Guest Week: Trying Writing Life Hacks

Hey Everyone! My name is Abby, and Luke asked me to guest blog this week.

A little about me: I met Luke through our homeschool group, I could eat pizza everyday, I LOVE reading and writing books\stories, I have a blog but I don’t post there, I procrastinate alot, I like snapchat, I hate when people eat food loudly and I am probably going to be the youngest guest blogger here.

Now that we are acquainted let me tell you why I decided to talk about writing life hacks. As I was mulling over millions of ideas (okay it was only 5 but...) the idea of trying some writing tips came to my mind. I had several ideas of things I could try, and several other ideas I had seen on Pinterest. However, then I remembered how on YouTube the whole “life hacks” and “trying ___” has been super popular! What better of a way then to kind of poke fun at it a little bit, and title this Trying Writing Life Hacks.

Hack #1: Download the app Evernote

I saw a lot of writers recommending this app, so I immediately downloaded it. My first impression was: wow!  The app is extremely versatile, and organized. The main purpose of the app is to take notes to the paperless level. It allows you to sync these notes to any of your other devices as well.

So when you're out and about living your glamourous life (nevermind you are probably at Walmart in a oversized sweatshirt like I usually am) you can simply type out your newest novel ideas on to the app on your phone.  So then later when you are at home with your writing program up on your laptop, you can easily access your notes through the app on there!

Good if: You find it easier to write notes down in your phone than in a notebook, and you want to save paper.

Bad if: You really prefer handwritten notes in a fresh notebook that smells amazing. (Have I mentioned I love notebooks?)

Hack #2: Write early in the morning

I am NOT a morning person. So when I read that it is just better to write in the early hours of the day I wasn’t exactly excited. I figured I would be too tired and sleepy to write then. But it was the BEST THING EVER! I woke up a couple hours before I usually would and didn’t check my phone at all. Then I set a timer for twenty minutes and just started to jot things down in my novel. The novel I have been working on since November.

The words just kept spilling onto the page, and my mind was only on my novel. I was focused, and there were no distractions. It honestly changed me. My average word count for twenty minutes? Maybe a couple hundred. I wrote almost four hundred words that morning, Coincidence? I. Think. Not.

Good if: You have trouble staying focused on writing during the day.

Bad if: You are too lazy to wake up early. (typically me but I want to change that!)

Hack #3: Bribe yourself with candy

Have you ever seen that silly studying idea on Pinterest where you put a gummy bear on parts of a page and you get to eat it when you read to that point? Sounds awesome, right? Well I thought….why not do it with writing?

I write by hand, so I put some candy on each different parts of the paper and started writing. Well, it didn’t work. You can't write when there are gummy candies all over the page. Plus when you are really into writing, you aren’t even interested in eating, and that is how I was. I was focused, because I was writing the end to my novel. Well guess what? I finished my novel!!!!

(Sorry I am slightly excited.) Anyway, I just had to share that awesome fact.

Good if: Maybe you were writing your novel online and would give yourself some candy for like every one hundred words?

Bad if: You are writing by hand, or are on a diet.

Hack #4: Listen to the Hans Zimmer radio on Pandora

This lived up to its promises. Very calming and relaxing. Movie soundtracks are just the best for writing (go check out Luke’s post about it for more ideas of what to listen to! #promo).

Good if: You need something relaxing to listen to.

Bad if: You dislike writing to any music, or hate movie soundtracks.

Hack #5 and #6: Inspiration and planning

I had to save the best for last. Because this idea legit just made me go into crazy writer mode! I loved it so much. (Please tell me you guys understand that mode when you are so happy about an idea or something you legitimately cannot contain yourself?) It was an idea to print out a few inspirational pictures from online and plan a novel or story around those. It was a blast to look for those few pictures that just made me want to write a story. Like stat.

So I printed the pictures and created my idea, and decided to use another hack I had seen. Planning your story on sticky notes. So you basically write a scene on each one and put them in the order you want. I did that and put them on my wall, but they fell down. So two pro tips: first don’t use sticky notes from the dollar store, and second put them on a sheet of paper in a notebook. That way you can still reorganize them, but they will stay in one place.

I loved this. Why? Because it was so awesome just to get my brain moving with different ideas.

And the sticky note thing? Genious. It really helped me understand the flow of the story before I wrote it.

Good if: You need inspiration, and practice.

Bad if: You don’t want to do it. But I think you totally should!  What kind of excuses could you give for not trying this? No never mind, don’t answer this. Just do it!! (Sure, why should I not finish as if I am promoting Nike)

Thanks so much for letting me share with your readers, Luke.

And thanks to whoever has read this far!

Keep Dreaming. Keep Writing.

-Abby

P.S. You should stalk me

-Follow me on Instagram (Only private because I don’t want creeps seeing my pics, but you guys aren’t creeps. You’re writers. You’re crazy humans not creeps.)

-Follow me on Pinterest.

-The blog I hope to post on soon.

-Add me on Snapchat (abbyh.12).