Category: Writing

Where to Get Ideas for Your Story

by Ninagracia, posted in Writing, Writing Advice

Okay, I listened to what everyone was saying. I’ve been reading a lot, especially in the genre I want to write.  I also read anything I could get my hands to like catalogues in my mailbox and old local papers that were left in the shop’s windows. There are stories and countless advice on the internet too. I’ve learnt to keep a pen and papers handy in case I need them. 

After all these preparations, I started wondering what to write and where I should get those bits and pieces of ideas for my story. I was like a tradie equipped with tools but no place of work to go.

So, I went surfing. The “net” is very friendly and has so much to share. Some said I could get ideas just by simply listening in to people talk. Anywhere – in the bus, train, shopping centre, at the coffee shop, or even eavesdrop on people talking on their mobile phones. People speak too loudly while on their mobile phones. Don’t they irritate you sometimes?

I tried the train. It was easy and not very much people use the train after peak hours. After moving around seats and looking for the right spot, I finally found one near the window. A couple sitting behind me were talking to each other. Perfect! It was true, there were nuggets of ideas you could get from people like the words they say, or even what they were talking. So, I took my pen out and my notebook ready.

I pressed myself close to the back of my seat so I could hear them very well. They even whisper but I managed to pick some words, so I started jotting them down one by one.

For me to understand them very well, I closed my eyes, trying to listen very carefully on what they were saying. I wanted to capture every word, every pause, and even their breathing.

What I didn’t realise was, two young girls sat in front of me. They giggled and commented that I was probably so tired, I fell asleep writing notes. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. I want to hear everything they were saying about me.

They argued that I was either a teacher or a reporter, or if not, I am a train inspector. Gosh! Really? Then, they started to pick on my looks. They talked about my make-up. Funny, girls always look at the make-up first before anything else. (I wonder what boys look at first, hmm!)

There was total silence after that.

Suddenly, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder, and a tall guy in blue asked me which station I was getting off. Apparently, it was the last station. I looked around, and there was no one except me. Before I got off, he commented, that I was probably very tired, I fell asleep writing notes. Really? Did I? Has it been that long?

It was a long ride back home, but I still have my pen and notebook with me. This time, I was writing down everything I heard and everything that I could remember from those girls. There was some funny stuff, and I giggled too, especially how they argued about it. There were a few slang words that I did not understand, but I could check them out with my children.

I realised that I could find ideas for my book anywhere, even by just looking at myself in front of the mirror.

I could also cultivate story ideas from my spontaneous trip and experience at the train.

If we know where and how to gather information, we will never run out of materials to write.

Sometimes, hanging out with people, even any brief interaction to strangers can give us tons of ideas for our writing project.

Don’t forget too that good old newspapers we used to love to read. It still provide us buckets of information about the daily happenings and incidents in our community.

And lastly, check your favourite book. There maybe a chapter or passages that you like so much, and write down what made you love that story. Use it to come up with your own materials for your story.

My writing journey was not easy and was not hard either, but there were so much to learn and a few things to laugh about.

It wasn’t all hard work, but with a little bit of funny stuff on the side as well. All in all, dedication, tons of imaginations, and commitment kept me from doing what I love to do most.

I am not done yet, but I am learning so much.

So, till next time. I’ve got to catch the bus this time. Fingers crossed, I’ll try not to fall asleep again.

See ya!

The Number One Common Obstacle Most Writer Faces: Where’s the Pen and Paper?

by Ninagracia, posted in Writing, Writing Advice

Staring at your ceiling at night and trying to get some sleep is not an easy task.

Rest is like a regular job. It comes after your exhausting day when all the hard chores of running around are finally over (for that day) like cooking, cleaning, washing.

You take a rest or try to get some sleep, and if not, you stare at your ceiling trying to figure out how you are going to work out your characters in your book, not to mention what your story is going to be.

Then, bingo! Something popped into your head: some great storylines and excellent character descriptions. It was a great story as a matter of fact.

You extended your arm to your bedside table searching for a pen and paper. Where are those pens and paper when you needed it? There is always one hanging around here and there when you don’t need them. But, they seemed to have gone on an epic holiday now that you want them all.

