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Tools, Tips, and Technology for Productive Writers

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Entries for the ‘Productivity’ Category

NaNoWriMo Interview: Whitney Rhodes

Whitney Rhodes is the Asst. New Media Editor of the Courier-Post by day, and shares her thoughts on the latest news in the journalism world at the blog MoJo DoJo. She is also a five-time NaNoWriMo winner, and can be found on the  NaNoWriMo forums as “Darksetyuna”. Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Jon Strother

Jon Strother (“jstro” on NaNoWriMo’s site) is a government employee who writes across several genres  –  science fiction, fantasy, romance, as well as non-fiction science papers and technical writing. He has participated in NaNoWriMo once, successfully completing his 50,000 words. To date, he remains unpublished, aside from some technical papers and his manual for the Wings 3D […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Carolyn Dekat

Carolyn Dekat is a four-time NaNoWriMo winner who has published numerous articles both online and off. She is an active member of the Skateboard online writer’s group, where she works with her online friends and fellow writers to collectively improve their writing, which has helped her win several local writing contests. Now, she says, she’s […]

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How to Pull Yourself Over the Hump

Image by slack12 via Flickr There comes a time in nearly every big writing project when you just can’t seem to move forward. Maybe you’ve written yourself into a corner and aren’t sure how to get out of it, maybe the end just seems too far away to be reachable, or maybe you burned through […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Sonja Faust

Sonja Faust is a romance writer living in North Carolina. This year she’ll do NaNoWriMo for the fifth time, after completing the challenge successfully twice. She’s published two short stories, “Love in Shadow” and “Cat in the Mist” with WildRosePress and is currently enjoying publisher interest in her first novel, completed during NaNoWriMo last year. Sonja […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Trisha Bartle

Though she hasn’t won her first two tries at NaNoWriMo, Trisha Bartle isn’t letting that get her down  –  this year she’ll try her hand again, hoping that the third time really is a charm. A freelance feature and commercial writer, Bartle is also an award-winning short fiction writer. Read more about her and her work at […]

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How to Achieve Your Writing Goal Every Day

  Image by churl via Flickr It’s November and for thousands of writers, that means National Novel Writing Month (or “NaNoWriMo”) a grueling exercise in creativity and self-discipline with the goal of creating a 50,000 word novel manuscript in 30 days. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year  –  I don’t have any pressing desire to write a novel […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Catherine Hicks

In honor of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I’ll be running a series of interviews with writers who have tried their hand at the NaNoWriMo challenge before. Hopefully, their words will lend other writers advice and inspiration as they attempt the feat of creating a 50,000-word manuscript in 30 days. Our first volunteer is Catherine Hicks, […]

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More on Mind-Mapping – and a Contest!

Image by sirwiseowl via Flickr In my series on collecting and organizing ideas, I discussed mind-mapping as a brainstorming tool. Mind-mapping is a kind of free-association method in which ideas are generated by association with a central idea, and then each of the generated ideas in turn becomes a source of inspiration for further brainstorming. […]

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Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May”: Tips for Collecting and Organizing Ideas, Part 4 — Organizing Your Thoughts

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr The hardest part of any project for me is getting my notes and captured thoughts into some sort of usable format. That’s one of the reasons why I like conputerized note-taking systems like Evernote so much  –  it organizes for me by creating notebooks and allowing me to tag each entry. But Evernote […]

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