Writing Inspiration

    I have a Pinterest board where I pin all sorts of Writing ideas, inspiration, quotes, and aids.  I reference it on a daily basis for various reasons.  Sometimes I just need a quote to encourage me to keep doing what I'm doing.  Other times I need help with description, or body language, or even a word that just won't come.  For anyone interested in some inspiration or writing aids, here is a link to my Pinterest board http://www.pinterest.com/alybworm/a-writers-life-for-me/ .  Everything I am posting today has come from various places on my Pinterest board.

  This quote was the inspiration for my creating my blog and enforcing rules upon myself to keep my mind focused on my writing.

  This pretty much captures how I feel about writing.  My writing process consists of a rough rough handwritten draft just to help me organize my thoughts and figure out wording that I like, then I start to type out what I wrote by hand to reword and reconfigure everything.  Everything becomes solidified when I do that, and it wouldn't happen without a rough rough rough draft.

  This reminds me of a quote I heard from somewhere that I didn't keep track of.  "A pen in hand shows God you are ready to be inspired".  What that means to me is that you have to keep forging ahead and inspiration will eventually strike, just never when you expect it, and only when you are working hard enough to deserve it.

  This chart is incredibly helpful.  It's an emotion chart.  You start in the center and move outward to find the most descriptive word that encompasses the emotion your character is feeling.  I've found it to be incredibly helpful when you can't figure out exactly what word to use.

  Going along with the last chart, once you figure out which emotion your character is feeling, you have to figure out the best way to show, not tell, the emotion.  This is a cheat sheet that will boost description for your character's body language to help you show how your character is feeling, rather than tell the reader their emotion.

  Now I'm moving more into specific wording.  I always struggle with finding words that I haven't already used a hundred times so that my reader doesn't get bored, and to keep me from using cliché phrases.  Here are two charts with alternate, more descriptive words to keep your audience interested.

  Said is one of the most used words in writing novels.  One of a writer's hardest jobs is avoiding the word "said".  This is a chart sorted by tone to assist in finding a better, more specific word.

  "Very" is another word that is overused.  I'm not completely against using the word "very", but using it too frequently can destroy your word flow, especially when there is a better word to use.

  This chart has many options for many words.  It's a classroom poster for younger ages, but I find it helpful when aiming toward young adults.

   These are words that I find fantastic and I think need to be used more often, so I aim to use as many as I can in my writing.

  This chart is important to me at this time because when I created Character Sketches for both of my main characters, I neglected one important thing.  I completely forgot about their fears.  I am currently working on finding fears that best fit their personalities, and I will update my Writer's Sketchbook 2 post with their fears when I can pin down what they are afraid of.  This is my reference sheet that I have found to spark lots of ideas.

 That's all for now.  I'm working on the next chapter now and hopefully it should be posted soon!  Thanks for reading!

~Alyson