resources you need to successfully plan and prep your novel!

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2017 Reflection

2017 is nearly finished. This has been a year of trials and errors, heartbreak and growth, change and curiosity. It has been full of good times and shitty ones. 2017 hasn't been the perfect year in the history of years–writing-wise, life-wise, or politically. But it was a year, and it deserves some attention and reflection so we can enter 2018 consciously, intentionally, and powerfully. Here's what's happened in my literary world this year, what lessons I learned, and how you can apply these to your own writing life.

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Say hello to The WriteLife Planner!

To live your best writing life, you need to set goals to accomplish your big dreams and tackle them one step at a time. You have to be intentional with your approach, making the time and space for life and the time and space for writing. You have to take consistent baby-steps to actually accomplish your writing goals, experiment with your writing process to perfect your best writing routine, show writing the love and attention it deserves to thrive, and balance writing with your life, so you can be both the human and the writer you hope to be. And I created an AWESOME tool to help you do it. Say hello to The WriteLife Planner – your 3-month guide to conquering one major writing project, strengthening your writing practice, and loving your writing life while you do it.

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The 6 Things Always on Your Writer's To-Do List

You don't have to be writing 24/7 to be involved in your writing life, and you shouldn't try to. As writers, we engage in other literary activities for our writing to become the best writers we can be. We work to balance out our writing, to refuel our creative wells, to know our stories intimately, and to share our stories with the world. We've got to infuse these kind of activities into your writer's practice so you can become the holistic, well-rounded, wholehearted writer you hope to be. I've found that there are six major categories of things that should always be on your writer's to-do list to balance out your writing practice: Reading, Experimentation, Wholehearted Writing Sessions, Intimate WIP Discovery, Engagement with the Literary Community, and Writerpreneurship Building. Let's talk about how you can infuse them into your writing life, put them on your writer's to-do list, and work to become the best writer you can be. (Plus, I've got 94 activities to accomplish these things and show your writing life some love!). 

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5 Ways to Balance Writing with the Rest of Life

In theory, we would get more writing done if we had a perfect world where the stars aligned and everything worked in our writing's favor. But we could sit around waiting for this "right" reality for the rest of our lives. The truth is, you're a writer and a human. You do have a day-job and responsibilities and a life. But you can't let the fact that you're human get in the way of the fact that you're a writer. Instead of thinking about your writing and life as an "us" versus "them" war, we have to help them work together. Here are my 5 tips on how to balance writing with the rest of your life.

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How to Have Your BEST Writing Year Yet!

Its’s time to live your BEST writing life! Whether you’re celebrating the New Year or knee-deep into June, you can ALWAYS take the time to set some strong intentions for the amazing writing life you deserve. I am determined to help you make this your best writing year yet and I've got 17 tips to help you plan your writing year, transform your writing dreams into your reality, and become the writer you were always meant to be. Are you ready?!

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How to Transform Your Writing Dreams Your Reality

Every month I like to do a reflection on my achievements and a little bit of planning my goals and dreams for the coming weeks. June is the half-way mark of the year, and it's the perfect time to evaluate where you're at and where you're going. It's also important to set goals that you actually can and want to accomplish. Learn how to set the right kind of goals so you'll actually get shit done and transform your writing dreams into your reality. Plus, there's a FREE 10-page workbook to get you started on your own goal setting.

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