Today is for all you new writers out there. You know who you are. You have all of these story ideas bursting from your brain But the moment that you sit down to actually write them They're gone. Well, I'm here to give you the secrets of becoming a writer permanently ready secret is to write mind blue Sit down at your laptop Put your hands on the keyboard and make words happen You'll never get any better at the things you want to do unless you do them mind blue Again, last year I decided I wanted to start painting. I have never before in my life painted Unless you count those finger paintings. I did as a kid But I went to YouTube. I started watching some how-to videos and I just did it first painting and After a year of practice painting But anyway, the point isn't to show off my paintings Point is to show you that if you keep working at something you will improve I'm going to show you four different ways to get yourself writing when you don't know what to write about or don't feel like writing Find writing prompts writing prompts are super fun You can go to Pinterest and pull up tons and tons of them and What they are if you don't know is just a random sentence or a way to start a story like what if Aliens took over the planet that was actually a pretty terrible one got some examples here Like this one says you find a stack of missing persons news clippings under your parents bed all with your photos on them So this would be a great kind of like mystery thriller story Where apparently these parents aren't actually their parents this kid's parents and they have actually been kidnapped when they were child So this would probably be like all about their Search for their real parents may be trying to escape These fake parents that she added a charm to her bracelet for every life that she took That sounds like a cool story Sounds like some kind of dystopian story Where the protagonist either is forced to do this by the government that has created her to be like this killer or Maybe she's doing it as a way to fight back at the government Sometimes prompts will start out with a line of dialogue like this one is a quick exchange between two characters Says I never stood a chance did I? That's a sad part once you did this sounds like a romance to me sounds like one character Was really trying to be with the other but there's something that they did to Just mess everything up. You could either write something back in time going back to What they actually did to mess everything up and what they actually did to have a chance or you could move forward from that Conversation and have character a try to convince character B that they really should be together and the last prompt is Is well, this is a nice change of scenery. It's a prison cell. I was being sarcastic So this sounds like Some trouble makers to me This could be fantasy or dystopian where the two characters are constantly getting into trouble or perhaps Character A is always getting in trouble and dragging character B into it since he sounds a little annoyed at being in a prison cell Yeah, you see how fun these prompts can be and how useful they'd be in getting some ideas flowing. Yeah, they're super fun Number two your own ideas Maybe you already have some great ideas for a story and you don't really need any prompts But you feel like your idea is just too big for you to get started on you're not sure where to start And if you don't know much about your story go ahead and write it down It may not seem like real writing But this is getting you used to writing down your ideas. It's getting you used to Creating characters worlds Conflicts and you might be surprised at what you come up with once you start writing all you do is for a couple of weeks or months Just write down story ideas and kind of hash them out and add characters and Add to the world if you're writing a fantasy and you're doing a lot of world building like if that's all you do That is still practicing your writing don't feel like you're cheating or that you're not doing real writing just because you're writing down ideas Even if you don't actually turn this idea into a story yet It's good to have it down so that way you can go back to it later the story that I wrote the hashness stone that is now a book Actually sat in a folder for about a year before I went back to it and started working on it Sometimes a story is too big for you to do right now And you just need a little bit of time to grow a little bit of time to practice writing and eventually you'll go back to it and Be able to turn it into a full-size book or short story or whatever it is that you're planning on doing Number three start a blog. This is what I did I Did not start really taking my writing seriously until I started the blog because it kind of forces you to write because you have an audience now That is expecting post every week or every month however often you decide to post and Not only is it a great motivator, but it's a great way to meet other writers and Definitely would not have made it as far as I have if it weren't for my blog community If you're wanting to connect with other writers or you're wanting a little bit of an extra push a little bit of motivation to keep writing regularly Starting a blog is a great way to do that and don't feel like you have to make it this huge thing and really Professional like just start small start with one post every week or if that's too much for you one post every other week just it really gets you Used to writing consistently last one is flash fiction Flash fiction is a story that takes place in 500 words or less although I have seen people do it in about a thousand words Monde tend to be about a thousand words. This is great if you're feeling overwhelmed with putting an entire story together and Chapters together. It's just too overwhelming Don't fret because you can write an entire story in 500 words This is a great way to build confidence in your writing and this one kind of ties back to Starting a blog and also to the writing prompts So you can use the writing prompts to come up with ideas to write the flash fiction pieces And then you can post them to your blog, which is what I did a lot when I first started blogging So whether you decide to start a blog or you decide to just write for yourself Or if you use your own ideas or story prompts, whatever you decide to do the most important thing is to make it a habit Just stick with it. I see a lot of times Writer advice is to write every single day and some people put a time limit to it like you have to write an hour a day You have to write several hours a day, but when you're first starting don't worry about all that Make it a habit that you can stick with and probably the most important thing to remember is to have fun try different genres try different things with your characters If you want to just write a page of dialogue Go for it. This stage it's all about just writing and seeing where it takes you So get off this video and go right