7 Tools to Help Keep You Writing

Cory Mandell, who teaches screenwriting at the UCLA extension Writer's program, sent out a newsletter update with a great list of ways to charge up creativity and dive into writing.

1. Make your goals public. Set a writing schedule and send it to some friends and/or fellow writers. Promise to check in with them on a weekly basis to update them on how you're doing. Being accountable to others can go a long way in helping us stay on track.
2. Consider employing the Kurosawa Method, especially for those of you with particularly hectic schedules.
3. Try using the Breaking the Glass Exercise, it's an effective weapon in the fight against resistance and fear.
4. The Jerry Seinfeld Chain has helped many of my students stay on track.
5. If Facebook, email or some other internet siren-song is your procrastination drug of choice, you might want to try a program that limits access during scheduled writing times. I know several working writers who use the app Selfcontrol.
   
6. If you haven't read The War of Art, I'd highly recommend doing so. 
    
7. This might be a bit extreme, but I know writers who put some money on the line at stickK in order to have a tangible incentive to get those pages done.

30 Tips for Writing a Book in 30 Days

Writer's Digest has a great post with tons of links for tips to either keep up the writing momentum or jump start your creativity. The article is 30 Tips for Writing a Book in 30 Days.

Writing an Interactive Story

I really liked how Terence Eden broke down and outlined how he built a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style interactive story on Twitter. You can go in to the whole process in his blog post: Writing A "Choose Your Own Adventure" Story On Twitter.

21 Fast Hacks to Fuel Your Story With Suspense

The Writer's Digest has a great guest article from Elizabeth Sims called 21 Hacks to Fuel Your Story Suspense. This is a great collection and terrific resource to turn to.

Write the Ideas Down

Neil Gaiman's advice for being a writer, in response to a recent question.

"I have been trying to write for a while now. I have all these amazing ideas, but its really hard getting my thoughts onto paper. Thus, my ideas never really come to fruition. Do you have any advice?"

Neil Gaiman responded (in good humor):

Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.

See the full response at Neil Gaiman's blog.

What can I do to re-start being a writer?

Great question on Quora "What can I do to re-start being a writer?"

What are the best short stories?

Recently there was a great thread on Quora where participants shared their own short stories, some short and with an unexpected twist, and some short stories from well known authors.

Here is some of what was suggested:

• All You Zombies -by Robert Heinlein
• Suit Up - Nikant Vohra
• The Elephant Vanishes and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami
• Gift of the Magi - O'Henry
• A Small Good Thing - Raymond Carver
• The Third and Final Continent - Jhumpa Lahiri
• Impact of job change - Dinesh Enid
• Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
• The Last Leaf - O. Henry
• The Swimmer - John Cheever
• Goodbye, My Brother - John Cheever
• Pet Milk - Stuart Dybek
• Victory Lap - George Saunders
• The Word - Vladimir Nabokov
• Notes to My Biographer and War's End - Adam Haslett
• The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
• The School - Donald Barthelme
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
• The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Ice Palace - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Dice, Brassknuckles, & Guitar - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Nick Adams Stories - Hemingway
• Good Old Neon - David Foster Wallace
• A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
• The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
• There Will Come Soft Rains - Arsène Hodali
• The Fall of the House of Usher  - Edgar Allen Poe
• The Birthmark  - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Metamorphosis  - Franz Kafka
• The Egg - Andy Weir (this also had a short video adaptation)