So last year I wrote this piece for my Minimum Standards Practise Test. I got level 4 (The Highest) and was pretty proud of my result. Anyways here it is. The question asked was “If you could go back in time where would you go”
So, you want to know where I would go if I was given the opportunity to travel back in time? At first glance, I might’ve said something along the lines of; ‘To reconcile with my past self’ or 'To watch a large historical event take place’. Alas, this question requires a larger quantity of thought than that. The question refers to you as going back in time, not stating whether or not you could go back to where you began. If the offer was to go back and not return to the exact point of which you left I would not go anywhere. Let’s assume for the following that it also included the ability to go forward, how many times would I be able to move fluidly through time. If I get one chance, one moment to go back and glimpse at myself the smartest act would be to preserve my chance, so when I lay cold and full on my deathbed I can go back in time and watch my happiest moment play through my head one last time.
But! But, but, but, but! Say I was given more than one chance to fluidly fold through the veil of time, my choice would be very different. Sure I would go back and watch everything play out, I have a rule not to change any events, but after that what would I do? Now we come to another question, am I travelling alone? If Doctor Who is anything to go off then travelling by oneself might become empty and tiresome. Although if I was alone there is one thing I would do. I would test time and her laws myself. Travelling through time I would test theories, change minor events and see how much I can do before time snaps. Can two of the exact same beings exist at the same time? What happens if I kill something in the future and bring it to the past, what effect would that have on the future? Alas if I did do this I would be driven to complete my final question. What happens to me if I kill myself in the past?
It’s quite clear to see that sending me back in time alone is a very bad idea but there is one last and final question you must ask about the situation, can I choose where I come out? If I could fluidly travel back and to the point I left in time, if I could travel with a partner and if I could travel more than once then can I have the ability of teleportation ingrained into that? This question is vital as if you went back in time and found yourself, in a hostile place, inside a mountain as the ground level changes over time, your body contorted into a tree as one has existed where you stood or witch no currency and no way to travel the entire aspect of time travel is completely ruined. Unless you could somehow see the exact place that you are going to at that exact point in time so your body would still remain whole I would not travel at all.
Although I did say the previous question was my 'last question’ there are so many more that must be addressed before even attempting to go through time. A main one of which is how will you get there and in what form? On the topic of 'how’ I refer as to whether this is an ability, you can do with your mind or an ability you can do with a vehicle or enclosure. Inside an enclosed area would be the safest way to travel if you could bend around time. Bend around the objects that are there at that time and completely prevent the last problem from even existing. Although the form is very important too. Will I be able to touch things or simply spectate in a ghostly apparition. Not being able to touch things would ruin most of my plans.
Now that my queries have been addressed I would like to give you the answer you’ve been waiting for all this time. if i could go back in time, bend around the objects that are there, influence and touch the world, travel with others, be able to teleport, control where I go from my mind without an enclosure, travel to the moment I started at, do it more than once and see where I would appear directly before I do I would explore the wonders of the world. I would grow old with a friend, I would show artists how great they became, I would see the paths of history truly play out as they happened, I would be the mysterious stranger know throughout time for helping others. I would become a myth, a hero, a legend. I wouldn’t go back in time and change the person that I am, I would go back and help people. Because if my deepest desire is to go and help, I wouldn’t need to change a thing.
So this project that will be dominating my blog for a bit…. what is it?
Until about mid-may, I’m going to be working on writing a short book for new and soon-to-be new writers to give them the starting place and orientation I wished I’d had when I was starting to write more seriously. It’s going to cover topics such as how to get into a project and keep going with it, how to become part of a writing community, and what to look for in writing advice at the earliest stages of the journey.
Once it’s completed, the final PDF will be available online for free.
Tag:
Currently the tag I am using is #new writer guide. You’ll see this on all sign-up opportunities to help, status updates on where I’m at, and on projects that I’m boosting as a thank you to participants.
How to help:
When they are open, I will have links next to the sign up for both the peer edit phase and the beta read phase below. Additionally, even if you’re not interested in being a part of the edit phases, please do not underestimate the value in sharing those sign ups - either by reblogging or crossposting.
