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Creativity, consistency, comfort and other writing advice you may have missed

Creativity, consistency, comfort and other writing advice you may have missed

I love writing for children. I love teaching kids about writing. But I especially love talking about writing with other authors who write in the kids/YA space.

One such author is international bestseller Amie Kaufman, who has hit the New York Times bestselling lists many times, and remains one of the most down-to-earth interviewees you could hope to meet.

This week, Amie and I staged a takeover of the Words and Nerds podcast, getting together for my occasional series about Creativity.

We talked about the importance of consistency for creativity – showing up is half the battle – and threw in a few more C words for good measure: like Conjuring up worlds, and Co-authoring.

Allison Tait Amie Kaufman Words and Nerds

Have a listen here – you won’t regret it!

 

More writing advice

And while we’re in the world of writing tips and advice, here’s a list of my posts about writing for the Australian Writers’ Centre blog that you may have missed.

Is your protagonist too comfortable?

Is it time to bring back the author blog?

Beta reading for beginners: 5 tips for providing helpful feedback

Do you need to write every day to be a real author?

Making sure your manuscript stands out in the slush pile

Three ways to tap into your creativity

Need to edit your own writing? Here’s where to start

Choosing a title for your novel

What is deep Point Of View – and how do you make it work on the page?

3 ways to create compelling characters (your reader will care about)

6 more top tips for writing commercial fiction

 

Other news

•June is another big month in my online Write With Allison Tait group. We’re welcoming Pamela Cook to our Industry Insider Zoom, to chat about the nuts and bolts of writing, publishing (traditional and indie), podcasting and more.

Write With Allison Tait online writing group

I’m also kicking off another round of #writeabookwithal, so if you’re looking for a daily dose of cheerleading and inspiration, now’s the time! to join!

•In other news, Your Kid’s Next Read now has a newsletter (sign up free here), with additional information, expert advice and resources for paid subscribers. On top of reading, Allison Rushby and I will be sharing tips for writers of all ages. Find out more here.

•And last but by no means least, my new middle-grade novel THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE (Scholastic Australia) is about to go to print and I’ll be updating my site with all the details next month! Can’t wait to share my ‘cosy mystery for kids’ with you!

 

Allison Tait writing tips and adviceAre you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of middle-grade series, The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.

There’s more about my online writing courses here and full details about Write With Allison Tait, my online writing community offering Inspiration, Motivation, Information and Connection, here

9 more posts about writing you may have missed (+ 1 creative exercise to try today)

9 more posts about writing you may have missed (+ 1 creative exercise to try today)

It’s the earliest days of a brand-spanking new year and anything is possible!

 

If your goal is write more this year – perhaps to finish the first draft of your first novel, perhaps to add to a growing body of work, I’ve rounded up some more of my ‘elsewhere’ posts (below) to help you on your way. (You’ll find another 10 posts about writing here.)

 

From top tips for writing commercial fiction to the nitty gritty of raising the stakes in your story, I’ve got you covered!

 

I’ve also added a creative exercise to help get you started. I did this exercise myself this morning as part of the #Fresh5000 challenge in my Write With Allison Tait group and it helped to unlock a thorny problem in an idea I’m working through.

 

Hopefully it will work for you, too!

 

9 posts about writing

 

An insider’s guide to story structure

 

Beyond the writing 5 authors share their tips for a successful career

 

5 reasons why you should write middle-grade fiction

 

Twitter for authors: is it still worthwhile?

 

5 ways to increase the stakes in your story (and keep readers wanting more)

 

Anna Spargo-Ryan’s top tips for writing beautiful sentences

 

Is your manuscript ready for feedback?

 

5 top tips for writing commercial fiction

 

Content writing versus copywriting: what’s the difference

 

And a creative exercise

This is an exercise I created for my online writing group, and attempted myself this morning.

 

Poetry makes us look at language in a different way.

Today’s challenge is to find three poems to read. Any three. They can be from a book on your shelf. From the internet. Or search for #poetry on Instagram (it’s a surprisingly effective platform for poets).

Once you’ve read three, try writing a poem of your own. It can be a haiku, it can be a stanza, it can be a sonnet, it can rhyme, it can be free verse – the beginning of a verse novel perhaps.

If you can’t think what to write, look out your window and try to write a poem describing what you see.

This exercise is about bending your brain just a little bit.

 

I looked for poetic inspiration in an anthology on my shelf, in the spoken word performance of Joel McKerrow (highly recommended) and in the (also highly recommended) Instagram posts by Red Room Poetry.

It’s not hard to find these days!

If you’d like to try more creative exercises and write 5000 words by the end of January, it’s not too late to join us!

 

So You Want To Be a Writer bookWould you love more writing tips and advice? Check out my book So You Want To Be A Writer: How To Get Started (While You Still Have A Day Job), co-authored with Valerie Khoo and based on our top-rating podcast.

Buy it here!

Meet ‘So You Want To Be A Writer’ the BOOK

Meet ‘So You Want To Be A Writer’ the BOOK

It’s been a big year for the So You Want To Be A Writer podcast team!

