Tips For Successful Writing as A Pantser

  Some people are organized, some people aren't, and I'm so unorganized I don't actually know where this sentence was supposed to be going. How can someone that disorganized write a 100,000-word story, have it all make sense, and be relevant?
  That, fellow humans, is what being a pantser is about. (That word really annoys me for some reason, who knows why, but from here on out that word will be replaced by disorganized writers.)  However, most writing tips out there are meant for the organized writers, especially the posts dedicated to outlining! So this is all I've got on the subject of disorganized writing...

1. Immerse Yourself

  This should just be a general writing tip, but especially for those of us who don't make a clear plan... Immerse yourself in the story, the characters, the setting. Make it like your new home. You know how everything works, what your characters will and won't do, it's a fully developed world and people living in it. This way, if you get stuck, you won't have to go through all the notes to see if your idea will work. And you won't have characters that personality-shift to fit what "needs" to happen for the story to move forward. You basically have everything you need to make sure everything can happen smoothly without having some major revisions in the editing stage. (Trust me, having rewrite half of a main character's scenes because they changed drastically for no good reason part-way through the book is the worst kind of editing...) 

  Not to mention this is enjoyable, at least for me! I love feeling that I know my characters so well that they're like a friend. I can look up at the full moon and my first thought is, "Wow, Jamie would love to see this!" or reading a funny quote and thinking "That sounds like something Bree would say!" As us writers tend to be the slightest bit reclusive and antisocial, it's nice to have someone you know well, even if they don't really exist... 

2. Have These Clearly In Your Mind... 

  I'm not going to be one of those people who tell you to begin with the end in mind, or know where your story is going, or any of that really amazing advice that I ignore on a daily basis... But I will tell you one thing: Know what each of your characters wants. 

  It's okay to not know how the story will end, but you need to know what motivates each character. What they're aiming for. That will keep them moving towards a goal, which, whether it gets completed or not, is crucial to having a good story. Knowing the goal will keep your characters on track, give you a general idea of where you should be going, and just give you some overall consistency. 

  This should be a thing to keep in mind for every character who is important to the story: the love interest, any family that keeps popping up, bad guys, everyone. Because if your main character really wants to be with the love interest, who really wants to go to college in another country, it's going to seem pretty unrealistic if the L.I. ditches their plans at the end of the book and doesn't seem bothered in the slightest. 

3. Edit Different

  There's a pretty clear cut way of editing, give or take a few details. And honestly, that doesn't work for me at all. I can't go through my book twenty times and focus on one thing throughout each readthrough... I don't have that kind of attention span, nor patience. So I came up with my own method of editing, which is pretty unconventional, but that's just how I work. I've reinvented quite a few wheels, and I did a good job of it too! 

  Anyways, I've written a whole post about my new editing method, which can be found here. Or here --> https://jaciknight.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-self-edit-your-book-unique.html Or here: Link. Yes, I'm weird... 

4. The Horror! 

  An issue for me: Okay, what can I do to make this more interesting? 

  A solution for me: Every time you see something horrible, write it down! 

  Seriously, if you hear about a horrible sickness, someone breaking a bone, a particularly nasty murder, some of my typos before I fix them, a mental illness that's terrifying, how someone cheated on a celebrity, anything you hear about politics, how someone's dreams were crushed forever, or a whole variety of things... Write them down in a notebook. That's your character's worst nightmare and imminent future right there! If your book seems to be at a standstill, like a rerun of problems that aren't going away or something of the sort, you look through that notebook until a problem that would work sufficiently pops up. 

  You don't want to go overkill with this; a stroke that ends up paralyzing your character is an amazing idea, but if they have a big, unavoidable fight coming up soon and the world will be destroyed if your character can't make it, maybe just stick with a broken arm or a mental block. 

5. Don't Look at The Shiny

  An important part of writing: Don't touch the shiny. The new ideas, that seem so much cooler than what you've got. Being a disorganized writer, this can come in as more than ideas for a new book, this can be ideas for the story you're writing right now. What if this happened? And that happened! And dragons are awesome, let's put a dragon in somehow! 

