Writing Prompt with a Quote in It
Ever since I read this quote earlier this week, I’ve been thinking that it would make a perfect prompt for creating a character or journaling. 📝🍵
Mindset Medicine 📔📝
Mindset Medicine: A Must-Read for Motivation
Remember that feeling of opening the decorative cover of a new journal to the first crisp, fresh page, awaiting all of your musings, pens in myriad colors at the ready? That anticipation! That knowing that you’re not entirely sure where your written journey will take you but that it will surely take you on a good, introspective journey by book’s end.
That’s the feeling, too, while reading award-winning author Mari McCarthy’s Mindset Medicine: A Journaling Power Self-Love Book.
Packed with authentic examples and can-do tips, Mindset Medicine explores a wide variety of life-applicable topics, from gratitude and respect from others to transforming your life through asking the right questions and establishing solid boundaries.
This book meets readers where they are in life and offers practical and positive next steps for setting goals step-by-step, elevating moods, and letting go of damaging thought-loops that keep a creator mired or stuck.
It’s like having your best friend who happens to be a life coach sitting with you and supporting your hopes and goals as you translate them into action steps.
Get your journals ready; you’ll surely fill them as you read (and, if you’re like me, reread—so many of these chapters invite a second and third visit) and explore an updated mindset that brings refreshment, renewed focus on your dreams, and a lot of self-knowledge along the way.
Want to read more? Great news! This book, as well as books 1 and 2 in her Journaling Power Revolution Series) and other inspiring resources, such as workbooks, are available and ready for your perusal at: Amazon and createwritenow .
Check out the other stops on Mari L.McCarthy’s Book Tour this month and next:
Featured Today on I've Got Questions 🥳
Great news! To celebrate my book birthday today, I’m featured on Clifford Garstang’s wonderful site, I’ve Got Questions.
It was a joy to talk about Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit as well as teaching, food, and other elements of the writing life.
Check out Cliff’s many excellent books as well as other interviews with talented authors.
It's Book Birthday Time! 🎉📚
I couldn’t resist staying up to ring in the book birthday of my next book: Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Woot! 🎉
Available at Amazon as well as signed copies at my Etsy shop, WritePathProductions.
Many thanks for celebrating with me and for all of your wondrous support!
Updates on the Writing It Real Series 🎉
🎉Just one more month until my book birthday @vine_leaves_press for Writing It Real: Creating an Online Course for Fun and Profit! Can't wait! Preorder today at Amazon.
It's even more awesome in person! 📕🎉@vine_leaves_press That holding the first printed copies feeling: priceless. Props to my amazing cover designer @jessicabelldesign . Couldn't resist sharing this moment with all of you. Writing It Real: Crafting a Reference Book that Sells has a book birthday in April, and it's available for preorder now at Amazon.
My Article Published Today: "Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?"
Excellent news! My article was published this morning in the WOW newsletter. Happy to share this fun topic with you, and if you’re interested, my next online class begins Friday, January 14th (details here: Fundamentals of Graphic Novel Creation).
Photo courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com
“Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?”
By: Melanie Faith
The initial answer is simple and direct: graphic novels are an exciting mode of storytelling and can encompass several genres. There are comics that are based on vignettes or flash fictions. There are comics that are fully autobiographical and others that are semiautobiographical and based on some real-life events. There are comics that are memoirs. There are comics whose protagonist is entirely fictional as well as comics based on historical figures and events from the past. There are animal comics. There are comics whose protagonist is otherworldly (science fiction and fantasy), from another realm or distant galaxy, from another time period or dimension. There are comics that have everyday protagonists who get stuck in traffic and hate certain foods, like you and me, and comics where the protagonists transcend the daily drudgery as secret superheroes who whip out their cosmic powers just in time.
Even more than that initial answer, however, graphic novels share key traits of meaningful literature that you’re already probably writing to hook readers into these visual stories, such as:
--Graphic novels have strong characters with a perspective and a problem that’s not easily (or forever) solved: whether from a down-on-her-luck office worker who just can’t catch a break or a fairy queen with magical abilities who leads her fellow fae to victory, if you can dream up a protagonist who has something to say and a perpetual conflict to try solving, then you can craft a strong plot for a graphic novel. The office worker decides she’s going up for the big promotion, only to get bested by the office bully, but only for a few panels before she cooks up another plan to aim for that promotion or something equally important to her growth. Even when the fairy queen swoops in to save her folk today, another destructive force must appear—in the next chapter, page, or even the next few panels—to challenge her abilities and give her a reason to test her powers and lead her fellows past obstacles to victory all over again. Struggle, momentary victory, struggle again is a good motto for graphic-novel planning.