Not only have we screamed past the ONE MILLION download mark (you’ll find my 15 favourite interviews here), with a LIVE event at VIVID Sydney (book now!) in the works, but we’re happy to announce that we’ve written a book!

So You Want To Be A Writer book by Allison Tait and Valerie Khoo

So You Want To Be A Writer: How To Get Started (While You Still Have A Day Job) by Allison Tait and Valerie Khoo will be on sale from 8 June (be at our event to be the first to own it!)

Here’s the blurb

The ultimate guide to making your writing dreams come true!

Want to write a novel or earn an income as a freelance writer, but not sure how to go about it? Authors Allison Tait and Valerie Khoo – co-hosts of the popular So You Want To Be A Writer podcast – will give you the steps you need to make your dream a reality.

In this book, you’ll discover everything you need to be a successful writer, including how to connect with people who will help your career grow and productivity tips for fitting everything into your already busy life. You’ll also explore how to keep your creative juices flowing and where to find other writers just like you.

This book lays out a blueprint to help you get started and thrive in the world of words. With advice from over 120 writers, you’ll tap into proven wisdom and find the path that will lead YOU to success!

Here’s what five of Australia’s favourite authors have said about the book

‘Practical, grounded and inspiring. When a thousand voices tell you that you can’t, you need a voice to make you believe you can. This book is that voice.’
Candice Fox, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘So many pro tips in here from working writers. This is like Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans but exclusively for writers. I loved it.’
Tristan Bancks, award-winning children’s author

‘Perfect for the person who wants to write but doesn’t have the confidence or the know-how to start.’
Pamela Hart, award-winning historical fiction author

‘Essential reading for any aspiring writer.’
Graeme Simsion, international bestselling author

‘Val and Al were a godsend to me before I was published, offering a guided tour to the world of publishing that was otherwise closed to me. Their advice is highly, highly recommended.’  
Dervla McTiernan, international bestselling author

And here’s a picture of the co-authors on the day (nearly a year ago) we decided to write a book

Valerie Khoo and Allison Tait So You Want To Be A Writer book.

We are thrilled to bring this book to our podcast audience, our writing community and to new and aspiring writers everywhere. It will be available through a range of online booksellers, here and overseas, so stay tuned for more details.

If you’d like to read more about So You Want To Be A Writer the book, or register your details to receive notice as soon as the book is on sale, you’ll find all the details here.

Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait and you can find out more about me here and more about my online writing courses here.

My top 10 posts for writers (2018 edition)

My top 10 posts for writers (2018 edition)

top 10 posts for writers (2018) | allisontait.comI can’t believe it’s that time of the year again! I’m taking a break from the online world for a few weeks at the end of this week, so I thought I’d start sharing some of my ‘new year’ posts early, starting with this one.

I’m always fascinated to see which of my ‘writing’ posts resonate the most each year, and this year is no different. So here they are, in descending order from 10-1, the 10 most popular posts about writing on this site in 2018. (Click the title to see the full post)

The one superpower that all published writers have

Industry Insider: How do you know when a story is finished?

Ask the writer: How to build your author platform

Starting Out #3: Do you need to do a course to be a writer?

6 skills you need to make it as a copywriter

Writing for kids: How to create remarkable characters

Writing for kids: 10 top writing tips from bestselling author Jacqueline Harvey

My top 3 tips from nine years of author blogging

Industry Insider: How to tell when your writing is ‘good enough’

10 things I’ve learnt from writing my debut novel 

Want more? You’ll find all of my posts about writing here.

Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m the author of two epic adventure series for kids 9+, and you can find out more about me here. Click the images below to discover more about my books.

The Ateban Cipher adventure series for kids 9-12 is out now!

Industry Insider: How do you know when a story is ‘finished’?

Industry Insider: How do you know when a story is ‘finished’?

Industry Insider: How to know when your story is 'finished' | allisontait.comOne of the most interesting aspects of any author workshop is the Q&A section at the end. You might remember this post, wherein I advised authors to be prepared for ‘anything’ when it comes to this particular aspect of a talk. But I confess I was caught short during my recent visit to the Burdekin Readers’ & Writers’ Festival.

In my defence, it was the end of a very long, hot Friday, in a (mostly) year 9 workshop, when a year 11 student put up his hand and asked me this question:

How do you know when a story is finished?

I was focused on structure, so I blathered on about getting to The End, about three acts, about reading a lot of books so that you have an innate sense of story structure.

And then I thought about it all weekend. Because, of course, he wasn’t asking me about how to get to The End of a story, he was asking me how you know it’s time to Let Go of a story.

Which is a really, really good question.

Such a good question, in fact, that I decided to get some help to answer it. So I asked a few author mates for their perspective and they all gasped in horror – because the answer is at once simple and complicated.

But then they – in all their award-winning, bestselling glory – gave me their answers, which you’ll find below. They write across a whole range of genres, demographics, and styles. They write novels, novellas, short stories, and essays. Some have 30+ books to their names. In short, they know their way around a story.

Click their names to find out more about that award-winning, bestselling stuff on their websites, and the title of their latest book (in brackets) to find out more about it.

Ready?