  Nu-uh, don't do that... Unnecessary clutter in your writing isn't good, having too many unrelated problems isn't good, and turning your "normal" romance into a fantasy just because you like fantasy too isn't really a good thing. It's bad writing... 

  So focus on your story, and be realistic as to what should happen in your story. Shiny is okay, blinding and neon shiny all over isn't. 

  

How To Write Great Romance

  I'm just going to make something clear... This isn't kissing scenes, this isn't how to write sappy conversations, this is about romance in general, and this is going to be CLEAN. This about making the love seem realistic, making the readers fall for the love interest, creating a love story that readers will laugh and cry and root for. Not individual scenes, not what kissing feels like, none of that.
  Now, you're still here? Want to know how to do this? Great, keep reading...

1. TIME

  I cannot stress this enough... All good things take time, correct? Yes? Then why on earth are insta-romances a thing? I recently read a book, it almost made me cry it was so terrible, that if you ever need an example of a bad romance (or a host of other things) you should read. Romeo and Juliet and Vampires. Lemme see... Romeo goes to place looking for one girl he has a crush on, sees Juliet, falls in love, proposes to her later that evening, and somehow she has the exact same unrealistic phenomenon... So lesson 1: Do not make them fall in love immediately. It's a process, and it takes time. As much as we love the happy moments in love, they're just cheezy and laughable if they happen too soon. Nobody likes them, make people wait and the moment will be so much better. 

2. These People... 

If you wouldn't date the person, they aren't a good love interest. Face it, half the people these characters fall in love with are self-absorbed, possibly abusive, and their only allure is how they look and the fact they're picky about who they date. Come on, that's the kind of guy I would punch in the face and never in my life date, why would I want to read about some girl who puts her whole social and academic life at stake for that jerk? Or the guy who starts dating the popular girl even though she's a brat who gossips too much and doesn't appreciate him? Find a better way to create some emotion or whatever, just stop using these brats as "ideals". 

3. Someone Else Should Make Them Suffer

  Someone outside the relationship should be creating the problems. Not problems originating inside the relationship, because in reality, that's what causes divorces and break-ups. Forbidden romances, someone one or both characters care about in trouble, imminent death, something besides miscommunications and conflicting personalities. 

  An outside problem is much better, especially if the romance is the main plot, because it helps the characters grow stronger and closer. That's much sweeter than these two people in love who can't just tell each other how they feel and end up fighting until the end of the book when they have one conversation that could've been done in the beginning and somehow everything's good and okay now. Those people in real life would have constant communication problems and a lot of fighting forever. Not good romance. 

4. Make 'em Wait

  Even once they finally fall in love, make them wait for the first kiss. First conversation together of just them. First "I love you." All those things readers wait for. Keep interrupting kiss attempts, have some friends tailing them, wars going on that demand a lot of attention, but make the readers wait for those moments. Once the moments do happen, they'll be much more satisfying and beautiful. 

  This is also not to mention that relationships based on physical touch and kissing are kind of not as believable. There have been studies showing that those relationships usually don't last and aren't as happy. They seem superficial, not to mention something I wouldn't want to read. So don't do them... Unless you're trying to write a superficial romance that won't last. 

5. The Fight to Love Thing

  You know the story when the characters meet and absolutely hate each other, have to work together for some reason, and end up falling in love. This, when done right, can be a great story! But you have to be careful with these, because if the characters hate each other because they're polar opposites with different views on life and opinions with only whatever stuck them together in common, then they're going to drive each other crazy. It just doesn't work that way. 

  They have to have something to bond over, some similarities, and they can't be zealously protective of their views to the point of being unable to accept someone who doesn't agree with them. Get the idea? 

6. Are They A Little Cliche? 

  When reading a story, do you ever feel as if you've read it before? They have the same basic plot and character type? Yeah, don't do that... 

  A little cliche is good, it means people already like the kind of story you write. But put something new in there! Mash two totally different kinds of cliche together, add a completely unheard-of problem, add in a parrot who happens to mimic the absolute worst possible phrases for your characters, whatever comes to mind. But make the story new. (See again: Romeo and Juliet and Vampires. Originality problems as well.)

