NaNoWriMo - Day Eight

It's been a hard eight days of writing. I haven't done much. Only hit 13,500 words last night. I believe if I can believe in myself I can write this story and give it good justice. I picked this type of story due to some news hitting my area. Bullying is what my story is about. I was bullied as a child and teenager. Still got bullied by close family and friends. I felt the world needs to do something about bullying in schools. Even in Catholic and Christian schools you get bullied in. There is many ways of getting bullied.

I have a close friend, who's daughter was bullied not only in school but on media too. This means Emails, Media outlets like MySpace, Tumbler, Twitter, Facebook and others like these. Plus, through text messages and kids leaving messages in your school locker. Some teachers ignore it and let it carry on. Others will stop it. You can get bullied by your teachers as well as peers. You have to watch who you talk to everywhere. Bullies hide is all forms in this world.

I'm a Christian and Catholic. I believe even at church you can be bullied and ignored. You should try and look out for these sorts of people. Don't let them get at you. If you need to talk to anyone, tell your parents first, then a teacher you can trust. If you get bullied online, distance yourself from that source. You need to first protect yourself, then you can help others in your same situation.

REMEMBER: God is there for you. Ask for his help. Ask for him to enter your heart and soul. He will send his Holy Spirit and Jesus to help you. Believe in them and you can be safe almost anywhere. He is there for you all.

Cliches

These are 12 of the most annoying clichés in writing. Clichés alienate your audience. Avoid them if you can. 

1. Avoid it like the plague
2. Dead as a door nail
3. Take the tiger by the tail
4. Low hanging fruit
5. If only walls could talk
6. The pot calling the kettle black
7. Think outside the box
8. Thick as thieves
9. But at the end of the day
10. Plenty of fish in the sea
11. Every dog has its day
12. Like a kid in a candy store

Which cliché annoys you more than these?

Andrew Motion: Ten Techniques to Spark the Writing

10 Techniques to Spark the Writing

1. Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.
2. Think with your senses as well as your brain.
3. Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.
4. Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.
5. Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.
6. Bear in mind Wilde’s dictum that “only mediocrities develop”— and challenge it.
7. Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.
8. Think big and stay particular.
9. Write for tomorrow, not for today.
10. Work hard.

Michael Morecock 10 Tips for Good Storytelling

1.My first rule was given to me by T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.

2.Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.

3.Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.

4.If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction.

5.Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development.

6.Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.

7.For a good melodrama study the famous “Lester Dent master plot formula” which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.

8.If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.

9.Carrot and stick—have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).

10.Ignore all proferred rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say.

Miscellaneous Advice and Collected Words of Wisdom

• Don't worry about selling the story you wrote. Worry about writing a story that will sell itself.
• Just because someone says he knows something doesn't mean he does. The world's full of "writers" and "agents" and "editors" who have no clue what they're doing.
• Yog's Rule: Money flows toward the writer. Any business that wants the writer to put up money should be avoided. A business that takes a cut of money on its way to the writer, such as an agent taking a commission, is acceptable, but the direction of flow should always be toward you, never away.
• It's not an editor's job to be fair to writers. It's an editor's job to make money for his publisher by acquiring and packaging books people want to read. Writing professionally is not a contest or a competition or a sweepstakes; it's a business, and you're on the selling end in a buyer's market. Expect editors to treat you not like a beloved student, but like a salesman who's interrupting them -- you'd better have a product that'll make the interruption worthwhile, and the manners to convince them to look at it.
• "I'm often asked if writing classes are any help, and my immediate and enthusiastic answer is always, Yes! Writing classes are wonderful for the writers who teach them and can't make ends meet without that supplementary income. They are also good places for unattached people to meet, talk about books and movies, have a few drinks and possibly hook up. But teach you to write? No. A writing class will not teach you to write."
                      --Stephen King, "The Writing life," Washington Post Book World, October 1, 2006
• "Like it or not, there is a culture of unpublished writers. It includes its own mythology (sending yourself your own ms by registered mail to somehow secure magical protection from plagiarism and copyright infringement), superstitions (paperclip or not?), hagiography and so on. In that culture it's a fairly widespread belief that there is no real communication between an editor and an unknown writer."
                      -- Fred Welden, SFF-Net, Feb. 1999If you are an unpublished writer, it's easy to be drawn into the culture Fred describes. It's easy to accept its mythology. You'll find dozens of people who believe it all implicitly.
  Don't.
  Some of that mythology is useful information; much of it is pernicious nonsense and superstition that will only get in your way.
  
• There's a whole industry out there advising beginning writers, feeding off the culture mentioned above. Some of it is honest and helpful; some isn't. Let me point you toward a few resources and warn you away from a few others:
• SFWA's Webpage has a lot of good advice, regardless of what genre you're writing in -- the same basics apply.
• There are a couple of bits worth reading at HWA's site, too.
• The small-press magazine Speculations is usually useful
• The SFWA Bulletin can be trusted.
• Writer's Digest, alas, is not trustworthy -- I think they're basically well-intentioned, but much of their income comes from paid ads from people who prey on unsuspecting would-be writers, so they'll sometimes give advice that's designed not so much to help beginners as to keep their advertisers in business.
• If you have the sort of personality that can handle the rough-and-tumble of Usenet newsgroups, rec.arts.sf.composition is aimed at advising beginning writers in the SF/fantasy field, and can be useful. Misc.writing, alas, I cannot recommend; the louder voices have triumphed over the more knowledgeable there.

This post came from a website.Below is a link to said website. I've been writing for 6 yrs on and off. I have finished my first book, which is due to be published in Jan 2011. Remember I have been researching a lot about writing and what I could learn from others.