Tag: memoir

Posted on

Tips to Help You Write (Everything) Better

by Erica Francis

Writing is one of those professions or hobbies that can mean different things to different people. But regardless of the type of writing we do, there’s always room to improve.

Create The Right Environment

Every writer has a type of environment in which they work best. For some, this could be a busy coffee shop, while others might thrive in solitude. Most of us, however, tend to write from our homes. Make sure that your home puts you in the right position to keep your mind clear. A few things you can do to push negativity out of the air are to clean and keep your writing area as uncluttered as possible.

Identify Your Goals

You’ve likely heard of the SMART goal strategy before in terms of professional aspirations. Turn this to your writing as well, whether you write for a living or just for fun. Know what you want to get out of your time. This will help you strategize a plan on what to say, how to say it, and when it needs to be said.

Use Writing Tools

Surgeons need scalpels, construction workers need drills, teachers need books, and artists need canvases. The point is that for every endeavor, there are tools that make them easier and more enjoyable. Writers have a host of free and paid tools, including those that help you tweak your grammar, keep your projects organized, and let you jot down inspiration and information to save for later.

Quit Typing, And Start Dictating

If you find that you think faster than you type, consider ditching the keyboard in lieu of a headset. According to Philips SpeechLive, dictation is up to seven times faster than typing, meaning you can get more out of your head and into a document. This will make you more productive and, even better, less stressed since you don’t have to worry about forgetting something that never made it from your brain to your fingertips.

Understand Your Audience

No matter what kind of writing you do, you have an audience. Get to know them, and you’ll be able to write in a way that allows your message to come through loud and clear. Keep in mind that you can’t be all things to all people. If you’re a marketing copywriter, for example, your job is to be upbeat, positive, and persuasive. When you pen fanfiction, you must be creative, descriptive, and able to invoke emotions.

Take A Course

Still feeling stuck and working on a memoir? Take a course that helps you identify the beginning and end of your story as well as what your memoir needs and what it doesn’t. You’ll also have no trouble finding plenty of free and paid courses online that can help you build your grammar skills, learn how to manage time, or get organized.

Stop Overthinking

Overthinking isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world you can do… unless there’s too much in your head to put onto paper. US-based Cleveland Clinic explains that overthinking can leave you jumping from one thing to the next and envisioning all of the ways that you’re making the wrong decision. Go with your gut. The worst-case scenario is that you go back and edit when your mind is clear.

Every word you write matters. When you want to refine your skills and make yourself a better writer, start by clearing out your home/workspace, which will also help you clear your head. This, along with the other tips above, can help you be a better writer, no matter what you choose to write.

For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

Posted on

How I Mark My Writing Progress

by David Kubicek

Many writers measure their progress by how many words they write each day. I’m not one of them. The words I write today may be discarded tomorrow or cut in the second or third draft. For me, the  words that matter most are the ones that end up in my final draft.

The idea for my young adult dystopian novel Empath first came to me in 2011. I wrote 25,000 words, wasn’t happy with the direction of the story, and set it aside for a few years.

In 2016, shortly before the election, I took it up again. The day after the election, I set it aside and didn’t work on it for six months.  The novel was a speculative fiction story set against the backdrop of a totalitarian regime 200 years in the future–I feared that by the time it was finished and published, bookstores would shelve it in the “Contemporary” section.

But eventually I took it up once more. I tried to take it in a new direction, wrote some new scenes and discarded them. Finally I discarded everything and started over. I did this two or three more times. I cranked out a lot of words, which I discarded before even completing  one draft. In all, I deep-sixed over 90,000 words, more than enough for a complete novel.

One reason I kept starting over was that Kassidy, my main character, was too passive. She reacted to things that happened to her rather than striving for a goal and making things happen. The other reason was that Empath was too much like many other young adult dystopian novels: heroine is pissed off at the leaders of her society, heroine leads a band of rebels to overthrow the government, etc. Ho hum. Yawn.  I wanted something different.

Then in January of 2020, out of nowhere, “something different” dropped into my head. A complete idea. That has never happened to me in all the years I’ve been writing. It dropped into my head at 10 p.m. and kept me awake for two hours as my mind worked feverishly to iron out some details. Apparently, while I struggled through these early drafts, my subconscious mind–a frequent collaborator–had been hard at work, and it chose this moment to reveal to me the fruits of its labor.

But it hasn’t been easy sailing since then. There are lots of kinks I need to iron out as I work through the first draft. With a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work I expect to have a complete draft of Empath by June 2021. I won’t give any plot spoilers but will describe it only as a young adult dystopian time travel romance.

One thing I want to make clear is that in my novel, the instrument of our present day civilization’s near demise has always been a plague because a pandemic is cleaner than an atomic war–it kills people but leaves the architecture intact. It was a pandemic in 2011 when I conceived of the story, and it is a pandemic today as the novel finally nears completion.  It’s not, as they say, a story ripped from the headlines; my story was in progress years before the novel coronavirus made the scene.

One thing I can say, though, is that COVID-19 has allowed me to do some hands-on research about what it’s like to live during a pandemic. But I would have preferred to do my research in a library.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

Posted on

Voices From the Plains, Vol. III

by David Kubicek

Voices From The Plains, Vol. 3

Voices From The Plains, Volume 3, the Nebraska Writers Guild’s annual anthology of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–an annual publication from the Nebraska Writers Guild–was released earlier this month. The list price for the ebook is $3.99, the list price for the paperback is $16.99, and both versions are now available from Amazon.  Voices from the Plains, Volume III, features 48 authors–one of them with work under his/her real name and under a pen name.

There are:

  • Thirty-four poems
  • Three essays
  • Twenty-two short stories [including my own Twilight Zone-esque story, “The Last Bus”]
  • One nonfiction book excerpt
  • Five novel excerpts

All but two of the authors currently live in Nebraska.

One of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States, the Nebraska Writers Guild was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members. 

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

Posted on

Shaving off the Mustache

 

David Kubicek Caricature
Caricature by Paul Zanderholm

by David Kubicek

I don’t remember when I grew my mustache, but I remember when I shaved it off–Labor Day, 2000. I’d only had it a few years, but growing it in the first place had been my wife, Cheryl’s, idea. Well, she had suggested I grow a beard, but I’d tried that once and had called it quits after three weeks because of the itching. The stache was a compromise.

After a few years I got tired of the mustache and decided to shave it off. My son, Sean, had just turned five. Since he didn’t remember me with a completely hairless face, Cheryl thought it would be a good idea if he watched me shave so the sudden change wouldn’t freak him out.

So on Labor Day morning, I laid out my shaving cream and razor and called Sean into the bathroom. He stood beside me and watched as I lathered up and made a few swipes with the razor. Then I wiped my face clean and bent down to let him see.

“How does it look?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said.

Then he tilted his head to the left, then to the right, then back to the left.

Then he said:

“Now put it back.”

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.