Your irritations started to flare up. It’s crucial. You don’t want to lose those big words and story lines that kept on flowing out from the corner of your brain.

 It’s late, and you don’t want to turn the lights on and wake everybody up. So you try to memorise them one by one…repeatedly…repeatedly.

But how could you, when there is another human being sleeping in your bed making a horrible noise.

So, you start to focus on him and what his snore resembles to something. He sounds like a lawnmower, or a motorbike running out of petrol. Seriously! You began to panic. You need to write everything down; you’re starting to lose them.

What the heck, you thought. You bravely reached for the light and turned it on. And there it was, a pen that is almost half empty, and a few pieces of yellow sticky note pad in the drawer of your bedside table.

Just when you’re about to start writing, suddenly, you realised that you already forgot everything. You sat on the bed, figuring out what to write. You already have your pen and your paper, but this time you are no longer staring at the ceiling anymore, but on the blank yellow sticky note pad on your hand.

My brain or maybe yours too sometimes functions in mysterious ways. When I want it to work into full capacity, it seems lazy, sleepy, and uncooperative. Worst of all, it might have “gone away” for the day.

I want to believe that it has something against me. When it is active and alert, it doesn’t care where I am or what I am doing. It’s always when I am in an awkward place or awkward position that those big, bright ideas and imaginations will burst out of my head in full colour.

And there I am again going in through my pile of things in desperation for pen and paper.

Just imagine the difficulty when our brain started to showcase its full potential with an explosion of ideas for our book, like fireworks with so many things to write, and we want them all. The sad thing was, we can’t keep a pen and paper in the shower.

 Ha, ha! Don’t laugh. It could happen to you too!

“Back to Work Blues” and Writer’s Block

by Ninagracia, posted in Opinion Writing, Writing

It is the beginning of the working week for the year 2020. Some of us are probably still feeling tired and lazy.

Some are wrapped up with plans and seriously thinking that something positive could happen this year. Of course, it’s New Year – a new idea, new hope, and a new beginning.

We all want to have a fresh start. That is what the new year means for all of us. It marks a new beginning – to restart and to do things better.

The holiday season may be a welcome break for all of us, but to others, it is a bit of disruption to their daily routine.

The gap between Christmas and New Year is so small, only one week to be exact. Yet, it felt like it was a lengthy vacation.

We allowed ourselves to overindulge with all the things we would never do in our regular daily routines. We drank too much alcohol. We ate junk foods, lots of sweets, stayed up late at night, and the list could go on and on.

Then, we all must face reality. We must go back to work.  

Going back to work to continue what we left behind is a struggle. It is hard to go back to our desk that was once cluttered with notes and papers, and where all electronic devices never get turned off.

Somehow, we must return to our desk to continue what we left behind during the festive season.

Whatever we have on our plate this year, our writing should always have a spot in our busy calendar. Otherwise, it will never get done.

I could understand the feeling of being a little bit anxious, especially turning on that computer again and thinking about what to write.

We feel that we have lost our momentum in writing. No matter how much we shake our heads, nothing is coming out, not a word or a single idea.

It felt like we are facing a brick wall, and we could not see anything behind it.

We want to break that wall in front of us, so we could think again, but it seems harder and frustrating.

It is hard when you are still feeling nostalgic about your vacation and wishing it never ended.

It is hard too when all you could think of is to check your social media content for photos and messages from your friends and families.

We shared a good laugh and memorable moments with them. Reminiscing those times how we acted silly and funny, and it was perfectly okay with them. Wiping off that smile on our face was hard because that was the only time, we let ourselves lose and vulnerable.

And that should have been enough.

Instead, we couldn’t shake them off our heads. We yawned in front of that bright screen on our computer. Our heads are empty. That brick wall in front of us seems to get bigger and taller. We couldn’t see anything except flashbacks of the best Christmas break we had.

Our daily writing routine would slowly come back to us. Perhaps, we would have already thought of something better to make our working schedules more achievable.

To ease back to work would take a little bit of time. But, whatever you do, make sure that it doesn’t take you that long.

There is no excuse for why we couldn’t write. We had our breaks, our time out from the daily grinds in our life.

