Secret Subject Swap - Inspiration

Today I am participating in the Secret Subject Swap. It happens once a month. This month the subject was sent to me by J. C. Wolfe and the subject sent was "inspiration." To see the others involved, click here.

For me, inspiration takes on many forms. There is inspiration for my stories. The ideas created for my stories often come from my children. I have seven children, some grown and some still young, but they have, throughout their lives, provided me with inspiration for many, many stories. My youngest will sometimes say something that is completely ridiculous, but it will spark a new picture book idea in my mind. My ten year old daughter might be bossing her siblings around during a game of make-believe and idea is formed for a chapter book. My 6 year old son might ask me a question, and an idea for an early reader comes to me. My seven year old daughter might be trying to find a superhero toy for her to join in with her brothers game of "Superheroes" and a need for a new superhero story pops up in my mind. Sometimes just knowing the things that my children love and are interested in can bring me oodles of story ideas.

If you ask me who inspires me as an author, I can't give you any names as there are too many. Inspiring authors run the gamut from relatively unknown names to world-famous names. Whenever I read a story that sucks me into its world and doesn't let go until I finish reading the book and, reluctantly, have to leave its world and come back to reality, I am inspired to make my writing just as gripping and just as unforgettable.

I am inspired when I see other authors helping one another, whether it is through offering to be beta reader,s offering manuscript critiques, sharing each others' books through social media, blogging about one another and each others' books, commenting on each others blogs, congratulating each other on achievements, encouraging one another and any number of other things that authors do to support and lift each other up. Being an author can be lonely and really hard on the ego. We need each other.

I'm inspired by everything in the world around me. Being a writer means that I have a vehicle for making myself heard if there is an injustice I have noticed or a topic I desperately want to share with the world. And I am incredibly inspired by writers who stand up for what they believe in by writing about it and sharing their views in the wide world of the Internet.

What inspires you?

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The the other writers in the swap are:

• Jodi Gibson
• JC Wolfe
• Melissa Gijsbers Khalinsky
• Josefa
• Rhianna
• Ashley Howard
• Zanni Louise

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NaNowriMo 2012: Week 4 Update & The Joy of Getting Comments

National Novel Writing Month has just completed its 4th week. Today is the 28th and we now only have two day left until we are supposed to be done with our 50,000 words.

For me, 50,000 words is not a complete novel. It's more of a novella. I have never completed a full-length novel, despite having successfully completed NaNoWriMo three times previously. This year, I decided I was going to write a full novel in the month of November, rather than just 50,000 words. I write over 75,000 last year, so I knew it was possible.

My goal was to write a minimum of 85,000 words. I've already done that, so I revised my goal to reach 90,000 words. Then I decided that I might even try for 95,000 words. I've still got two days of writing to go and only a little under 10,000 words left to get there, so it's possible. And I like stretching myself by setting these personal goals that push the boundaries of what I can do each time.

I don't just want to reach 95,000 words; I want to have a completed first draft to my novel. Every previous year, whether I wrote 52,000 words or 75,000 words, I stopped at the end of NaNoWriMo and never picked up the story to continue with it afterward. This year, my goal is to get to a first draft and then I am giving myself three months to finish the first round of edits on it.

Once I've gone through the first round of edits on it, I will start having writing friends do some critiquing for me. And then I will go from there. This story is going to make it to publication eventually, just not until I know it is ready.

As a blogger, comments on the writing I do on my blog mean a lot to me. It's rewarding to know that people are reading what I write and if it helps them or interests them or gives them something to say, it is extra rewarding. I don't know if anyone is reading what I write unless they comment.

As a writer, when I share bits of my creative writing, it is even more important to get comments. I suffer from a common writer-disease called self-doubt. It is more prominent when it comes to my fiction writing. When someone reads some small story or snippet of writing I have shared and tells me they enjoyed it, it literally gives me a happiness boost.

I started out, in the beginning of this year's NaNoWriMo, just posting my daily word count and total word count, at the end of each day's writing, on Facebook. A little ways through the month, I decided that it was a rather boring way to let people know about what I was doing, so I started sharing snippets from each day's writing along with my post about my day's word count.

Today, one of the people on my Facebook friends list, (someone I have known since she was a child who played with my own kids) gave me this comment when I wrote about my goal to finish the novel.

"Do It Becky I LOVE reading your snippet of the day...you got me hooked and I've only been reading little bits!!"

She has never before commented on one of my word count posts, so I had no idea she was even reading them. And her comment has really brightened my day and given me a slight confidence boost for the story I am writing. It's also made me wonder how many others are reading my daily snippets without commenting.

