When JJ Jacobson convinced his mom to accept a surprise invitation to an all-expenses-paid weekend getaway at the illustrious Barclay Hotel, he never imagined that he’d find himself in the midst of a murder mystery. He thought he was in for a run-of-the-mill weekend ghost hunting at the most haunted spot in town, but when he arrives at the Barclay Hotel and his mother is blamed for the hotel owner’s death, he realizes his weekend is going to be anything but ordinary.
Now, with the help of his new friends, Penny and Emma, JJ has to track down a killer, clear his mother’s name, and maybe even meet a ghost or two along the way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Fleur Bradley
Fleur Bradley is passionate about two things: mysteries and getting kids to read, and she regularly speaks at librarian and educator conferences on reaching reluctant readers. Originally from the Netherlands, Fleur now lives in Colorado Springs with her husband and two daughters, and entirely too many cats. For more information on Fleur and her books, visit www.ftbradley.com, and on Twitter @FTBradleyAuthor.
Sweet Success is coordinated by Darby Karchut who is an award-winning author, dreamer, and compulsive dawn greeter. A proud native of New Mexico, she now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she runs in blizzards and bikes in lightning storms. Click here to submit your Sweet Success Story.
Or – How to love not knowing what the hell you’re doing.
By: Bowen Gillings
I am a huge fan of Pikes Peak Writers’s Write Drunk, Edit Sober improvisational writing events that occur on the second Wednesday of each month. Deb Courtney provides a grounding lesson at the outset that sets the theme, if you will, for the evening. Then a series of writing prompts are given out, each designed to be the opening line that drives you the writer forward for the next ten minute span to let you brain steer the train down whatever track opens up first.
When the timer goes off, that train hits the station whether you’re ready for it or not and then you’re off again, chugging down the tracks with a new thread to pull on led by a new prompt and, if you’re brave enough, allowed to take the wheel of you’re creative self all on its own until the clock dings and time is up. Then the whole crazy excursion starts again. Only the boundary of the clock following the final prompt halts your cross-brain zephyr. Then it’s upstairs for a final cocktail and a bit of sharing with your fellow writers.
What is Improv Writing?
Improvisational writing, that is writing based on the directive of a third party and limited by time to force creativity, is a wonderful, powerful, and inspirational tool all writers should make use of. Improv writing is fun, invigorating, and eye-opening. It is from one night at Write Drunk, Edit Sober where I wrote about four paragraphs that I then expanded into a short story which was published in Allegory. That short story provided the opening chapter for my first completed novel manuscript which won at the Zebulon Writing Contest and became a finalist at the Colorado Gold Rush Literary Awards. Without improv writing, I would not be able to call myself a published, award-winning author. Did I mention I love improv writing?
Four Benefits of Improv Writing
Allow me to share with you four benefits of improvisational writing and I think a) if you have never tried it, you will want to, or b) if you’ve dabble in it as a fun release, you’ll grasp it’s true potential to release the great writer in you.
Improv Writing Kills Your Internal Editor
By having a hard time limit, you are forced to drive the story forward. You can’t afford to go back and make your effort pretty, to select a better adjective, to tweak a phrase so that it rolls better of the tongue of the mind. You have to move the story along and that is key to getting through the first draft of any work. Improv writing allows you to ignore the blemishes of what is already on the page and just get the story that is swirling in your mind onto the paper or screen in front of you.
2. You Will Discover Your Voice
Voice is something each of us has. It is what makes us different from the next schmuck with an idea for a novel. Voice is the you in your writing. It is that special something that makes the story yours versus someone else’s tale of a non-binary werewolf looking for love while touring the Dutch tulip fields in 1973. Improv writing brings your voice forward like no other tool I know.