Book Review - Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

                                                                ★★★★★★★


This book, I really liked... The theme of anorexia, to the best of my knowledge, was portrayed accurately. Especially the overall message that you need a reason to recover, you can't just take medicine and go to therapy, you have to want to get better. This was deep, true, and I loved the story. The message was great, theme portrayal was great, the character building was great as well. There was a wide variety of character who were each clearly distinguishable, as well as the fact that the story was very immersive. I was able to feel connected to the different characters, dislike some based off very little other than the M.C.s feelings, that was exceptionally done. 
  I liked the originality of this story as well, there were a good amount of different problems which all made sense to the plot and helped to build this into a realistic and unique book. Overall, one of the better books I've read! 
  The only complaint I have was in the first half or so of the book, as well as in the synopsis, I didn't have a clear idea of what the plot was. At the end looking back it was clearer, but from the beginning, I was just kind of thinking, "Okay... So she's anorexic, not particularly life threating as of now... Friend died, she's upset, understandable... Where exactly is this going? What's she got to lose?"   


★ Development (Characters, setting, etc.)
★Completely Cuss/Inappropriate Free
★ Totally Believable (Barring magic, supernatural, etc.)
☆ Really Sweet Romance
★ Accurate Representation (Themes such as mental illness, abuse/bullying, war, etc.)
★ Insightful Junk is Thrown In (Personal preference)
★ Originality
★ Character Progression
☆ Foreshadowing/Plotline details 

Mistakes to Look For In The Editing Process

Editing is so fun, isn't it? What's better than shredding your hard work and rewriting half of it? Okay, on a serious note... Which parts do you shred, and which do you delete? How do you know if something's good or not?
  Honestly, a lot of editing you just have to be the judge. You know your book, you know what's necessary to the story. The trick is to be able to look at it analytically, not emotionally.
  However, because I'm writing a whole post about what you should look for... Here are the more mechanical parts of editing to do! Grammar, style, all that fun. So here are the things to look out for!
  Also, this is just going to be a big bullet-list. Because sometimes, I just want a big list and couldn't care less about why. Unless it's messing up something, just knowing the bare facts usually helps me to focus and not go into more researching... So here's what you should look for (with a grain of salt.)

Things To Just Delete

• Link to a bunch of words to cut (Or replace) 
• Chapters that don't move the plot forward
• Scenes that don't move the plot forward
• Clothing descriptions longer than two sentences
• Character descriptions longer than 2 - 3 sentences
• Recurring character description (Ex. Mentioning eye color many times throughout the book)
• Long paragraphs in Latin/made up languages/etc. 
• Irrelevant/small talk dialogue
• Excessive world description

Things to Rewrite

• Melodrama
• Clunky sentences 
• Character inconsistencies
• Info Dumps 
• Change in tense (Past, present)
• Change in 3rd/1st person
• Important scenes that come across as bland/wrong emotion/etc. 
• Dialogue doesn't sound natural
• Too much show/too much tell (Here's a great video on this and melodrama!)

My Current Story Writing Crisis...

  This isn't a tip post, a funny post, nothing like that. This is a post about my thought process as I doubt everything I've done, what I want to do with my book, everything. Mostly, this is just me trying to get my thoughts onto paper so I can look at them and make a good decision. However, as most problems are not unique to a single human being, maybe this will help someone out there...

The Whole Mess... Beautiful Mess, But Mess All The Same. 

  So basically, I wrote the novel. Twice. The first time I wrote it in Sabrina's POV (Point of view, for idiots like past me who had no idea what that meant) and honestly it sucked. Grammar was atrocious, storytelling was off, I could go on a whole rant on this... In fact, I already have, here's the link! 

  The second time, the most recent time, I wrote Jamie's POV in as well. So now we've got both Jamie and Sabrina as main characters, however, I don't think it's working. The whole book is fine up until the end, when spoilers that I cannot say happen, and I realize that nobody's going to have much motivation to read book 2. That could be fixed if I took Jamie's POV out of the book... But there's a reason I put his POV in there in the first place! 