Peer edit [NOT YET OPEN] (where fellow writers get to read the book or parts of it and let me know what I may be missing, spending too much time on, or maybe didn’t get quite right - as well as letting me know what’s working and doesn’t need to be changed)
Beta read [NOT YET OPEN] (where new or soon-to-be-new writers get to read the book or parts of it and let me know what’s confusing or needs to be expanded upon - as well as letting me know which parts are all set)
Boosting WIPs:
As a thank you to everyone who participates in either of the editing passes (as well as the now-closed “what advice would you give your past self” survey), there is an option to drop links to WIPs they’d like to have boosted.
The official Camp NaNoWriMo challenge starts on April 1! Camp NaNoWriMo is a virtual writing retreat where you can set your own focused writing goal for the 30 days of April.
(Want to participate in the Camp NaNoWriMo challenge with a project you’re already tracking on the site? Check out our FAQ.)
Why join the official challenge?
1. It’s a great way to participate in the community spirit of an official challenge, while still getting to set your own writing goal. It’s solid practice for the 50K challenge in November!
2. You’ll receive a special badge on the website for participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, and another for achieving your official goal.
3. You’ll earn a winner’s certificate and other rewards (including discounts on writing software like Scrivener, etc.) for reaching an official Camp NaNoWriMo goal.
What else happens during Camp NaNoWriMo?
Published authors will act as your Camp Counselors, sending advice in Camp Care Packages throughout April. Plus, keep an eye on HQ’s virtual events for a packed schedule of Virtual Write-Ins, webcasts, and more.
Here are the main three characters from my novel in progress, currently untitled and under the project name “Tropical Dream.”
From left to right: Cara Marie Juarez, Inés Ortega, and Leon Aolin. They all have POVs but technically only the girls are the protagonists, while Leon’s the deuteragonist.
I can’t wait to share more, to paint scenes and environments and settings from the book (it’s largely tropical!), and I can’t wait to come up with a proper title, haha, which I aim to have by the end of the draft I’m completing now (the second one!)
Whose story are you guys interested in seeing more of?
Time for a little more of an official post now that my other post has floated around for a couple days!! The Summer Chaos Writing Challenge is a wonderful way for writers to let lose with their creative juices in a completely unhinged, practically unplanned story with random strangers equally unprepared!
Here’s how it works:
Due to the number of people interested there will be several groups/pairs of writers and you’ll be matched based on your answers to the Google form attached
Writers will be able to decide on themes, tropes, and a brief description of the main character as well as a title for the characters role ie villain, love interest, best friend etc.
WRITERS MUST NOT DISCUSS PLOT POINTS FOR THE STORY
Writers will have a rough schedule of about 2/3 days per person to write a scene/chapter before the next person in the group/pair takes their turn
This will continue until the story reaches its natural end or one or more of the writers decide they no longer want to continue the project**
Writers can make a mini presentation on their work to post on tumblr and you are free to share the work on this platform with the rest of the writeblr community!
**in this case, if the leaving writer permits the remaining writer may continue the story without them or receive a new partner!
This is supposed to be a fun way to explore themes and ideas and break away from things like outlining and plot lines and to just indulge in some writing, unabashed and unfiltered. Of course there are a few rules to make sure everyone has a great writing experience and I will check up on writers throughout the summer!
Rules:
no discussing plot
no editing other writers work
try your best to stick to the schedule - let your partner or me know if you need an adjustment!
do not repost any of the writing on other platforms
you may withdraw from the competition at any time
all members will receive a copy of the document at the end of the challenge!
I don’t know if I should make a discord server or not, so feel free to tell me if you think that’s something you would enjoy! The google form will be open for a week so please go ahead and reblog so anyone who is interested can join so I can match people as soon as possible. The challenge will run from early to mid september (unless you feel your story has reached a natural conclusion before that!).
Writers read to expand their knowledge on different writing styles and patterns of other writers, established or not. It has been a constant reminder to writers to keep reading and reading something does not necessarily mean it has to be finished.