So please, if you enjoy someone's writing, let them know!


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10 Ways To Inspire Your Child To Write

1. Read to your child or make sure he or she spends time reading every day. Not only does reading help her get used to using her imagination, but it also improves her vocabulary by introducing her to new words.

2. Tell your child made-up stories. Seeing you using your imagination to come up with interesting stories for him helps inspire him to do the same.

3. Play story-telling games with your child. Start by saying one line of a story, and have the next person continue the story by coming up with the second line, and the third person has to come up with the third line. If this proves too difficult, each person can come up with a paragraph instead of a line each. This is a great way to stimulate your child’s creativity and get her thinking about the things that make up a good story.

4. Have your child and some of his or her friends write poems and make it a contest. Make sure they don’t put their names on the poems, and then collect the poems into a pile. Read the poems out loud, one by one, and tell them all they can vote for one poem, other than their own, that they thought was the best one. Then tabulate the votes and the winner gets a treat, like a candy bar, a sticker or a new notebook (depending on what you can afford to give and how old your child is). Do this once a week, at the same time each week, because knowing that it is coming up will have them all thinking about their poem throughout the week.

5. Get your child a library card. As in the first point above, reading is important for your child if she is going to develop the ability to write. Reading a variety of stories and books, as a library card will allow, will help her to become familiar with different writing voices and styles.

6. Self-publish his stories and drawings so that he can hold a physical book of his own creation in his hands. This can be done through places like Amazon’s CreateSpace, Lulu.com and Blurb, Inc. Or you can create the book by hand using your printer and the right materials. If you are completely lost on how to create the book, use a service such as Your Kids’ Creations. Having a physical book of his own words and drawings that he can hold, read and share with others inspires a confidence in his own writing that is hard to capture in other ways. This confidence will inspire him to write more.

7. Do some writing yourself. Seeing a parent take writing seriously and spend time writing emphasizes the importance of writing in a child’s mind. It’s a case of leading by example.

8. Have your child write and illustrate a poem. This helps show your child the connection between the beauty in words and the beauty in the world around her. It helps to make the connection that you are painting a picture with words when writing. As an extra step, you can even put her masterpiece on a mug, poster or magnet at Zazzle.com for her to keep as a physical reminder that she can create beauty with her writing, or just to show her how proud you are of her work.

9. Help your child create a newsletter. Let him take pictures of his friends or other things with a digital camera, or provide him with pictures if a digital camera is not available, and he can write stories about sports he loves, games he plays with his friends, or just interesting news about his friends and family that he’d like to share. Help him put it all together in a newsletter format. Print up several copies and he can hand them out to his friends and family members. He can even let his friends participate in the newsletter by contributing stories to it.

10. Let your child have his or her own blog or use other social media outlets. With the proper supervision, writing for her own blog or keeping in touch with her friends through other social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook can really help inspire your child to reach for even greater creativity. Using a blog source such as Blogger.com makes it easy for her to choose a template and set up her own blog (though, depending on her age, she might need your help), and you can set it to not allow comments or to only allow comments after they’ve been moderated by you. She can share her writing of stories and poetry as well as her drawings and even simple journal entries in her blog. The blog can be set to private or public and you can monitor it to the extent that you think is necessary. Facebook and Twitter accounts can also be set to private and you can only allow them to authorize friends you know, but this frees them to chat freely and be creative with their friends.

There are many ways to inspire creativity and a love for writing in your child. Even as simple a thing as writing a letter to his or her grandparents can help bring out the creative writer in your child. It’s up to you to encourage your children and to lead by example in their lives. If you put importance on writing in your life, your child will see it as important too.

New Year's Resolutions

My husband and I have made the commitment this year to each of us writing/working on our novels for at least one hour a week this year. We have seven children, a dog and a cat, and our time is largely taken up with caring for them. We have not been getting much writing done lately, so we have made this commitment to set aside a small amount of time every week.

Robert has already spent his hour writing this week. I have spent only thirty minutes writing and still have another thirty minutes to go.

How much time are you going to set aside for your writing endeavors this year?

Dreaming Up Stories

Ever had a dream that was so vivid and interesting that you knew you had to write it up into a story or novel? I've had two. So far, although I've written an outline for one of them and a brief synopsis for the other, I haven't really gotten started on them yet. But I know in my soul that they are meant to be written.

For other inspiration, like for my children stories, I only need to look to my children to find inspiration. What interests them? What wonderful adventure are they pretending to live today?

Where do you get your inspiration from?