StorytimeWednesday

In today's fast-paced world, distractions are everywhere when we sit down to work. It's crucial now more than ever to carve out a space free from interruptions so we can concentrate on our priorities. Even though I’m a jack of all trades when it comes to writing, artistic endeavors, business consulting, and life coaching, I also read other fields to learn about real estate, finance, banking, politics and so much more. I’ve found many successful people such as real estate mogul, Gary Keller gives great advice when it comes to being successful in business. He once said, “Success is not a marathon but a sprint, fueled by discipline until good habits take over.” He’s absolutely correct because I find when things start spiraling out of control, it's time for me to pause and evaluate my actions and determine what's effective and what's not. In this article, I'll be sharing the daily habits that I find helpful for me to establish a distraction-free environment and ...

How to Turn Your Manuscript into a Screenplay   They say that Hollywood movie producers are always in the market for new screenplay material to turn into the next big feature film. However, industry experts say they don’t want new fresh ideas and scripts, instead, they’d prefer book to film source materials because it helps to sell the movie itself in the long run. If you’re working on your own novel, consider adapting your novel into a screenplay for a film or TV series. So how do you transform your book into a movie script, it’s not that hard. Actually, each of my books started out as a movie script first. The reason I do it this way is because the movie script is all about scenes and dialogue. In contrast, a book has scene descriptions, feelings, and what the character is wearing to help give the reader a visual description so they can follow along in the book with better clarity. The Movie script helps me set the stage first for the story, which characters are in the scene ...

  If you’re having a hard time getting into the writing swing in order to write an article, that book you’ve always wanted to write, or even that movie script you’ve been dying to create, but just can’t seem to get anything down on paper or know where to start. Well, there are various writing exercises you can try in order to get your mojo back. Let’s examine a few of them, This world is large and so is the English Language, it is also chaotic so when you limit yourself in time and words so you can create that specialized piece of prose. For example, you demand of yourself to now use certain words like adverbs or adjectives, or how about writing a poem that only has 7 words in each line. What this type of exercise does is allows your brain to discover language more organically and use it in a more productive way. The next type of exercise would be freewriting in order to open your subconscious mind to new jotting down your basic thoughts each day. You don’t write with a filter or c...

  How to write a kick butt Narrative As a writer who has done a ton of research into the proper way to create a storyline from an original idea, plus understanding the groundwork laid out by previous storytellers, I’ve figured out how to create and write a narrative that is both engaging and gripping due to understanding the true elements of a story from it’s theme to the character biographies to the plot, the conflict of interest by the protagonist, the style of the story and the end point of view. These are the items we will go over in this article today, so, let’s get started. Your first thought of any creation is the theme to which will drive the story itself and your characters. It is important to know how the story will play out before you start to write. For example, is there something in the past of your main character that he or she needs to learn, say in a love relationship or a behavioral message that needs to be learned. Are their feelings to be explored, strengthen...

  Your first draft if finished, now walk away for at least a day or two before you begin your editing process. If you can't afford to hire a professional editor to clean up your project, then you'll have to do it yourself. When I first started writing it took me ages to get the first page written because I kept rereading the page and editing, changing, and redefining the sentences. Finally, my writing mentor who was a previously published novelist who I adore finally got fed up with me during one of his biweekly catch-up phone calls to me when he asked how many pages I got written in the previous two weeks. My response was one page, and my reasoning was that the grammar and wording just didn't sound right to me. He snapped at me and gave me the best advice any writer could receive, stop editing and get the story out of your head and onto the paper or laptop in my case. Editing comes later. It's serious writing time. Now hang up the phone and get to writing and you bette...

  Write Articles that Rock! An issue comes up in social media or a conversation with a friend and you do a bunch of research and discover the truth as you know it and then what to do with that knowledge. Have you ever wanted to write an article about the subject matter because it stirred emotions in you that you just didn’t know what to do about it? Well, writing an article will help you get your message across to others and potentially gain you, new clients, or a writing gig that pays because the article helped make you stand out in your field. When you learn how to capture the essential aspects of your soul and passions in writing, everything falls together and can make a difference. Because you see when you become powerful within yourself, you then become powerful in educating or convincing others of the essence to which you were born with. The following items can help you understand what I’m talking about. Each area starts with a letter in the word ROCK to help you remember eac...

  Hi There, I have been in the hospital over the last few month and haven't been able to do my weekly posts, much less create any posts. Trust me when I say not being able to be creative has been the hardest for me to deal with. Being stuck in the hospital has been depressing for sure. Although I am now home, I am still layed up, but my depressive state is slowly disappearing. Wish me luck. See you at the keyboard soon. EAK

  Writing Distractions   What are the most distracting items that every writer deals with and how to solve them in order to get as much writing done as possible?   Each of these items are what usually happens when you sit down at your computer or laptop, then immediately get distracted from your goals of writing for that timeframe. 1)       Social Media Do you schedule writing time only to get distracted by checking your email, or some form of social media account? If so, stop it! Turn off all internet access during the scheduled time you are supposed to write. That means turn off your phone, unplug your laptop or computer from the internet or better yet get a separate laptop that doesn’t touch the internet and use that system for your writing.   If you can’t afford to buy another laptop them down load an app that turns off your social media and blocks it for a specific period of time. Like Freedom, Self-Control or Stay focused. 2) ...

May your New Year be filled with an abundance of stories to be written, plots to be discovered and characters that make you smile and hate them at the same time. Happy Writing this year and remember never give up on your dream to finish that novel, short story or screenplay.   

    I hear aspiring writers tell me all the time that they wish they had more time to be creative and write that novel they crave to produce. When I hear that line, I immediately tell them that they have no desire to be a writer, instead it’s only an unwanted dream to be able to write. This is when they get upset with me and want to storm off and curse me out for being honest with them. Like I’ve said in the past to many a protégé, if you can’t taste it, you can’t produce your written word in that novel you want to write. What does that mean? It means you have to really want to be a writer in order to be a writer. You must crave the opportunity to write that novel or movie script and then make it happen. Your dedication is key to your success. There is always time in your day to write, you just need to be dedicated enough to find it. For me, writing happens early in the morning over my first cup of coffee, or late at night with a cup of tea. When I first started writing, I onl...

  7 common story plotlines in any story   Every book no matter the genre uses one or two of the 7 common story plotlines wrapped up in their writing. No matter a long or short story, the basic pattern of story plotlines can be found in any story written since the conception of novel writing. In order for you to understand the 7 story plotlines in any story, you must first understand how a book is designed so that the story is told in the right format. Here is how a good story is constructed with the main points as follows: every story has 4 acts, the setting up the story with the problem that needs to be solved which is   (1) Unpleasant Incident or the issue that caused the situation or dilemma for the main character,    then you have the first arc or (2) Plot Point 1 or Arc 1, This arc takes the reader from one state at the beginning to a changed state, then you have Act 2 which is the   beginning of recovery from the problem, now we enter the fir...

  Secrets to Writing Better stories Every one thinks that writing is as easy as a piece of cake, unfortunately, those who think that have never written an article, or even a book to know or understand how difficult it can be to string words together that make sense and tell a story at the same time. Writing a story is the hardest thing of all. To come up with characters with good names, a back story and a goal within the story is really the hardest of all, besides the overall story itself. Then you have to string out that story with an antagonist and a protagonist that reaches 120,000 words to fill the pages of a book. If your really good you can write the movie script to tell the story which is only about 100 pages long. Either way, the concept of telling the story is the pinnacle of writing first and foremost and that can take up to a few years, or only a few months, depending on how good you are as a writer.   I’ve written several books in my career, my first one took 6 m...