I can no longer remember the very first time I picked up a book and just sat down and read but I do remember the complete set of colorful picture storybooks my parents bought for me when I was a child. Those were my first books.
My love for reading continued when I was in elementary. I was not a very outgoing child so I spent my time alone in the library, flipping though books with pictures. I eventually learned to love books without the colorful pictures when I read the Harry Potter series. That was my very first set of young adult fiction books.
As the years passed, I started to read more fiction books that young teenage girls read, like The Mediator series from Meg Cabot, the Mates Dates series from Cathy Hopkins, and the Year Abroad trilogy.
I noticed that once I like a book with a certain theme, I tend to search for other books with the similar theme.
Is Reading Books You’re Comfortable With Enough?
Is reading the same genre of books enough to help one develop as a writer? Wouldn’t that just limit the writer to write something similar?
It’s not limited to genres either. How about just reading short stories and novels, but never really paying attention to other forms of literature like poems, prose, or plays?
I have to admit that I was never really a poetry fan and I am very limited to a handful of novel authors. After reading a post here about collecting images for poetry (and for stories as well), I realized that I haven’t really explored other forms of literature and other genres that I stay away from.
We all have our comfort zones, in reading, writing and in our lives. Without stepping out of that small bubble of ours, our knowledge would not be able to grow and we would not know if we might be better in other fields of writing or not.
Realizations are one thing, but acting upon a realization is another.
I may not be able to write poems with measures and rhymes just yet, but I’ve decided to start reading more poems, analyze and criticize them without bias and eventually write some before completely scrapping it out of my writing experience.
Now, this prompt may be more outside of some people’s comfort zones than others (looking at fanfics here mkay) but even if this is something you’ve done before feel to indulge once more.
Think of your favorite story (book, movie, whatever). Got it? Now, write a scene with the main characters (and supporting characters for major kudos) as gender-swapped.
Three Ways Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone Can Boost Your Freelance Career
Most of us like to be comfortable. It’s only natural. However, the reality is that most growth doesn’t take place in your comfort zone. Instead, if you want to grow and improve, you need to get out of your comfort zone. This applies to writing as well as to other areas of your life.
If you want to be a better writer, and improve your freelance career, you need to get out of your comfort zone with your writing. Here are three ways that writing outside you comfort zone can help your freelance career:
1. Learn Something New
I’m very comfortable in the personal finance niche. I ended up specializing in financial topics, and it’s been amazing. And, while I know that there’s plenty left for me to learn in terms of finances, the truth is that there isn’t a whole lot that surprises me in the course of my writing.
Getting out of my writing comfort zone can help me learn something new. The research required when I write something outside my comfortable financial niche practically guarantees that I will learn something new. Not only that, but I think I become a better writer as a result. I might see a different side to something, or find something that allows me to look at personal finances in a new light.
It’s more work to research something outside your comfort zone, but it’s usually worth it to learn something new. Constant learning improves your ability to adapt, and comes with a number of benefits to your life as well as to your freelance career.
2. Stretch Your Creativity
It really takes me outside my comfort zone to write fiction. Even if I don’t share what I write with others, it stretches my creativity to write fiction. I’ve been thinking about it a little bit more recently, since it’s National Novel Writing Month. Even though I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I’ve done it in the past, and I’m still using this month to refine some of my fiction writing.
I’m not very creative, but stretching those creative muscles forces me to be a better writer. That creativity can add something to my nonfiction writing, and improve my ability to tell a story. At least, that’s what I hope is happening. My ability to write creatively can open up new opportunities in my freelance career, as well as keep me open to new possibilities.
Writing outside your comfort zone forces you to be more creative and that can influence the rest of your writing career for the better.
3. Potential to Find New Clients
You might even land new clients when you write outside your comfort zone. The truth is that I didn’t start out writing about finances. My first gigs were mainly science writing, and I tried to write about religion and politics. One day I was asked to write for a money blog. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do it, but I said yes, and the rest is history.
Getting outside your comfort zone can encourage you to learn a new style of writing, and it can also introduce you to new markets. Your freelance career can get a boost with the help of your willingness to move beyond what you’re wholly comfortable with.