   I could only use Jamie's POV, but I don't know if that would fix the ending problem... I could come up with a new ending, but that would include rewriting the last 1/4 of the book and having to create a totally different book 2. His POV is honestly much more interesting, and he's used to create a "pink-filter" (Apparently I made that term up, I have no idea if I did or not, but every time I bring it up nobody has any idea what I mean, so yeah.) for Bree. I personally dislike Bree, she's just not a relatable character to me. I love some of her lines and her sense of humor, but I just don't like her as the only POV character. So I use the pink-filter to see her through the love-struck lense of Jamie's eyes, therefore making her more likable. She sucks without him in multiple ways. 

  So using Sabrina as the only POV character would make the ending so much better, but would the rest of the book suffer for it? Is it just me who dislikes her, or is she crap? I've already changed her, as in name, personality, background, everything. And I still don't like her. 

  So what on earth do I do with this? The lazy part of me is saying to just leave it and hope people want to read book 2, which is a viable option, but I know the book could be better than that. The logical side is saying to cut Jamie out of the book because my biggest problem with Bree is my emotions getting in the way. Suck it up and rewrite the darn thing again! Then my emotional side, saying to totally use Jamie as the POV character because his POV is more interesting, I love writing about him more, and he doesn't even need to be a pink-filter if we only know Bree through him. 

  AND. THIS PAID OFF. 

  That last sentence there reminded me of something I told my Dad to do when he didn't know what to work on... "Do what you love, the project you won't go crazy on if you spend two years on it. That'll make it come out better, the love shines through, and chances are that someone else will have the same interest." 

  So Jamie's POV it is... Because I like writing his POV. This will turn out amazing because I'll love every second and every word of it! Woohoo!! Bree will be more likable, I'll find a way to make a more compelling ending,  the story will be more interesting and all, and I won't go crazy writing it. 

  I'm gonna let this decision sit overnight... Because oftentimes my emotional decisions aren't the most logical (See for reference: Decision to buy $20.00 shirt when I just barely had enough money to buy dance classes for the month, which is not optional. Now I need $16, without a job. Go me.)

  Anyways, if you made it to the end, thank you! Here's my tip... Rant. Talk it out, write it out, even if you have no audience, getting it out of your head helps A LOT.  Feel free to say it to me, I'll give feedback if you want. Thanks again for reading! 

How To Self-Edit Your Book (A Unique Approach)

  There are a ton of videos, articles, and books about editing your writing... And absolutely none of them worked for me. Being the person I am, if something doesn't work or even feels like it takes too long, I find my own way to do it. This both wastes days of my life that I spend trying to find alternate ways to do things, and makes the process of doing many things more enjoyable and efficient for me.
  So how do you edit a book in a different way? Hasn't everything already been done? Maybe, but I haven't seen it done this way yet!
  I'm also just going to point out, as everyone else does, that apparently this doesn't cover your professional edit... But you know what? I don't have money for a professional edit, I don't even have money to buy a copy of my own book when I get it published! So there may or may not be an upcoming post on what to do if you can't/don't want to get a professional editor!
  Okay, this has been a longer than usual intro, so I'll just get on with the steps...

1. Forget it! 

  The moment you write the last word of your book, you close the page, stick the papers in a drawer, whatever you need to do, and you don't touch it. Don't read it, don't edit it, don't even look at it. 

  This stage is always the hardest for me because I love my book! I want to always be reading, writing, editing, or thinking about my book. But for at least two weeks, but ideally longer, don't look at it. 

  The outline, character sheets, notes, and other parts that aren't a part of the manuscript count as well. You look at them, and you start over... (That's the only way I can convince myself to keep my hands off!) 

  But don't be idle this whole time, start writing the next book! Work on cover art, perfecting the tagline, marketing, whatever you've got to do. That doesn't involve the manuscript or any of the above items. 

  Yes, the cover art and tagline are fine, because it won't have you pointing out all the flaws in your story, worrying about potential plot-holes, or whatever. Editing goes better when you can look at the story through new eyes. 

