Three Thing Thursday–Lots of Hints for Our August Challenge

August 15 is now just a few days away.

Are you ready for our August challenge? (If you are wondering what we’re talking about, go to August 1, 2017 and see Ann Dee’s post.)

Here are some things to help you and your family get ready for your one hour a day.

1. Decide on a time. You may want a trial run. Is 6 am better for you or 10 pm? Practicing will help you know what is best for you and your family.
2. Make your place, for this one hour, sacred and private. Time for you and your words.
3. Alert everyone for the next several days that you WILL be writing at this time and you’ll need this time, alone, to complete this challenge. IF you can write with children at your feet, more power to you. Just remember you are working toward 60 minutes of straight writing.
4. If you are writing a book that needs lots of research, do that now. Perhaps, as you experiment with what hours are best, you can look up the price of chicken in 1929 (the same price as in 1969), which Apollo launch caught fire and killed the astronauts (Apollo 1), or how far Tampa is from New Smyrna (just over 2 hours down I-4). Get the pre-work done so you can follow Ann Dee’s rule of writing a solid one hour.
5. Set a goal for how many words you’d like to write in that one hour. Anyone can sit in a chair and look at an blank computer screen  and put down a word a minute. But you want to end up with a good number of words on the page. 500 words? 1000? 2000?
6. Do some brainstorming now. What is your story about it 25 words or less? What does your main character want? How do you keep that from happening? What are five subplots for your book? What is the climax? How do you expect this book to end? Knowing little things (not all the important details but having ideas) will help you succeed.
7. Jot your ideas down and post where you can see them.
8. Tangerine oil is supposed to help your creativity. I’m thinking of purchasing some and putting it in the diffuser I bought months ago and have never used.
9. Bring your snacks with you and don’t get up to go get more.
10. Write scenes instead of writing chronologically.

So those are a few helps. We’ll have a few more before next Tuesday.

What if we also watched this movie as a final reward?

 

Also, I won’t go see this but I really want to because RYAN REYNOLD’S!!!!!!

(for those of you with sensitive ears [like me] don’t watch with the sound on as there are lots of swears. This is a rated R trailer. I listened to them for you. Mostly I just wanted to see Ryan Reynold’s face. It is cute.)