While I think that most of my writing will likely center on the financial niche on into the foreseeable future, keeping my options open can be a good idea, since it helps to maintain diversity so that you aren’t relying on any one niche, or even any one product or service. Even though it’s out of my comfort zone, I’ve started offering additional services with my business, from running blogger campaigns to presenting workshops.
When you are willing to step outside your comfort zone, and write what you’re not completely comfortable with, you have better chances to enhance your freelance career now, and safeguard an income for the future.
It’s the 15th, which means Music Shuffle! Put your music player on shuffle and write about the first song that plays.
Extra Challenge: Since we’re challenging ourselves to write outside our norms this month, try your music shuffle with a genre you don’t usually listen to. If you listen to a lot of classical music, listen to a bit of rap. If you’re into Metallica, maybe try a bit of country. Or vice versa. Pick a genre you normally wouldn’t be caught dead listening to and see what you can create from it.
When people meet me for the first time, they usually find out within the first ten minutes that I love to write. The question that proceeds right after is, “What do you write?” At that point, I’m stumped. The thing is, I write a little bit of everything – memoir, flash fiction, news articles and feature stories, to name a few. As a writer, I don’t stick to a single genre or style. I never have.
Branching Out I got my first diary, a red Hello Kitty notebook with a matching lock, when I was about seven years old. My handwriting was horrendous back then, and there wasn’t much to say except perhaps what my mother made for dinner and which games the kids played at recess. But I still wrote nearly every day.
My first fiction story, which I wrote a couple years later, was 60 pages long and followed the bond between a young girl and a horse she saves from animal cruelty. The writing was flat, and the premise was strangely similar (okay, identical) to the story of Felicity Merriman, my favorite American Girl Doll at the time. But I still cried when the story got deleted one day with a single click of the wrong button.
Throughout my childhood, I continued to write short stories and even created a neighborhood newsletter called The Weekly Reader – sounds original, right? – because I wanted to be just like The Pickwick Club from Little Women. It didn’t last long, but here I am, one decade later, a student journalist who writes for campus magazines and the local newspaper.
I’m a journalist who writes news articles on tight deadlines and scribbles poetry in the margins of her reporter’s notebook and submits fiction or memoir shorts to literary magazines. I’ve written horror, contemporary romance and erotica because I like the challenge. The answer to the question, “What do you write?” is, “Whatever I feel like, plus anything I haven’t tried before.” As long as I’m doing some form of literary storytelling, I’m happy.
Fitting In Some people might say it’s important for writers to specialize in a certain category like young adult, or stick to just one genre like mystery or sci-fi. It becomes your targeted market for future work. Your time can be devoted to this one niche instead of getting wasted on your dabbling in other irrelevant areas. Certainly a novelist can’t be a good lyricist, too!
There is some merit to this rationale: You practice writing humorous pieces and you eventually become the Jim Carrey of literature (oops, wait, that’s John Green). You construct a thousand different ways two or three people can fall in love with each other, and Nicholas Sparks gives you a run for your money. You become not only a knowledgeable expert of the topic, but you become better at writing about it over time.
But this “hyper-specialization” also narrows your choices of what you can write and hinders your ability to discover worlds beyond the one you’re writing in. Every time you start on a new project, it takes a little bit more effort to think of something new that fits with your bailiwick. Beliefs like “I only write chick-lit” or “I’ve never written fantasy in my life, and I don’t think I could start now!” become reinforced. It’s only when you start exploring that you become exposed to possibilities – a potential interest or knack – that you might otherwise not have found.
Quit Boxing Around Writing outside of your comfort zone doesn’t necessarily mean you have to “think outside the box,” because the rules of a box, or whatever your usual genre or style is, no longer apply. You don’t think outside a box because there is no longer a box – it’s a tunnel, or a cylinder, or a cone. It means you become a more creative and daring writer. Soon, you learn to incorporate several different elements together for a much richer piece of writing. Many of my favorite novels do this: The Lovely Bones, for example, has elements of romance, paranormal, horror and family tragedy all woven in a single beautiful book. When you write outside your comfort zone, you’re no longer categorized as a young adult novelist or a mystery writer. You’re a storyteller.