2. Take Notes

  Now, I have a whole notebook full of this... That much is unnecessary, but I get obsessive. Let's say you made it 2+ weeks, and you're ready to get editing! Before you even look at the manuscript, take at least an hour to think of every problem you might have... Uncharacteristic things your character may have done, melodrama, lack of sensory detail, too much sensory detail, scene changes too much, think of literally every problem you think is a possibility and write it down, before reading a single word you wrote. 

  For me personally, I use this the same way I use the quote "The great thing about being pessimistic is you're always right or pleasantly surprised." Sometimes I find that I was right about that problem, I have a brief moment of triumph that I was correct, and I'm fully prepared to fix it! Other times that problem isn't a problem, and that's one less thing to fix! 

  I've found that if I just read through and look for issues that way, I don't want to delete that scene! Or that uncharacteristic phrase isn't that bad, and it's funny! But if I've preplanned that it's an issue, when I see that it actually is, I'm much more likely to feel attached when I cut that bit out. 

5. Read!

   Finally, you read the book! (Put your notes aside for a second, they'll be used in step 3.) For most people, they wouldn't touch anything now... Just read and take notes. Did you guess that that's not what we're doing? Good, you're correct! You read, not necessarily reading for plotholes or anything, but instead analyzing every chapter and scene. Ask yourself if that scene is really necessary. If it was gone, would the story still make sense? Does that scene move the plot forward? Is it a scene that just accentuates something that's already been established, or does it have its own significant meaning? If the story would still make sense, the scene doesn't move the plot forward, and the scene doesn't have it's own unique value to the story, then kill it. 

  Oh, but it's a super sweet scene that fans are going to cry over! It shows the character growth! Well, it's super sweet but doesn't have unique value? Then make an already important scene a little sweeter. Truth is, the scene can be the sweetest thing ever, but only a select few romance geeks will like it... Most readers will wonder why that couldn't have been more important, if it has any hidden meanings that will be shown later on, etc. It'll just annoy most people, get rid of it or find a way to make it meaningful to the plot! 

4. Back To The Notes!

 Time for the second read through, where you read through with your notes in mind. Edit anything that's in those notes and you were correct about. If you think something isn't quite right and your reading confirms the suspicion, cut it out or edit it. 

  After this, your manuscript may or may not be a little choppy, but that's okay. Edit is fixing, and sometimes fixing means tearing down a wall and building a better one instead of painting over a hole. (Someone always finds the hole!) 

5. Final Scene Cut Stage

  Read one more time, looking for inconsistencies or unnecessary scenes that you may have missed the first few times. Any mistake that's on a chapter or scene scale, go ahead and fix it. Info dumps that need to be smoothed out, plot holes that you need to patch up, anything like that. Remove anything that needs to be removed, and take note of anything that needs to be added. 

  In the first few stages, I try not to add anything, because it's like house remodeling... You tear the walls down before you rebuild, because tearing some down, building some up, and then removing something else both weakens the structure and can make smoothing things out again harder. Remove everything that needs to be removed, find a way to not forget what you want to add, and then move onto the next step. 

6. This Is Where People Call You Crazy

  Now, this is usually where people would go through their book as a whole and rewrite everything that needs to be rewritten. This is where people would call me crazy and tell me this isn't the right way to edit. But you know what? It works! 

  Basically, you have your list of things that need to be added, plot-holes, all that, right? Great. Keep it with you. 

  Start at chapter 1, and edit chapter 1 with the whole plot in mind. Don't add too much information or anything, but make sure it's consistent with what happens later on. 

  Then things get even crazier... We move onto chapter 2 for the same things, right? Wrong! Now we edit chapter 1 with line and word edits until it's perfect. 

  I've found that editing all 100,000 words of my book the same way at the same time drives me insane, I don't have the attention span nor patience for that. I get lazy towards the end, and it sucks. Instead, once I've cut all the scenes out of my book that I don't need to and found my list of plot-holes, I have a pretty good idea of the plot and how it ends. Everything that goes into the story, I've got in my mind. I can edit every chapter to accurately represent the plot, and by the end, I find few if any inconsistencies. 

  So edit chapter 1 to perfection, then move onto chapter 2, and 3, and onwards. 