--Graphic novels often have characters who are delightful oddballs or passionate outcasts who question their place in the world through their actions, dialogue, and their inner doubts and fears as they move through these challenges, however slowly, haltingly, or while bumbling sometimes. Insecurities, fears, limitations, frustrations, self-consciousness, anxieties—call them what you will, but graphic novel protagonists are often recognizable and loveable for the very sensitivities that keep readers reading (and putting themselves into the protagonists’ shoes). Just like in short stories and movies, nobody roots for a character who is picture perfect in every way and has it all figured out every step of the way. Graphic novel protagonists are often thrown into new environments where they feel overwhelmed for much of the narrative or cannot escape their home environments where they have never felt the same as others. In both situations, the protagonists demonstrate their character, mettle, sass, and wit through how they cope (or barely cope or mostly fail to cope) with not having complete (or even partial) control over their lives. Humor and pathos both result from tales of protagonists doing the best they can as fish out of water.
--Graphic novel characters and narratives touch on universal truths. Whether your novel is set on a distant star or in Chicago of 2130 or in your own home office this very year or in Boston in 1850, one of the hallmarks of graphic novels is that they illuminate what it means to live in an imperfect world with others who frequently have different goals that conflict with one’s own. Readers want to identify with and cheer on the situations protagonists navigate through and, as a bonus benefit, feel a sense of investment in the protagonists’ struggles and triumphs and encouragement about their own lives.
Yeah, but comics are written by people who are whizzes at drawing, right? Nope. Graphic novelists don’t have to have the most up-to-date software or even be skilled at drawing or anywhere near professional-artist level. If you can sketch a table or shapes and/or draw a stick figure, you can get your point across based on the story your graphic novel tells and the strength of your protagonist, antagonist, conflict, rising actions, and story arc. Plenty of writers team up with professional or student artists to make their comics, which is another option. Comics can also be created from photography and collage as well as simple line drawings and from various forms of drawing software and apps.
So, if you have elementary artistic skills or can take a photo or sketch basic shapes and draw a stick figure, possess an interest in making good literature with a strong, identifiable protagonist who gets in hot water and feels hesitant about their vulnerabilities and yet finds their own way, bit by bit, it’s likely you can turn a strong character and story premise into an entertaining, meaningful graphic novel. It’s well worth dipping your toes into the graphic-novel waters to give it a try.
Image courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com
Pre-Order Time! 📚
Super excited to announce that the pre-order for my next book is all set!
Whether you’ve never taught an online class before or if you’ve been an educator for years, if you’ve ever thought about launching your own online course or brushing up on your teaching skills to bring extra pizzazz to your classroom this book is for you.
I’ve packed it with tips, advice, exercises, humor, and lots of can-do motivation to inspire the class-creation and class-launching experiences from choosing a theme through syllabus creation through marketing and more! Also, it’ll make the perfect gift for the favorite educator friend in your life this holiday season.
To pre-order and learn more: Amazon Paperback and Amazon E-book .
Breaking out the Red Lipstick 😁
It’s a red-lipstick wearing kind of occasion. While this morning started out gray and sleeting and a little blah, this afternoon turned around. I finished Day 30 of NaNoWriMo and have managed to get a few pages into Draft 3.
A package arrived tonight, and my next book was inside. That holding the first tactile copy feeling: priceless! Dropping February 2022: stay tuned.
Insight into Developmental Editing, Part Two 📝☕
As an editor, it’s incredibly fulfilling to work with fellow writers as they sculpt their awesome novels and prepare for publication.
This year, I’ve had the complete joy to work with Ian Rogers of But I Also Have a Day Job and TRAM on his debut novel that drops in April 2022 (Vine Leaves Press). MFA Thesis Novel will leave you entertained, laughing, and thinking deeply about your own life’s path long after you’ve savored the final page.
Photo Courtesy of Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash.com
Wonder what it’s like to work with a developmental editor? Ponder no longer! Ian does a stellar job exploring what developmental editing entails, what it’s like to communicate about your vision for your book with a developmental editor, and how authors and editors can bond over shared goals on behalf of making fabulous books.
Here’s the second (and latest) post about Ian’s developmental editing experience: ta-da! Be sure to check out his first post about developmental editing from June .
Also, make sure to check back on Ian’s site for wonderful reflections and interviews with working writers and at Vine Leaves Press to reserve and order your copy of MFA Thesis Novel in early 2022 as well as to peruse and purchase the many amazing Vine Leaves selections available.
Here’s to writers making it happen and bringing meaningful literature into the world! 📚🌟