For the longest time, I was convinced that my writing destiny lay in epic fantasy. I loved, lived, and breathed that genre. I set out to write a trilogy set in my own magical world. Yet I struggled to move it forward. I started and fought and sputtered and started again. Then I dove into improv writing and found that, when pressed by the constraints of the medium, my brain never went to fantasy. I wrote contemporary stories dripping with wry humor, offbeat characters, and odd scenarios. My voice emerged of its own accord and it was not in any way the voice I saw as mine until it popped out and said, “Yo, douchebag. What took you so long?”
3. You Can Try Things Out
Let’s say you have a work in progress. You have a character you love or a scene you want to expand. Improv writing is an opportunity to flesh out that character, reimagine that scene, play around with the structured narrative of your current project. Maybe in your story your protagonist would never attack an innocent. But, in the freeing realm of improv, a writing prompt may just let you experience what your character would do or how they would react to doing just that, or sitting by while that happened, or maybe they shoplifted a Snickers. I don’t know, but you get the point. Improv lets you play with aspects of characters and events that you won’t reveal in your story, but will add to your understanding of that character’s depth, that scene’s importance, and what the consequences would be to your fictional world if you changed just a tiny aspect of your work.
4. Exposition Go Bye-Bye
Okay, we have all read or been guilty of writing the hated info dump opening. These are the “here’s how my world works” first five pages that agents and editors stop reading after paragraph one. Improv writing forces you to ditch exposition. There’s no time for backstory and world building on the page when you only have ten minutes to vomit out an opening narrative. This is a good thing! You quickly realize that, no matter the genre, readers don’t need or want a lengthy setup of the world in which the story takes place or the traumatic history of the main character. That info can come later, at the time and place the reader and the character need that knowledge revealed. Your story features complicated social norms? Improv writing forces you to show them to us through interactions with your characters, not by telling the reader how things work before starting us along the path of the story.
Improv writing is like a trip to the gym for your creative muscles. It hits your weak spots. It lets you flex your strengths. It leaves you tired but energized and eager for more. I challenge you to tackle an improv writing event at you earliest opportunity and experience how your writing will metamorphose. Pikes Peak Writers offers improvisational writing every second Wednesday. Check out Write Drunk, Edit Sober on pikespeakwriters.com for details.
Bowen Gillings is an award-winning author writing to appease the story demons in his head. A former president of Pikes Peak Writers, he currently hosts Open Critique and Writing with a View each month (both on COVID-induced hiatus). He has been featured in Allegory e-zine, Voices and Views and Rocky Mountain Writers podcasts, Ghosts of Downtown, Writing is Art, and the Writing from the Peak blog. He holds a Master of Education in Adult Education and is a travel enthusiast, nature lover, and closeted RPG nerd. He enjoys cooking big meals for family and friends, hiking wooded mountain trails, and seeking Zen through mixed martial arts. Born in Wisconsin, he grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, matriculated in Minnesota, and then bounced around Europe with the Army. He’s lived on both coasts, danced on the Great Wall of China, and driven a Volvo from Alaska to Louisiana before settling in Colorado with his wife and daughter. Check out his website and look for his latest work in the anthology from Pikes Peak Writers due out in 2021.
Congratulations to Ken Barrett on the recent release of DESTINATION, the final book in his five-novel speculative evolution series EXTINCTION.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Barrett explains that “the inspiration for the books came from reading Arthur C. Clarke’s CHILDHOOD’S END and Isaac Asimov’s I, ROBOT when I was a child. As of now, we are not in our final form; our personalities and consciousness grow with every new experience, and our bodies adapt to our changing environment and activities. We will inevitably become something more than we are currently, but what will that be?” For the author’s take on this question, pick up a copy through Amazon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ken Barrett grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as a Design Engineer for over thirty years in Silicon Valley. He is a lifelong biker and an accomplished martial artist with advanced black-belt degrees in Tae Kwon Do, Chinese Kenpo, Hapkido, and Shotokan. He is retired and living in Colorado. Follow the author on Facebook and visit the author’s webpage.