By experimenting with different styles of writing, you also improve at the craft. If you write poetry, you know how to condense a lot of meaning into a small amount of words. You pick words carefully, because each one counts toward the flow of things. Not just in the symbolism, but in sound. Syllables matter. If you write narratives, you know how to knit sentences together that make sense structurally. If you write a lot of both, you know how to create stories with vivid imagery using the rhythm of words. Essentially, you’re Michael Ondaatje.
Over time, you become multi-talented and capable of working on several different projects. When I first started writing feature articles, I struggled. I’d been trained to write either with a creative mind or with a strict formula for presenting hard news facts, never both skill sets at once. Feature articles are in-depth human-interest stories that focus on people, the things that happen to them and how they’ve changed as a result. By nature, feature articles use creative storytelling to present facts or the subjects’ interpretation of facts. By writing several feature stories, I became a better journalist and a better creative writer. Now, I use the same techniques for memoir writing, which must also rely on colorful human memories to recall true events.
If you’re used to writing within a particular genre, it can be scary to suddenly switch to something new. That’s why it is helpful to stick with familiar territory at the same time if you can. During the last few months, I experimented a lot with poetry. But because I’m used to writing romance, I wrote a lot of love poems. Unlike the awful angst-ridden poetry I wrote in sixth grade, these poems actually turned out, well, pretty. They sounded pretty when I read them out loud, and they resonated with the few people who read them. I call that a success.
Choosing to write outside of your comfort zone is the first step. The next step? Just write whatever comes to mind. That’s usually how the magic happens.
Alright, now think about your friends, your family, your significant other. What are their biggest fears? How do they differ from yours?
It’s easy to write about a character who’s afraid of spiders if you’re also afraid of spiders. But it’s a lot harder to write about someone with a fear of public speaking if you’re a natural public speaker. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.
So, my challenge to you today is to write about your character’s biggest fear, and make it different from your own. Try and get inside their head and really understand what they’re feeling.
As creative writers, sometimes we need to stretch our muscles, step outside our stuffy little comfort zones, and try something new. Comfort zones are called just that because they are comfortable and safe. And while it’s scary to do new things and take risks, it’s the only way we grow.
We jump out of airplanes, talk to strangers at parties, and visit new countries when we want to face our fears and grow as people. But what can writers do to step out of their comfort zones and try something new? Here are a few ways to get started.
Switch POV. Try writing a story in third person, even though you’ve always been most comfortable in first. Switch poetic forms. If you write narrative poetry, try a ballad, a palindrome, or a visual form of poetry. Or try your hand at romance if you normally write humor. Is there a writing style or form that has caused you problems in the past? Try it again and overcome your weakness. Take something ordinary and make it unusual. Write a story about something terribly boring but with a twist—your toaster oven comes to life, or something incredible happens when you open your mail. Try writing about something awkward, upsetting, embarrassing, or controversial. Tackle subjects like incest, religion, and STDs, or reveal your deepest, darkest secret in story form. Switch story settings and put yourself in unfamiliar situations. Attend an evangelical church if you’re normally part of a super-sedate congregation—gain a new perspective on religion and how people worship. Or spend a few hours in an area of town you normally avoid and see it from a different view. Make a fool of yourself. Step onto a crowded elevator and stand facing the others rather than the door—really experience the feeling of awkwardness. What reactions do you get? Or plant yourself outside a large store and be an unofficial greeter—observe how people respond to you. Face a fear—and then write about it. Terrified of spiders? Visit the zoo and spend some hands-on time with some creepy crawlies. Or shut yourself in a closet and really tap into your claustrophobia. Everyone feels more comfortable with what they know, and writers can easily fall into a habit of sticking to their comfort zones when it comes to literary form, genre, and theme. But these habits can block new and creative ideas. When a writer steps out of that comfort zone, either physically or in writing, there’s no telling what will emerge!
