Alice Walker, From “Even As I Hold You”, Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990

happy pride month

on june

emily dickinson complete poems of emily dickinson: “all these my banners be” (via @soracities​) \ annette wynne why was june made? \ pablo neruda one hundred sonnets \ virginia woolf the waves \ l.m. montgomery anne of the island (via @metamorphesque​) \ sylvia plath the unabridged journals of sylvia plath, 1950-1962 \ mahmoud darwish a river dies of thirst \ emily dickinson complete poems of emily dickinson: “ourselves were wed one summer–dear–” (via @soracities​) \ philip larking cut grass \ morgan parker magical negro: “the black saint & the sinner lady & the dead & the truth”

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"No! It wouldn't be funny at all."

97 character motivations

Here’s our masterlist of 97 character motivations that you can use in your novel to spark an idea for a character arc!

Saving a family member from capture

Saving a sibling from disease

Saving a pet from danger

Saving the world from ruin

Saving a friend from heartbreak

Saving the town from financial ruin

Saving friends from dangerous deadly situations

Saving a love interest from dying

Saving themselves in a dangerous world

Saving a community from falling apart

Saving a child from a potentially dangerous circumstance

Saving a place or location from evil forces

Saving a ghost from limbo

Overcoming a phobia

Overcoming an addiction

Overcoming marital struggles

Moving on from loss

Finding a significant other

Finding a new family (not blood-related)

Finding true biological family

Finding out an old secret

Finding a way home

Reconnecting with long-lost friends

Getting out of a dark state of mind

Finding peace in life

Beating a disease

Beating an arch nemesis

Forming a peaceful community

Transforming a location

Bringing someone back to life

Winning a competition

Going on an adventure

Getting a dream job

Keeping a secret

Escaping a location of capture

Proving a moral point

Proving a political point

Winning a political campaign

Betray someone

Ruin someone’s life

Find a suspect or killer

Find the answer to a mystery

Discover ancient sites & secret histories

Perform a successful ritual

Summon the dead

Save a country from dictatorship

Become the most powerful in a community

Outshine a family member in business success

Prove someone wrong

Win prize money to help someone in need

Get revenge on someone who wronged them

Find the person who wronged them

Develop significant scientific progress

Gain respect from family

Get over an ex-lover

Move on from a painful death

Keep their community alive

Lead their community

Heal people in need

Preserve a species (animal, alien, plant…)

Discover new world

Get recognition for hard work

Become famous

Get rich to prove themselves to people who doubted them

Break a long tradition

Challenge the status quo of a community

Defeat a magical nemesis

Take over a location to rule

Find out truth behind old legends

Help someone get over their struggles

Prove their moral values

Prove their worth to an external party

Become a supernatural creature

Keep something from falling into the wrong hands

Protect the only person they care about

Start a revolution

Invent new technology

Invent a new weapon

Win a war

Fit in with a community

Atone for past sins

Give top-secret information to an enemy as revenge

Kill an ex-lovers current partner

Reinvent themselves

Raise a strong child

Make it to a location in a strict time period

Find faith

Find enlightenment

Find out more about the afterlife

Confess love to a friend

Solve a moral dilemma

Have a child of their own

Avoid being alone

Run away from past struggles

Reinvent themselves as a new person

Impress a colleague or boss

Avoid a fight or war breaking out

If you need a hand getting started on your novel, we have 3 coaches at The Plottery who can work with you intensively for 4 month to skill up your writing and help you finish your first draft.

Apply through the [link here] or below!

Sorry for infodumping about my special interest out of nowhere, you said a keyword and it activated my unskippable dialogue

me fr

me and karma vibe like that.

my first favorite hobby is yapping. second is being extremely quiet and not talking ever at all ever.

Challenge: Write for 10 Minutes Every Day for a Week

It’s a common misconception that a daily writing habit takes a huge amount of time and effort to maintain. It doesn’t.

With the right tools and systems in place, it can be as leisurely as a walk in a park. You don’t have to lose sleep over it. You don’t have to chain-smoke cigarettes. You don’t have to quit your job and move into the woods to do it.

I’m not sure what is causing this sentiment — perhaps memories from when you joined NaNoWriMo and tried writing thousands of words daily (or a similar push to hit a crazy deadline). While it can work for some, most writers don’t write thousands of words every day like that.

This week, I want to challenge you to write for just ten minutes every day. There’s no daily word count goal. If you sit there for ten minutes and nothing comes out, that’s a success too.

From Dreamer to Writer

Hang on a second. How can you get anything done with just ten minutes per day? I’m glad that you asked!

If you stick to it, you’ll write for just over an hour per week, five hours per month and 60 hours per year. According to my writing stats, I average about 1,500 words per hour. That’s 90,000 words per year. I’m not a particularly fast writer, but even if you did half of that, you’re still in the 50,000 words/year range.

That’s a lot of words, considering you’re only writing for 10 minutes a day. But there’s more.

Occasionally, you’ll be in the mood for writing. Your ten minutes fly past, and you’re nowhere near done. Maybe you write for 30 minutes, perhaps an hour, working on an exciting chapter of your story.

The words add up faster than you think.

The Challenge

Starting today, write for at least ten minutes per day for a week. You may work on your current WIP, write a short story, blog post or journal.

There’s no word goal. As long as you sit down to write, it’s a success!

I set up a challenge in Writing Analytics if you’d like to join:

https://app.writinganalytics.co/challenge/647f2785e7b6ddfbda265635

One great thing about WA is that you can set and track time goals for your writing sessions. That makes it super easy to build a writing habit like that:

Happy writing!