  Here's what I do for chapter edits: 

• Add anything necessary - If I need to add something, fix something, etc. I do that first. 
• Sentence necessity - Same as scenes, some sentences are redundant. Either combine them with another sentence or delete them. 
• Smooth it out - If anything's clunky, has poor transitions, etc. now's the time to make it flow!
• Word edit - Change recurring words, put a more powerful word in the place of a less powerful one, delete unnecessary words, etc.
• Read - See if it all sounds good, has good grammar, etc. 

See here for a more detailed list of things to look for in each stage! Hopefully, this is helpful for those out there who find editing to be a boring, repetitive process! This method helps add a little more variety! I'd also like to add that if at any point you feel tired, like giving up, like your book sucks, like you just want to stop now, it's okay to take another break. Taking a day or even a few weeks off editing to work on something else won't hurt! Thanks for reading, best of luck with your books! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions on any part of the writing process!

Top Tools To Use As A Writer

  There are so many things out there that you can do to organize thoughts, find shortcuts, discover new information, and become a better writer overall... So many that you can waste a lot of time looking through them, setting them up, trying to manage them all, and losing passwords.
  While most of the things on my list are basic, that's just me. There's an app for everything so if apps are your thing then go for it! But I don't generally do that, so I'll just be sharing the basics of what I use, why, and what you need to get out of it.

1. Writing Platform

  First thing, you need something to write on. This is one of the few things that I do use on a computer, as writing a novel in a series of notebooks just to copy it onto the computer so I can share it kind of sucks. 

  I've gone through a ton of things to do this... And my all-time winner is Google Docs. Free, plenty of tools, easy to use, can handle my 100,000-word manuscript with minimal lag, let's me make mass changes (Change all chapter headings to a different font automatically, change every instance of Jenna to Sabrina when I changed her name, etc.), and can export your finished work in a variety of different file types. Overall, just really easy and convenient to use. 

  Many writing apps that you can download an app for kind of really suck, I found that they either lagged, had horrible formatting, had a word limit, or couldn't export my work. Microsoft Word was the only worthy contender I found, however, after it sometimes crashed on my tablet or refused to load my work I switched to Docs and haven't regretted it. 

2. Sharing Platforms

  These are amazing places where you can share your work with other writers and readers, get feedback, and also check out other people's work. I would definitely recommend these sites, especially if you're a little-known author who doesn't have a huge fanbase. 

  First off, we've got Wattpad. Wattpad is an all-inclusive site that you can post any kind of writing on, millions of readers go there to find new stuff, and I've had a great experience there. There is a lot of junky writing there, as anyone can make an account and put whatever they want up, but that doesn't take away from the fact that you can gain a great audience (and the good writing is all the more appreciated!) 

  Second, is NowNovel. This site exists purely for receiving criticism on your work. I've found that to be very helpful, and I've gotten some great insights into things that hadn't even occurred to me as a problem. Only downsides are that in order to see more than the first 2 - 3 critiques you get you need to upgrade your account with real money. But the first 2 - 3 are usually enough to tell you what you need to know! (Plus they have great character/setting building tools if you're not past that stage or want to test what you've got!) 

  Third and fourth, for more specific kinds of writing, we've got Cosmofunnel and WriteTheWorld. Cosmofunnel is mostly based around poetry, and they have monthly contests for poetry that you can actually win money from! WriteTheWorld is similar, except made for young writers. They have writing prompts, contests (again for real money!), and opportunities to have your work reviewed both by peers and judges in the contests. Both are great places to just put yourself out there, and maybe even make some friends. 

3. Mistakes

  I never knew how many grammar and spelling mistakes I made until I got Grammarly. (See more on this in the Inspiration part!) Turns out, my mind moved so fast trying to get all the words out that spelling and grammar kind of got butchered at times! Having something to tell you that you made a mistake is extremely helpful, and makes your writing much cleaner come editing time. Again though, you do have to pay to get full features, but I can catch basic grammar and spelling mistakes with the free version. 

  If you want extra help catching mistakes such as cliche phrases, passive voice, and adverbs, https://www.slickwrite.com/ and https://www.scribens.com/ are some good sites you can paste your writing into and get some feedback! 

