Post-election advice for grieving writers:
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Nov•
10•16
If you’re scared or angry or feeling disenfranchised, write. If you are choking on grief, write. If you’re worried about future Supreme Court nominees, write. If you’re worried about our political system in the largest possible terms, write.
Create stories like our lives depend on them because they do. Create stories because storytelling is generous, important, and uniting. Write to prove we cannot be cowed or terrorized or mocked. Write to feel less alone. Write to protest and howl so the sound of your soul ache reaches the farthest star.
Writing will bring you back to your body. Writing will help you notice what is immutable, beautiful, and true all around you. This noticing will help you break through fear. Write and your heart will begin to stitch back together.
Make art and stories because they heal and are an expression of your soul. Make art 
because art prevails through the ages and brings meaning to a sometimes disheartening reality. Make art because we need beauty.
Step up. Or perhaps I should say sit. Get quiet in your writing space or studio. Now is the time.
Advice for Wri Mos from Laini Taylor
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Nov•
05•16
Unstoppable. Machete-toting. Sounds good doesn’t it? And if you don’t make your word count one day do not panic. Just keep plugging aw
ay. Live that story in your head while you’re walking the dog or microwaving dinner. As you and Rufus the Border Collie head to the park, stride or swagger the way your protagonist would. Become your detective or woman on the run–and not just when you’re imagining scenes at your computer. Roll over your next scenes in your imagination before you fall asleep at night. Live the story.
NaNoWriMo Survival Guide
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Nov•
01•16
Last November I posted a long, smart (yes, I know I’m bragging), and practical survival guide for making it through November and succeeding at NaNoWriMo. It’s a giddy, laborious, exhausting and fulfilling marathon to crank out a 50,000-word novel in November. Thousands of people worldwide have joined and pulled it off.
And you can too.
Here’s a piece that illustrates 8 successful novels that proves it can be done. What a list! Some of these books have sold millions like Hugh Howey’s Wool.
Here’s the link to my best survival advice. Actually, it’s called NaNoWriMo Hacks & a Bit of Tough Love. Best of luck to you and just keep writing. Then write some more.
12 Reasons to Join NaNoWriMo–or undergo a 30-day writing sprint
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Oct•
29•16
- We think quicker than we write. Writing fast helps you catch up with your brain and empty your swollen imagination.
2. Breakneck writing is energizing and immersive. Once you’re into your story, you fall into enchantment, fall away from the ordinary world. When you take breaks for life’s necessities you long to come back to it. You ache for it like a first love.
3. For the comradery, support, and fun of being part of a giddy, committed world-wide community of writers.
4. To stretch and test yourself. Many published authors, especially those who write series, have a NaNoWriMo schedule every month. Think about that.
5. Blazing, high-speed writing helps with consistency of voice, tone, and viewpoint. It creates fluidity as you live amid your story day during a whizzing-past day.
6. It teaches you to trust in the process.
7. Anything is bearable for 30 days. Well, according to one woman I know, bed rest with triplets is almost unbearable; but after November your eye strain will ease, the dust piles can be vacuumed, your mate embraced with renewed affection.
8. Writing fast makes your brain limber.
9. You’ll have more fun, you’ll stay loose and potent and nimble.
10. Because you owe to yourself, your muse and the stories locked in your imagination. You don’t want to carry around those untold stories like hungry ghosts scratching to escape.
12. If not now, when? Next year? When you’re 30? 50?Retired?
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. Because all the changes in the publishing landscape means you need to learn to write at a quicker pace. The whole book biz is moving at lightning speed these days, so writing solid first drafts as quickly as possible makes sense for beginning writers or have-not-yet-broken-through yet writers. None of us can predict what a writing career will look like ten or twenty years from now, but creating a backlog of manuscripts is a wise move in these tumultuous times.
Always noticing….
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Oct•
28•16
It’s stopped raining and the morning sky is almost cloudless and a dusty, pale blue. In the Pacific Northwest we sort of skipped autumn and jumped into winter. Usually September and October are our finest and most golden months. Not this year, rains have battered the region, and even brought tornadoes to the coast. But in many parts it’s been welcome because some southern counties were experiencing drought and the whole region has had lower snowfalls, thus snow packs.
Put weather in your stories, my friends. Weather adds drama, reality, and mood. And while you’re at it, note the quality of light, the indelible details of dawn and dusk, the subtleties of the season, the way the wind feels and sounds. Witness the world like a poet. Always noticing. What does the sky look like right now?
And here’s a fine example:
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
– Edward Hirsch
from Fall
You might want to visit Hirsch’s site here.
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart
Important advice in our times….
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Oct•
27•16
You can supply the adjective here; turbulent, troubling, divisive….
I believe profoundly in continuing to read and think and communicate in sophisticated ways, especially when the problems we as a world are dealing with have never been greater. It couldn’t be more important.
~ Jennifer Eagan You can find more about Eagan and her stories here.
Hiatus is over
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Oct•
26•16
Dear readers who stop in here,
Wanted you to know that my hiatus from blogging is over and I’m back to inspire, nudge, nag, and encourage. I’ve got some great tidbits about writing planned for you that have simmering in some lovely recess of my brain. 
I’m doing much better after a major surgery and several accidents that made my back pain and eye problems much too noticeable when I sat at my computer. So things are improving, another season of color and change is upon us, and NaNoWriMo will be starting soon. More to come on prepping for NaNo.
And buckle up if you’re joining that writing frenzy. This would be a good weekend to lay in supplies.
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Sep•
02•16