Sweet Success is coordinated by Darby Karchut who is an award-winning author, dreamer, and compulsive dawn greeter. A proud native of New Mexico, she now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she runs in blizzards and bikes in lightning storms. Click here to submit your Sweet Success Story.
When you write, you’re likely to be throwing a lot of obstacles in the paths of your characters. You’ll be giving them skills to solve their problems. Whether or not your readers will believe what they’re reading depends, to a great deal, on proper foreshadowing. Without proper foreshadowing, what you’ve got is a deus ex machina. A magical event that appears, implausibly, out of nowhere.
Prepare the Reader
Johnny Carson said, “If they buy the premise, they’ll buy the bit.” So, you have to sell the premise early on. You can’t stop to explain a skill set at the height of the action. You have to show the character using those skills (or fears) early on, in a ‘normal’ setting.
Think about Raiders of the Lost Ark. If the movie had opened with Indy in the classroom, would viewers have “bought” that he was really capable of everything he’d have to do in the movie? No, but by showing him in the field in a life-and-death situation first, we’ll accept that he’s a lot more than a mild mannered college professor.
And, you have to be a bit of a magician. Think sleight-of-hand, although in this case, it’s more like “sleight-of-words.” No waving red flags. If readers stop to say, “Oh, that’s going to be important; I’d better remember it,” you’ve pulled them out of the story.
Hide Your Clues
Show the skill or event early on, in a different context. These Setup Scenes can occur throughout the book, and will foreshadow things to come.
An example from my book, When Danger Calls. Ryan, the hero, is in the midst of emotional turmoil. He’d confronted his father about removing all traces of Ryan’s mother after she died, as if his father didn’t care. Now, in this scene, his father hands him a box of mementos from his childhood:
Ryan leafed through the snapshots while he waited for the earth to start revolving again. He knew which one he wanted as soon as he saw it. He remembered the day it had been taken, right after he’d won third prize at the fair with Dynamite, his pony. He’d been so sure he’d get the blue ribbon and hadn’t wanted to pose for the family picture his grandfather insisted on taking. He was eight, Josh was eleven, and Lindy was barely out of toddlerhood, holding a wand of cotton candy. He saw the look in his mother’s eyes, as she looked at him, not the ribbon, not the camera. So proud, she’d made him feel like he’d won first prize after all.
The reader sees this as a scene showing Ryan’s emotional history and relationship with his mother. But later, when Ryan is stuck with a couple of kids, and he braids their dolls’ hair, readers should accept it. Here’s that bit:
“Mr. Ryan knows how to braid hair,” Molly said. She twirled around, revealing her now-braided ponytail, neatly adorned with a blue ribbon. “He did our ponytails, and our Barbies’, too.”
Frankie peered above their heads where Ryan stood behind them, his face marked by a grin more sheepish than Cheshire.
“He gave mine two braids,” Susie said, handing her doll to Frankie.
Frankie made a show of scrutinizing all four coiffures. “Everyone looks beautiful.” To Ryan, she said, “Where did you pick that up?”
He shrugged.
Molly chimed in. “On real horses. He used to braid their hair. For shows.”
Frankie smiled at Ryan, then got up and hugged the girls. “Well, that makes sense. Horses have real ponytails, don’t they?” She flipped their braids. “How about I fix you some sandwiches, and then Ryan and I need to talk.”
Stopping for Ryan to go back and explain about how he learned the skill would stop the action, even in a ‘quiet’ scene like this one.
The above example should show how even a “mundane” scene can be helped with subtle foreshadowing. When you’re writing, ask yourself if the details in the scene you’re writing are going to show up again, regardless of their significance. If the answer is “no” then you probably don’t need the details. Readers don’t want to waste time remembering things that won’t show up again.
In Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow, I’m impressed by how he uses every detail. When a fellow passenger rambles on about the different kinds of subway cars in New York, it’s not idle conversation. That tidbit shows up front and center later on. And even the little things, that might not be plot points, such as the origin of the use of “Hello” to answer the phone will appear, letting the reader know that the character was paying attention, too.
Is your character going to have to survive in the wilderness? We need to know he was always going camping as a child. Do you need to show a scene of him camping? Absolutely not. A mention of it in a discussion with another character, preferably mixed in with a lot of other stuff sets the stage but doesn’t shout.
Don’t Wait Until the End
Maybe you’re trying to reveal a clue that will be important later on. This is especially true in mysteries, where it’s unfair to spring things on the readers at the conclusion when you’re wrapping things up. But maybe your character is packing or unpacking a suitcase or purse. Your clue can be one of many objects you show the readers. And even better if the unpacking is done while you’re showing something else about the character. Perhaps your main plot point is that he is angry or upset, and he’s being haphazard about the way he takes things out or throws them in. Or maybe another character is watching, noticing his emotional state more than the actual objects.
As for fears – we know Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes at the very beginning of the movie. So we can fear along with him when he looks into that snake pit later. (And because of that opening scene, we know to expect something with snakes, which adds to the tension.)
Keep it Believable
So, let’s say the hero and heroine are hiding and the villains are closing in. The hero is injured. He hands the heroine his gun and asks her if she can shoot. She says, “Of course. I’m a crack shot,” and proceeds to blow the villains away (or worse, has never handled a gun before, but still takes out the bad guys, never missing a shot). Not only that, but she is an expert in first aid and manages to do what’s necessary to save the hero’s life. Plus, she’s an expert trapper and can snare whatever creatures are out there. Or, maybe she has no trouble catching fish. And she can create a gourmet meal out of what she catches. All without disturbing her manicure or coiffure.
She’s the heroine who can fill in for a missing musician, be it a rock band or a symphony orchestra. And she can sing like the proverbial angel.
(I’d like to say I’m exaggerating, but not by much.)
Believable? Not if this is the first time you’ve seen these traits. But what if, earlier in the book, the heroine is dusting off her shooting trophies, thinking about how she misses those days. Or she’s cleaning up after a fishing trip. Or she’s doing a solo in her church choir. Maybe she has to move her rock climbing gear out of her closet to make room for her cookbooks. You don’t want to dump an entire scene whose only purpose is to show a skill she’ll need later. Keep it subtle, but get it in there.
When you’re writing, it’s important to know what skills your characters need to possess. You might not know when you start the book, but if you’re writing a scene where one of these skills will move the story forward, and there’s no other logical way to deal with the plot, then you owe it to your readers to back up and layer in the requisite foreshadowing.
Before James Bond pulls off his miracles, we’ve seen Q show him the gadgets that will save his life. We know MacGyver has a strong background in science, so he’s got the theory and knowledge to pull off his escapes.
So when you give your characters jobs, hobbies, or put them in precarious situations, don’t forget to look at all the skills they need. Can they visualize what an empty space could look like? I can’t—that’s not in my skill set. Are they able to look at a blueprint and know exactly how many bricks to order, or gallons of paint it’ll take to cover the walls? Know those ‘sub-skills’ and work them into scenes. Those basic real-life skills your characters have can be used to foreshadow the kinds of things they’ll be called upon to do later in the book.
Terry Odell is the author of over thirty novels, novellas, and short stories. She writes both mysteries and romantic suspense, but calls them all “Mysteries With Relationships.” Terry’s books have won awards including the Silver Falchion, the International Digital Awards, and the HOLT Medallion. A Los Angeles native, she moved to Florida for far too long, and is now enjoying life in the Colorado Rockies. Find her at https://terryodell.com Twitter: @authorterryo Facebook: AuthorTerryOdell
It is finally happening! The day we have all (at least most of us) have been looking forward to – the end of 2020. Even though it has been a tumultuous year in many ways, it has also been a year to celebrate. Faced with the challenge of not being able to meet readers face to face, many, many authors launched books, held readings, and virtually held launch parties throughout 2020. If you are curious to see all of Pikes Peak Writers’ successes, head over to Sweet Success on our website.
