Great advice from Caroline James on writing regularly and getting that first draft down:

Take a notebook, sit down and write in longhand for half an hour. Write anything that comes into your head. Let your stream of consciousness flow. Do this every morning for a week and see what happens. I promise; something will connect and your creativity will spark. In her book, The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron calls this, The Morning Pages, and many writers including myself, practice every day. Don’t forget that you have to write badly in order to get better and the more you write the more your writing will improve.

Stephen King, the famous author, who has sold millions of books, states that in order to write well you should read prolifically. He wrote a book for writers called, On Writing, and I highly recommend using some of his methods.

Begin a writing project and allow yourself time to write. Take time out of your day to sit down in a space that you can call your own, for however long you have. At the moment, we can’t take ourselves off to cafés or parks, so it is important to make it clear to your household members that this is your bit of ‘me time.’ If you write in challenging circumstances, you can write anywhere. Every day that you don’t write because you don’t know what to write or where to begin, is another day of not being a writer.

Don’t worry about grammar and spelling.

Just get it written. Get to the end of your first draft. The most important thing is to get your story on the page. You can check everything later. Don’t stop the flow by worrying over poor spelling or grammar. Once the first draft is in the bag then editing, re-editing and re-writing can be done.

Best-selling author Caroline James writes women’s fiction. 

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