Morning Pages

Oliver Burkeman recently wrote in The Guardian about how he was won over to the practice of Morning Pages.

Ten Reasons to Write Short Stories Even Though the Pay is Peanuts

New article:
Ten Reasons to Write Short Stories Even Though the Pay is Peanuts

5 Alternative Sites to Visit After Triggerstreet

The great site, Triggerstreet, is being shut down. Triggerstreet has been a great place for sharing creative works (stories, screenplays, films) and getting feedback. It was set up well to make sure you had to put in an effort to provide accurate feedback, and if you wanted feedback on your stuff then you had to help others first. Sadly I learned today that it will be going off-line.

Here are some alternatives to go to:

• Zoetrope Virtual Studio Home
• Scribophile
• Critique Circle
• Script Frenzy
• SimplyScripts

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.