This past year also brought you over 50 articles from fellow PPW members covering subjects ranging from marketing and social media, to inspiration and every other aspect of writing. Writing from the Peak is chock-full of everything you need to write and stay inspired.
Most important of all?
YOU!!
Thank you for your support throughout 2020. Everyone here at Writing from the Peak wish you and your families, friends, and loved ones, the best of this holiday season, and may 2021 be the brightest year for all of you.
Esteemed past, present, and potential 2021 PPW Conference Attendees –
As you know, we regretfully had to cancel our 2020 in-person conference due to COVID concerns. Unfortunately, as we approach the end of 2020 there are still safety concerns over large public gatherings. While our 2021 conference is ~5 months away–scheduled for late April 2021–it takes our PPWC volunteers ~12 months to put a conference together. With that thought in mind, and with the uncertainty of what spring 2021 holds for all of us, Pikes Peak Writers has decided to host a virtual conference in 2021 with the hope and plan to come back as a hybrid conference in 2022.
More to come about registration, which will open 15 January 2021. Click here for more information.
All 2020 conference registrants who rolled over their conference registration should have been contacted about available options and refunds. If you missed this email, please contact registrar@pikespeakwriters.com and Karen will take care of you.
We appreciate your patience as we figure out how we can best serve our community while keeping our health and safety in mind, and hope you will join us on this exciting new virtual adventure.
Click here for conference updates as they become available.
In memorial to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, Patricia Walkow is honored to announce the October 2020 release NEW MEXICO REMEMBERS 9/11. Patricia Walkow is the editor and curator of this collection of stories and poems.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
This anthology captures the 9/11/2001 experiences of New Mexico writers. Some witnessed the event.
The talented contributors to NEW MEXICO REMEMBERS 9/11 offer enlightening, sometimes heart-wrenching prose, thoughtful analysis, and evocative poetry. What did they see? Do? How have they coped? What did they tell their children? How did they get home? Who got angry? Who retreated into themselves?
Readers of these stories and poems will understand New Mexico may have been physically far from the devastation, but its heart was just next door. Copies of the anthology may be purchase through Artemesia Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and indie booksellers. For more information about the book and the contributors, visit the book’s Facebook page
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Patricia Walkow is an award-winning author and editor. She is a member of Pikes Peak Writers, the Corrales Writing Group, SouthWest Writers, New Mexico Press Women, Military Writers Society of America, and The National Federation of Press Women. A former Fortune 200 systems manager, Ms. Walkow is also editor emeritus of Corrales MainStreet News. Her editing has been honored by both New Mexico Press Women and the National Federation of Press Women. Her writing has won awards at the state, national, and international levels for full-length books, short stories, and essays; her work appears in over a dozen anthologies. She lives in Corrales, New Mexico with her husband, cats, and one very spoiled dog. Visit her website to learn more.
Sweet Success is coordinated by Darby Karchut who is an award-winning author, dreamer, and compulsive dawn greeter. A proud native of New Mexico, she now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she runs in blizzards and bikes in lightning storms. Click here to submit your Sweet Success Story.
We’ve covered a lot of ground so far as we discover the steps and craft elements needed to write a novel. However, we mustn’t relax now as we arrive at an important place in our book—writing a successful ending.
Quick Review
As a quick review, based on the Three-Act structure for a novel, your first act, or the opening/ hook/introduction, which comprises less than 25% of your story length, introduced your characters, setting, the problem, the lie, and the strengths and weaknesses of your hero and your villain.
Then the second act, or the middle of the story, which comprises the bulk of the book, the next 75% to 90% of the story, placed your characters into difficult situations, building in intensity, forcing them to make harder and harder decisions. You also introduced more characters and story lines, or subplots, in this part of your story.