4. Notetaking

  I do all of my notetaking the old-fashioned way... With three various notebooks, three colors of pens, and a corkboard to put the important stuff on! 

  I've found that this is much more helpful to me than taking notes online, both in how likely I am to look at them again and in how well I remember what I wrote down. But notetaking is very, very important in writing! 

  Without notes, writing can quickly become messy and inconsistent (See for reference: Warriors by Erin Hunter - Dovewing's eye color.)  So having a good notetaking method is really important. Planning your story, writing down important details about your characters, keeping track of side-characters, pretty much everything you do your story can be made easier with notes. 

  Also, if you're a chaotically organized person like me, you might want a folder... (By chaotically organized, I mean my papers are spread around randomly and look like a mess but they all make perfect sense to me. Except people don't realize that, and your "mess" is fair game to touch and look at because there's "no order" meaning I "won't notice if they're touched". So get a folder, nobody will ruin your chaotic order or worry about why you have pages of notes on killing people...) 

5. This Thing That Nobody Seems To Have Thought Of... 

  Quick disclaimer: I've never actually done this yet, I'm still learning, but it's one of my better ideas! 

  This genius idea is lucid dreaming. That's controlling your dreams. So I had the awesome idea... Why not lucid dream scenes from your book? Talk to your characters? Even better, apparently it's possible to ask a person in your dream to become lucid and act on their own, so you could (hopefully) have actual real conversations with your characters! 

  Is it just me, or is that the coolest thing you've ever heard? I've never personally done this because I'm still trying to figure out how to do the thing, but from what I've heard that's all completely possible. 

  Considering this works, this could be my favorite tool on this list. 

  Here's a cool site and YouTube channel all about lucid dreaming! 

6. YouTube

  First, use this wisely people! 

  Second, YouTube or the internet are the best ways to learn. You can learn literally anything from the internet, and that is a very important tool. 

  As for writing, there are a lot of writing channels that are extremely helpful... Here are my favorites and why. 

1.   Jenna Moreci - I love this channel, just for the blunt reality checks. Sarcasm is my favorite, and Jenna is the sarcasm queen! (Only complain is some of the language... Be aware of this!) 
2. Ellen Brock - What's more helpful than a writer telling you what they know? An editor telling you exactly what makes some books good, some books suck, and what's an instant red-flag to editors. 
3. Vivien Reis - Helpful, great advice, and interesting! Not to mention the dogs in the background of some videos! I love this channel; one of my go-tos when I feel stuck. 
4. Nour Zikra - Don't have the time or attention span to watch a 10-min. video? This is the place you should be... Videos ranging from 2 - 5 minutes that cover just as much as everyone else's 10 - 15-minute videos! Not to mention the writing humor that you can't find elsewhere on YouTube... 
5. Merphy Napier - Yet another point of view on books... We've got authors, editors, and then readers. Merphy is an entertaining reader who reviews books, shares her opinion on covers, tropes, and all else that goes into a book. As a writer, hearing what people want to read is gold. 

7. Inspiration

  My favorite inspiration tools are Spotify and images. Playlists for each book I have, pictures of characters and settings and anything that reminds me of my book, all those things help me stay motivated and inspired to write. Because everything else here is worthless without the actual ability to write and enjoy it... 

  Find what inspires you, whatever it might be. Reading, music, singing, pictures, taking a walk, talking about your book, having a lucid dream, the possibilities are endless!
  Another thing that I recently found that motivates me to write more would be Grammarly... What? How does a grammar checker motivate you?! Well, at the end of each week it tells you some statistics... Such as how many words you wrote that week, how many unique/unusual words you used, and what percentage of users you beat on word count and quality. Apparently, I write 200,000 words a week on average... Use more unique words than 99% of people who use Grammarly, and my most common mistake is unnecessary epilepsies... (<--)  And being the person I am, I want to beat my progress every week! Which I find very motivating, both to writing my book and completing essays in school. 

Those are the big things I've found helpful to my writing experience, and really they're the only necessities! Sure, other things are cool, but they also clog up your time... What's your experience on these subjects? Any opinions either agreeing or disagreeing with me? I'd love to hear them! Thanks for reading!