11 top Australian authors share how they know a story is ‘finished’

“It’s never finished! I had to re-read The Paris Seamstress for the eleventy-billionth time to proofread it for the US market after it had been published here in Australia and I made changes to it yet again! So I prefer to think of a manuscript as “as good as I can make it at the time” rather than finished. Finished is obviously much shorter and punchier to say though!

So the moment when I submit a manuscript is when it really is as good as I can make it right then. I’ll always leave a manuscript to sit for at least a couple of weeks before I send it anywhere, have another look at it and then, if I’m just tinkering rather than really editing or redrafting, it’s reached the stage when it’s ready to go.

For interest’s sake, I did 13 drafts of my very first novel before it was accepted for publication; I now do around 5 or 6 drafts. I know they’re not perfect – that even the published book isn’t perfect – but it’s my best work at that moment.

Which is a good test – can you say, hand on heart, that you’ve done everything possible and given it your all and made it your best possible work? If so, then it’s ‘finished” – for now!”

Jack Heath (Liars #1: The Truth App)

“You know you’ve finished the plot when the reader can guess the rest. You know you’ve finished the first draft when you can’t think of any other things to change, and you can’t stand the thought of looking at it again. But you’ll have to read it at least four more times to implemented everyone else’s suggestions – that’s when the book is finished.

Melina Marchetta (Tell The Truth, Shame The Devil)

“I find that if I can read a hard copy without scribbling notes on the page, then that’s it.”

Anna Spargo-Ryan (The Gulf)

  1. When you write something, you know what’s supposed to be in it, all the background information and research. You have all this context that a new reader won’t have. In that sense, I think it’s very difficult to know when your own work is finished. Writing a book is a team effort. I rely on other people – not to tell me whether or not the story is finished, but to help me see why it isn’t.
  2. I also think you get to know your weaknesses as a finisher. I write rushed, terrible endings. I know that the first time I write an ending, it’s not finished, and probably still isn’t finished until I’ve rewritten it four or five times. I always think it’s finished, but I’ve come to know better.
  3. “Finished” always comes sooner than I expected. I’ll be writing and writing and then, suddenly, it will be done. That happens to me at first draft stage, and at final proofreading stage. It’s like a magic trick (the only magic trick that exists in writing).
  4. Lastly, most writers – and other artists – will tell you that nothing is ever truly finished. There’s a point at which you just have to abandon it. I sometimes read over my published writing and think, oh yeah, I would change all of these things. But you could honestly keep on doing that forever, and I think often you wouldn’t even necessarily make it a better work on the whole. Would this sentence be better written a different way? Maybe. Will it make the whole book so much better? Probably not. I read once that the painter John Olsen (I think) would take a brush to exhibitions and touch up his work while it was hanging on the gallery walls. There’s a point at which you have to recognise you’ve done as much as a project needs and that’s not the same as doing everything you wanted to do, but it doesn’t make it any less finished. Let it go.

Pamela Freeman/Pamela Hart (The Desert Nurse)

“I know it’s finished when the characters/plots etc don’t bug me when I’m waiting in line, or at the traffic lights – if my mind is disengaged and the book doesn’t appear in it, it’s probably done.”

Krissy Kneen (Wintering)

“I know I am about to be finished when a new book starts to knock on my brain. I get the urge to move on because the new book feels so much more interesting. I start to read and collect material that relate to the next book. This is how I know I am about to finish a project. Pretty soon after this I can put the final sentence in, read over the book and just feel the urge to submit it. Moving on is a sure sign it is done.”

Alan Baxter (Devouring Dark – coming 6 November, 2018)

“I know it’s finished when I’ve had it read by a couple of people I trust and addressed their concerns, and it subsequently doesn’t keep knocking on my brain for more. I never trust that feeling unless others have read it, too.”

Cat Sparks (Lotus Blue)

“When it comes to judging my own work on this score, I am almost always wrong when I initially decide a story is done. Everything I write needs to be composted for at least three months, enough time for glaring errors of style and judgement to become visible to my own eyes. Sometimes longer.”

Ian Irvine (The Fatal Gate – The Gates Of Good And Evil #2)

“I don’t show my work to anyone for an opinion, I judge it myself. And I like to meet my deadlines, so I normally submit on the day or a few days later. Occasionally, well in advance, I might ask for an extra month, in which case I treat that as a firm deadline.”

Dmetri Kakmi (Mother Land, plus essays, short stories and novellas)

“For me a piece is never really finished. You can always do better. But I do recognise when I’ve done the best I can for the time being. I stop and send it to my trusted editor, who then pushes me beyond whatever barriers I might have. Ultimately though I know when a story is ready to go into the world, flawed or not. It’s a gut feeling.”

Jacqueline Harvey (Disappearing Act – Kensy and Max #2)

“I know it’s finished when I feel like I’ve brought together the loose ends and untangled the mysteries – the last line really needs to give me a feeling of ‘ahh, it’s done’ (either that or I’m crying tears of joy for my characters).”

writing group Allison TaitI hope you found this helpful! Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! You can find out more about me here.

For more brilliant writing advice and tips from top authors and other industry insiders, join my online writing community Write With Allison Tait. Click here for all the details.

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