And now you’ve arrived at the third act, where you’ll wrap up the plot lines, the character arcs, provide a satisfactory outcome (however that’s defined for the genre), and, if it’s a series, prepare the way for the next book. This third act should take up 15% to 25% of the book, but less is usually better.
One thing to remember about the three-act structure is that the first act will enable the reader to decide if they want to keep reading; the second act keeps them interested in the story and the character arc; but the third act will sell your next book. Resolving all the plot lines and questions creates a satisfying ending that gives the reader confidence that your next book will also be worth reading.
The Big Lie
What keeps readers reading is the Big Lie, what your character believes about themselves that wounds them so deeply and makes them question themselves and make poor choices, brings tension and conflict into their arc and the story. Alluding to the Big Lie in the first act, bringing it to the forefront and having it cause all kinds of problems in the second, naturally leads to the realization of the lie and the desire to overcome that belief by taking heroic measures in the final act. These actions should be based on what we already know about the character, which you would have told us previously, including any special abilities or talents. Don’t simply spring this on your reader in the final act.
Readers want your hero and heroine to confront the Big Lie and overcome it, but the process should elevate the stakes more than ever in the final act. Their final struggle is the Climax, which should take place in the final 5% to 10% of the story, where they have to make the toughest decisions and embark on the most dangerous journey to succeed. This victory isn’t all about external action; it should also include internal conflict. And it will solidify the story’s theme.
Regardless of the genre, this confrontation and victory must happen, or the reader won’t be satisfied with the outcome. They have been rooting for your hero and heroine to change, to meet the obstacle and overcome it, and to come out better on the other side for having done so.
Loose Ends
After the Climax, now is the time to tie up the loose ends. Make sure your hero and heroine have met their story goal, which might have changed from the beginning. If there were situations where the hero or heroine made a poor choice during their quest, now is the time to right those wrongs.
Once that is done, introduce your hero or heroine’s new normal, which should be a juxtaposition of where the story began. Show that they are different, they act different, and they’ll make different and better choices going forward.
Cover Your Bases
Here’s a list to double-check your ending to ensure you have covered all the bases:
Don’t cheat – grow the ending from the seeds you planted along the way, and don’t rely on coincidence.
Use callbacks and motifs – have a character repeat or restate something said earlier to tie the end to the beginning; thread a motif through the story, using the motif in a new and different way because of the changes in the character.
Highlight the theme – while you should have alluded to the story’s theme throughout, now is the time to make that final point
Wrap up any loose ends – keep a list throughout your writing of all the issues, topics raised, plot lines, and questions, and make sure you have resolved those. If you’re writing a series, you don’t have to solve every problem or resolve every issue, but at least give the reader the promise you’ll address it again soon.
Don’t drag out the ending – the goal of the ending is to be unique, succinct, and satisfying. If you’re finding the ending, which should be less than 5% of the book, is long and convoluted, perhaps you have too much going on in the book. Cut some plot lines and save them for the sequel or another book.
The Final Act
One you enter the final act, no new characters and no new situations should be introduced unless you foreshadowed them earlier. Your hero and heroine should serve as the primary catalysts—they drive the climax, not simply respond to it. The hero and heroine should grow and change internally, learning from their past decisions, and emerging as a better person.
You want to emotionally vest the reader in the story right from the beginning so they feel the ending through the heroism of your characters. To do that, plan the ending every bit as carefully as you’ve planned the rest of the book. Even if you’re not an outliner, make sure you’ve included all elements of a successful ending to ensure the reader wants to buy your next book. Folks love characters and settings, but it’s really the ending that they remember best. And that’s true whether they consider it a good or a bad ending. You want them to remember your book favorably.
