Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing
    Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing
    Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing

    By Nancy L. Cassidy and Donna Alward

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Have you lost your writing mojo? Has your Muse abandoned you? Is the business of being a writer sucking away all the joy you used to feel in the process?

    If finding the time to write has become a chore rather than a pleasure; if your prose seems forced and getting words on the page takes longer than it used to, this book is for you. 

    Find the meaning in your writing once again and go for the story, rather than the page count! Donna Alward, freelance editor and NYT Bestselling author of fifty feel-good novels and Nancy Cassidy, editor and owner of The Red Pen Coach editorial group, give you the tools to rediscover the joy in your writing. 

    Throw out the rules, the timers, and the word counts! Discover more meaning in your creativity and enjoy every minute. Let your joy lead to higher productivity, resulting in more opportunity for success, increased readership, and higher sales.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Red Pen Coach
    Release dateDec 11, 2017
    ISBN9780988048881
    Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing

    Related to Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing

    Related ebooks

    Language Arts & Discipline For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Specificity of Art

      Oct 10, 2022

      Like most writers, Jill Madden Melchoir has been putting pen to paper for as long as she can remember. But perhaps unlike most writers, Melchoir’s writing didn’t start with stories or poems: “It was writing lists of stuff I liked, literally just list

      8 min read

    • Article

      Common Publishing Terms

      Aug 16, 2021

      ACQUISITIONS EDITOR – A person who acquires book titles for a publishing house. ARC – Advanced Review Copy; a copy of the book that is sent to reviewers and influencers before publication. BLURB – Complimentary quotes from other authors and experts t

      1 min read

    • Article

      Funny You Should Ask

      Oct 18, 2021

      People ask you all kinds of questions here, but they all boil down to one big question, can you answer as simply as possible: How do you get a book published?Sincerely,Hunting for Blunt I laughed out loud at this question because in this column and i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Anna-Marie McLemore Speaking in Magic

      Aug 16, 2021

      A family of tightrope walkers with feathers growing in their hair. Five queer Latina cousins creating the lush estate gardens that reveal their shared love for the same woman. A girl appearing from an enchanted water tower. Magic is often how I write

      2 min read

    • Article

      Get Emotional With Your Characters

      Jun 14, 2021

      Writers want readers to care about our characters, to feel for them, to invest emotionally long enough to follow their journey for several hundred pages. Evoking emotion in our readers means demonstrating emotion in our characters in every scene. Cha

      10 min read

    • Article

      Potpourri For The Pen

      Aug 16, 2021

      Create a story by filling in the blanks in this passage from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. First, create a list of words following the suggestions below without taking a peek at the fill-in-the-blank section. When you are finished, use your list to f

      1 min read

    • Article

      Digital bookmarks

      Jul 17, 2021

      Billed as a site “for anyone curious or serious about conscious language,” Conscious Style Guide serves as a database of articles, guides, and resources to help writers think critically about the terms they use to describe appearance, abilities and d

      1 min read

    • Article

      Self Starting

      Jun 4, 2020

      Self Starting
      9 min read

    • Article

      Free Writing Contests

      Apr 14, 2021

      FOR those looking to dip a toe into the deep waters of writing contests, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Every year we list hundreds of opportunities in the Grants & Awards section of this magazine, ranging from small local contests offer

      19 min read

    • Article

      Dean Koontz

      Jan 26, 2022

      Describe the room in which you write. It’s 22’ by 20’, with a built-in U-shaped Art Deco desk, each arm of which is 10 feet long, plus one long wall of waist-high Art Deco cabinets, all of golden anigre with a piano finish. One large 19thcentury blac

      2 min read

    • Article

      Wrath Of The Gods

      Oct 18, 2021

      The Poppy War trilogy, Rebecca F. Kuang’s debut fantasy series, creates a new magic system with very old roots. the Chinese-American writer borrows Taoist and Chinese folk themes to build her own pantheon of gods, then draws on the ancient tradition

      6 min read

    • Article

      Bookish

      Sep 10, 2019

      “Learning how to shape your ideas into well-crafted pieces of writing is essentially learning how to think critically and creatively at the same time,” Tara Mokhtari writes in the introduction of The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing, now i

      1 min read

    • Article

      The First Five Pages

      Jan 7, 2021

      The First Five Pages
      5 min read

    • Article

      Twelve Tips for Collaborating With a Cat (Who Wants to Help You Write)

      Dec 14, 2022

      1. Mind-set. The first thing to know about collaborating with cats is that they don’t have owners. They have staff. You’re their staff writer. Some writers think they want total independence, but others know the value of productive constraints, assig

      3 min read

    • Article

      Twelve Reasons You Should Keep Writing

      Dec 14, 2022

      Sometimes I forget why I should keep writing. I hope you make a list of your own. Here is mine: 1. Write for God. The cave. The envelope. 2. Write for your mother. Your father. Your friend who is sick. 3. Write for the future. Write for the past. Wri

      1 min read

    • Article

      Bookish

      Feb 26, 2022

      BY MATT BELL Author and writing teacher Matt Bell offers a three-part plan to help aspiring novelists finish a manuscript. First is the exploratory phase of discovery and drafting; the second involves structured outlining and rewriting; then, finally

      1 min read

    • Article

      Find Your Niche

      Apr 11, 2022

      Find Your Niche
      5 min read

    • Article

      Using Shorter Pieces to Improve Your Longer Projects

      Apr 10, 2023

      Imagine walking across a tightrope over a deep canyon. To me, creative writing feels like tightrope walking. (Metaphorically. I would not attempt walking across actual rope.) For any writing project, we start on one platform with an idea, a premise,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Revising

      Apr 27, 2020

      Revising
      6 min read

    • Article

      Beat The Blues

      Jan 4, 2024

      Beat The Blues
      5 min read

    • Article

      Funny You Should Ask

      Jul 31, 2019

      Dear FYSA, I’m trying to be more disciplined about my writing. I want to really push myself to hit that daily word count, but I don’t know what is reasonable. How do you settle on a work volume that feels both meaningful and manageable? Signed, S

      3 min read

    • Article

      How Do I Find My Calling?

