What did I learn after writing 10 blog posts in 4 days?

The last 4 days have been tough. My partner and I are pulling off a writing rally. We each gave the other 10 topics that fits the themes of our respective blogs. There were no other guidelines or rules except that we had to churn out the 10 blog posts in 2 days. Today is…

3 Tools that will change the way you write

Scrivener – The Greatest Book Writing Software ever. Scrivener has been a life saver for me. I write multiple chapters and sometimes I am not sure how they should flow. Scrivener lets me rejig the order by just dragging and dropping. While writing I have sudden ideas strike me- their idea tab works well for…

3 ways to build a writing process that works for you

The writing process has some very distinct phases, though they aren’t always sequential. Every writer has a process that is unique to them. In this post, I am attempting to walk the reader through the different ways of building a writing process. Maybe you already use a mixture of them, and maybe you use only…

How can you improve your vocabulary to write better?

My father played this game with me when I was younger.  He got me a journal and labeled the pages from A to Z. Everyday I was to write down new words in it, that I learnt throughout the day. He didn’t tell me to read or anything though. He made it a competition. At…

3 ways of Managing Writer’s Insecurity

The biggest insecurity that there is is- what if nobody reads me. Followed by- what if nobody likes what they read. And then- what if I don’t like what I am writing. Or worse- what if my story is great, but my characters fall flat. And then- what if nobody publishes me (Amazon has sorted…

Does grief make you a better writer?

I know that the title is insensitive. Ordinarily it would be insensitive for me to tell you that the parts of you that are hurting the most could be turned into something beautiful. But if you think about it, it could also be the best way to pay homage to your loss.  In the space…

How can you elevate your craft?

From times immemorial, ever since the formal schooling system has been in place, we have always been pegged at how great or not we are in a classroom. So if you were like me, you probably had a rank in class. A rank in the subjects that you studied and then overall. Throughout your school…

One fool proof way of polishing your creative process

When we read, our thoughts tend to circle around that content. The characters that we draw up for our stories start resembling the ones that we have been reading of. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk- That Danger of a single story, she says that as a kid growing up in South Africa, her imaginary…

Why am I compelled to write?

As a professional it is easy to get drawn into the race. You want to be more, to earn more, to be promoted more often and so unknowingly you start playing to the race. You follow the rules of the race. You try to beat others at the game. Soon you lose sight of what…

The BEST way of drawing a character map for your characters!

Dearest Reader, I find myself in a difficult situation because it is hard for me to know how you feel about me; you do not speak much, you simply look but very intensely. Line after line informs you of my desires, my fantasies, my goals and my flaws and yet all I get to witness…