It’s time to go back to work.

If we continue to make excuses, we will never write again.

 

365 NEW Days, and the Counting Begins

by Ninagracia, posted in Opinion Writing, Writing

Perhaps, we are still feeling exhausted after those endless preparations for Christmas, then New Year has just begun.

Just imagine a tree shedding off its old leaves and flowers, day after day, until the last leaf fell on the ground on December 31. With great anticipation, only one minute before the clock strikes 12:00 a.m. we welcome the new day and the new year.

Just imagine too, how we watched that leaf fell on the ground. And the much-awaited desire to see new foliage comes out as soon as the clock ticks to signify a new day.

Just imagine too, what is playing in our heads while watching that new leaf comes out from that tree. We feel the excitement of what the foliage will look like this time and the flowers it will bring us, or perhaps fear of the unknown, for nothing is certain anymore in this world.

Whatever the new year has brought us, we have 365 NEW days to re-start and begin all over again. It is like peeling off old or dead skin to allow the new and fresh coat to grow. While to other people, the new year is to continue what they have started.

Some of us make resolutions every new year promising to accomplish a personal goal or do something to improve one’s life.

Other people set up unrealistic goals with a list of Dos and Don’ts. It seems that they are sincerely following their guidelines from morn till night and changes have been made for themselves.

However, slight mistakes are unavoidable. One of the resolutions is beginning to miss. . . two. . . then three . . . and so on until the whole list is omitted. Afterwards, they feel sorry for what happened. They even find them funny objects of amusement, yet everything is wasted – the time and the effort used.

On the other hand, some devotedly fulfilled their missions. Still, it then takes time and patience to be successful in undertaking these goals.

Listed resolutions are not needed unless we have the so-called faith in determining and knowing ourselves our capacity to understand right from wrong. In other words, “self-study” is necessary for better living.

No matter what we are aiming to achieve in our life for this new year, determination and commitment to our goals would take us there.

If we aim every day to change something small in ourselves for personal growth, perhaps it would be accessible and achievable.

Remember, there are only 24 hours in a day, a small chunk to consider compared to 365 days to battle with, tirelessly which seems no end.

Change something in yourself, whatever comes to your mind, one bite size at a time would make us feel better and more accomplished than you would ever imagine.

Aiming for a change? Try it piece by piece, one chunk at a time. They are easier to swallow and more achievable.

Before you knew it, you would be looking at the mirror to a new YOU, and that would be the fresh flower that would be coming out of that old tree.

Happy New Year.

The Struggles of Being a New Author (The First Time is Never Easy)

by Ninagracia, posted in Writing, Writing Advice

Read! Read! Read! Sounds familiar? I went through this at the early stage of my writing journey. It is good advice, especially for an emerging author like me.

I dread long readings. It makes me tired, sleepy and hungry. If there were ways, I would skip the “reading part” and go on writing. I have a long list of excuses not to read, but at the end of the day, I still need to open some books to read and learn. It is not mandatory or a requirement to become an author, but it would surely help us to be a good one.

And so, I read. I burnt both sides of the candle, as the saying goes, reading from early morning till the sun comes up. The books on my bed almost became my pillows, and trust me; it does hurt, you know. I flipped through the pages of some of the books written by those great and famous authors and read one or two pages to find out what made them stand out from the others. By morning, I still couldn’t make up my mind how to begin my story. I have a good story to tell. It was all there in my head but putting words to paper was a real challenge. All I want was to write and express my thoughts and put my imaginations into play, and then see what happens next.

Read! Read! Read! It was not so entertaining to hear this at the back of your head. It is good advice, but I couldn’t figure out where it fits into my writing dilemma. So, I reread more books. Occasionally, I made some excuses not to read. I borrowed at the library all kinds of books and read them all. As I said before, those books are not as good as my old pillows.

One thing though, writing became easy afterwards. I was moving forward fast and non-stop. Five hundred words glided smoothly, then came a thousand words. My first page was starting to fill up, even though I cheated a little bit by making my margins wider and double the line spacing. Then finally, I wrote my first two thousand words. Hurray! I thought it was a great accomplishment. The only downside to this was, I noticed that I write like them, and I began to sound like them too.