      Aug 19, 2019

      How Do I Find My Calling?
      5 min read

    • Article

      Beat The Block!

      Feb 1, 2024

      Writers can feel stalled at any stage in the writing process, from planning to publication, but there isn’t a onesize-fits-all solution. Blocks at different stages require different strategies to break through them. If you’re stuck on the first page

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ways To Level Up

      Feb 1, 2020

      Ways To Level Up
      8 min read

    • Article

      Designing Your Legacy

      May 1, 2023

      EVENTS OCCUR UNEXPECTEDLY to all of us at random points throughout our lives. Some of them can spark sudden and drastic changes; others make themselves felt slowly and over time. What about you? Are you hearing the slow, dull murmur of dissatisfactio

      6 min read

    • Article

      Time For change?

      Jun 3, 2021

      Time For change?
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Joy Your Way to a Bestseller! Re-ignite Your Passion for Writing - Nancy L. Cassidy

      Introduction

      Nancy and Donna

      Writing is a long journey filled with the peaks and valleys of discovery, creativity, success and failure. Each person’s voyage is their own, different from anyone else’s. To imagine that you can follow another author’s exact footsteps is foolish, and we don’t recommend that you try. But there are areas of commonalities and ways we can learn from each other’s travels.

      This book will review some areas of writing that are common to all: the emotional and physical efforts we put into writing, the ways in which we can steer ourselves in the wrong direction, or the painful process of choosing a new path. There are times in our lives when the writing stops and life intervenes—during divorce, job loss, the arrival of a new baby, the loss of a family member. Writing becomes a chore and we wonder why we put the effort into the development of each paragraph, let alone each book.

      These things are real and valid. Working through burnout, stress, uncertainty, and even positive things like a move or a new (day) job means making adjustments. And when deadlines loom or bills pile up, creativity can be one of the first things to suffer. It’s a cruel trick, really. We rely on our creativity as a therapeutic outlet, and full-time authors rely on it for their income. The very solution to our troubles could become the one thing we avoid most. And the vicious cycle perpetuates itself.

      When times like these arrive, we need to rediscover the joy in the written word. Sometimes this process can be as simple as taking time to read a few favorite novels and becoming re-inspired, or making sure we have time to heal from emotional or physical distress. Sometimes it takes a more focused effort, and we need to re-evaluate our writing process from the ground up.

      Both of us have been there. When we started working together, we quickly realized that while our lives were very different, they were also very similar. The pressure and the longing to be able to write and hit that zone was real…and difficult to achieve. We both wanted to find the joy in writing again…and that’s when the idea for this book was born.

      Wherever you are in your journey, we hope this little book can help you and encourage you to rediscover the joy in your writing—and with new inspiration, find greater success and fulfillment.

      Chapter 1

      Throw Out The Word Count—Nancy and Donna

      In order to achieve the most from our efforts, the majority of us realize we need a set of goals and a plan to achieve those goals. No plan, no goals, no success .

      We can hear you all crying now. But...not Goal Setting! Not again! We’re supposed to be talking about creativity and joy—you know, the fun way to a bestseller!

      We’ve all been to goal-setting workshops; they come up each and every January at the very least, with determined writers ready to set the goals they believe they need to excel as authors.

      And yet, the process often seems...pointless.

      Because it hasn’t worked in the past. Our writing goals spreadsheet, carefully laid out with daily and weekly word count goals, turns out to be as successful as our New Year’s Resolutions about diet and exercise.

      Ahem.

      Oh, it goes great for the first few weeks, maybe even the first few months, and then… Well, we all know what happens. Quite often the difficulty in reaching each goal comes down to one word: life. We can’t stop life from happening. It’s common to say things like when (insert week/month/crisis) is over, I’ll get back to a regular schedule. But guess what? Rarely is anything ever regular. There is always something, isn’t there? And our well thought-out goals and plans go out the window. And we exhaust ourselves trying to catch up—or reconcile ourselves to failure. That is not joyful!

      But perhaps we are going about goal setting all wrong.

      At the beginning of our goal-setting session, we often pull up the previous term’s objectives. Most of us save them from year to year, and when we review our plans, we can see where it all started off well, but then our success peters off and there are areas where targets have not been completed. That is the first problem—thinking about the past can mean thinking about what we didn’t accomplish, rather than what we did. That’s depressing, people! Even if we had an awesome year, we tend to focus on the negative—what we didn’t get done. And yet, we determine that this year is going to be even more productive. All we need to do is make a new plan.

      That is the second problem. Because goals have not been reached, we try to push more into the next plan. It didn’t work last year? Obviously, we need to work harder. Play catch-up. Have better time management skills and better focus. But because we push more into our plan, we have even less chance of succeeding. Being super organized and color coded does not mean the work is going to happen. In story creation, we’re often told that it’s all in the execution. The same holds true for goal setting. We can have the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1