Donna Schlachter lives in Denver with her husband Patrick. As a hybrid author, she writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, devotional books, and books on the writing craft. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Writers on the Rock, Sisters In Crime, Pikes Peak Writers, Capital Christian Writers Fellowship, and Christian Authors Network; facilitates a critique group; and teaches writing classes online and in person. Donna also ghostwrites, edits, and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, and travels extensively for both. Donna is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.
More happy news for Karla M. Jay. IT HAPPENED IN SILENCE, her second historical fiction set in rural Georgia in 1921, has recently released.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Mute since birth, fifteen-year-old Willow Stewart has one task to complete—to leave her Appalachian homestead and find a traveling preacher and her brother, Briar. When a peddler kidnaps her, she escapes only to face an unjust arrest and penal servitude. It’s Georgia 1921. The laws are not on her side. Or her brother’s.
Soon Willow and Briar become ensnared in a world of cruel secrets, savage truths, deceitful practices, and desperate predicaments. This is a powerful tale of family, a celebration of decency, and the heartbreak of society’s injustices then that rings true today.
Set in a world where women of the KKK betray their neighbors, horrors of unscrupulous foundling homes come to light, and buried mysteries are not all that hidden. The book may be purchased through Amazon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karla M. Jay lives in Salt Lake City. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, gardening, playing with her dog, or traveling to new places to try to find a story that has never been told. Follow her on Facebook and learn more about her books on Goodreads.
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Sweet Success is coordinated by Darby Karchut who is an award-winning author, dreamer, and compulsive dawn greeter. A proud native of New Mexico, she now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she runs in blizzards and bikes in lightning storms. Click here to submit your Sweet Success Story.
The holidays are coming up quick and gift giving is at the heart of the holidays. Have you thought about what to give that writer in your life? Here are just a few ideas that any writer I think would love (I know I would!).
Never Enough Notebooks
As a writer, I’m always jotting down ideas whenever something strikes me, so how about some nice notebooks in different sizes? I know in this age of smart phones, notebooks are very low-tech, but I know of some writers who prefer to write their story ideas—or even first drafts—down on paper. Small notebooks can fit into a purse or back pocket, and bigger ones are nice to write out your scenes.
Writing Instruments
They will need something to write with in their notebook, so why not some nice pens? You can find out which pen your writer prefers and buy a few packs of them. Especially if they do book signings, having a pen they like will make life easy for them knowing they have several pens on hand.
Subscriptions
How about a subscription to a writers magazine? There are so many to choose from—Writer’s Digest, Poets & Writers, The Writer, and Writer’s Forum are just a few magazines geared toward the craft of writing. Each has their own format they follow, whether it’s articles on the craft, where to submit your work, or info on conferences and competitions. Most of these are available online or on Kindle as well as a printed copy, so find out what your writer prefers.
Refreshments for the Soul
Coffee or tea, and a cute mug to go with it. We writers need to keep our brains awake and the creative juices flowing, so we need that caffeine. Again, find out their caffeinated beverage of choice and buy a box or three for them. Or if they just have to have their Starbucks coffee, buy them a gift card so they can get their venti Pike Place with cream and nine sugars.
Send them to a Writing Conference
Maybe you could pay part of their way to a writers conference. A little pricier than the other suggestions, but the writer in your life will love you for it if you can manage it. They are a great way for a writer to learn about many aspects of the business, from writing to editing to marketing.
Buying a gift for the writer in your life doesn’t have to be difficult. Most of us are happy with anything, but having a little thought put into the gift-buying will bring a smile to their face. Happy shopping!
Margena Adams Holmes has been writing ever since she can remember, writing her first poem in 1st grade. At her day job, when she’s not kicking young kids out of R-rated movies, she’s sweeping up spilled popcorn from the hallways and aisles (she’s not your mother, though, so please take your trash out). Her days off consist of writing science fiction, short stories, and more movie theater shenanigans. Reading is a close second to writing, and she normally has her nose buried in a book. Her publications are available through her author page. Contact Margena via email: jedi_anegram@hotmail.com.