I hit a roadblock. I want to achieve all those required of me to write and produce an outstanding story. I doubted myself again. So, I read. I immersed myself reading and learning a little bit here, a few more there, and everything in between. I fleshed out every word and sentences I came across in the book. I dissected the whole story, chapter by chapter as if I was looking for something. It was a challenging mental activity. What I found was “nothing”, only a great story all written with pure intention straight from the heart of the author. They were well researched, and everything stamped mark with the author’s writing style, tone and voice.

I figured out that those books I read should only serve me as guidelines and not a template. All the rest should come from me-my style of writing, tone and voice. I wouldn’t say that I have already perfected my craft, but the journey of learning new things is so rewarding. Of course, writing and reading more often is beneficial to our career. It sharpens our skills and imaginations. I am still learning, and I know that there are so much more I need to learn before I become a better author. I always peek through those books to guide me.

I believe that commitment and persistence would take me one day to where I want to be. When I started my journey, I have so many excuses not to do things. I doubted myself and my abilities that I can do anything. But, those books that I read, and those authors that I barely knew, gave me reasons to stay focus and “just keep on writing”.

What about you guys. What excuses have you made?

Why Do Writers Write

by Ninagracia, posted in Behind the Scene, Writing

The wait is over, and I am thrilled that my new website is finally here. Putting together a platform such as this is not an easy task. It may look simple, but there was so much time involved to come up to its completion. This site is my new address, and for the next coming weeks and months, I will welcome new friends and perhaps talk about our journey as an emerging writer. We could share our experiences, which could be helpful to other writers who might be going through the same struggles.

Why do we write? Some of us would probably shrug our shoulders as a quiet response to this question. It is not because we don’t have an answer to it, but merely we were caught off guard.  But the truth is, we all have something to say to one another. Whether it be an issue about a particular subject matter, or an event, a place, about an individual, even our personal experiences, prompt us to share it to everyone we know. Some people say it out loud, while others choose to write them down. No matter what it is about, we always have reasons why we write.

Regardless of what method of writing we use—a letter, poetry, an essay, or even a novel—some of us write to share information, while others write to educate us, to teach us, and others to tell stories. Whatever is behind our reason for writing, we are all storytellers in our way, and we write it in our method, style, and pacing.

To some people who don’t understand our passion, they say writing is not a job that will put food on the table, pay your mortgage, and your bills. We write to pass the time, according to them. It is a hobby to make ourselves useful instead of wasting our precious time. It’s not a job that makes you get up in the morning and work from nine to five. In other words, it is just a whim for a reason.

But for writers like us, it is not about the monetary rewards that we could gain from it. We are lucky if we get to that level in our career. It is not a money-making profession, especially for new authors. To us, it is merely our intense desire to write, to inspire our readers, and perhaps to pursue a dream.

The truth is, writing is a hard job, tedious, overwhelming and secluded. No matter what everybody says, it is something that is and will always be close to our hearts.

It is our way of communicating our intentions and expressing our feelings. It is our road map to reach other people from all four corners of the world. We tap into their imaginations, their deepest desire, and sometimes we strike tender emotional chords.

We are “Escape Artists”. We use our pen to whisk them away to where we want them to go. Our paper is their vehicle to take them to the other part of the world that only we have been before.

Our readers escape through our imaginations. They feel what we want them to explore, and they see what we saw. We planned and interfered with the events to make their adventure more exciting, reckless, and impulsive. Sometimes, we manipulate the landscape, even the weather. To make the journey more challenging, we choose the characters surrounding the events. We make them fall in love or despise each other. We allow our readers to live in awe. They laughed and cried with us, and they got outraged too.

Then, when we reached the “End”, with one flick of our fingers, we switch them back to the real world to let our readers know that their journey is over. We leave our readers amazed and sometimes captivated. And if we hear applause or a deep breath or a sigh, then, our job is done.

When we write, we leave an imprint to our readers the journey they took with us. It will forever reside in their memories how they connect to nature, when the cool breeze of the ocean touched their skin, the smell of the roses in the garden, and how deafening that thunder in the sky. Then, they would still hear our voice even after they put their book down.

I guess this is why I write.