The Year in Review: What I’ve Learned About Writing in 2014

by Naomi L. | December 31, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing | 2 comments

It’s the last day of 2014, and you know what that means: time for a recap of the year! To celebrate the turn of the year, here’s a brief review of what I’ve learned about writing in 2014. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

Juggling grad school and a blog is hard work…

I was admitted into a graduate program at the beginning of this year (yay!), and I’m now halfway toward achieving a Master’s degree in Marine Ecology. While I have been enjoying the experience so far (stressful as it may be at times), it also takes away from the time I would otherwise spend writing creatively. Sometimes I have to spend all day at my university, and even when I don’t, there are still scientific papers to read and lab files to organize for my thesis. With everything I have to handle at once, I’ve come to learn a harsh truth: multitasking is hard!

…but miraculously, I can do it.

Despite the challenges of balancing these passions of mine, I’ve still managed to keep up with my creative writing. I haven’t yet fallen behind schedule on my blog posts, and I still stay ahead on ideas for upcoming topics. Let’s hope it stays that way; next year is going to prove even more challenging!

Scientific writing and artistic writing are surprisingly similar…

Whether written for a scientific journal, a literary magazine or a book, prose is prose, and all of it is subject to a basic foundation of rules. Aside from obvious guidelines such as grammar and spelling, scientific papers and fictional stories both have to follow a set structure in order to be complete, that is, they need a clear beginning, middle and end. Both require a ton of editing and proofreading before being released to the public, and when not written well, expect a storm of criticism to rain down shortly after publication.

…yet also very different.

Scientific writing requires that you follow strict formatting rules (so strict, in fact, that one mistake can get your whole paper rejected for publication), while artistic writing offers much more freedom to experiment. Art is also considerably more flexible about getting facts straight than science. In other words, there are plenty of things you can get away with in art that you can’t in science. But more on that subject later.

Writing is and always will be my one true calling.

Whatever I do in my life, there will be times when I seriously doubt if I have what it takes to be successful at it. It’s happened with my singing, with my video editing and even with science. The only exception is writing. Though I’ve dealt with my fair share of doubts and stress when it comes to my writing, I have never once questioned if it’s something I was born to do. I know it is. It’s embedded in the very core of my soul. And it always will be.

So what about you? What have you learned about your writing in 2014?

The Year Ahead: Writing in 2014

by Naomi L. | January 1, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing | 2 comments

Happy New Year! It’s the first day of 2014, and as we all know, the start of a new year means the promise of new beginnings. It also means the emergence of those infamous promises we make ourselves: New Year’s resolutions. Sure, maybe most of them don’t make it past February, but I still think it’s good to motivate ourselves to make the next year even better than the last. That’s why I want to start this year’s blog posts with a list of my own resolutions for my 2014 writing experience!

Since I’m in vacation mode, I’ll keep this post short and sweet. Here are my hopes for 2014:

1) Be more productive with my writing. Not that I haven’t been productive already, but there’s always room for improvement, right? It probably goes without saying that I’d love to be able to write even more in 2014 than I did in 2013, as much for my blog as for my stories. What writer wouldn’t want the time and inspiration to work on several projects at once?

2) Work more on my novels. I admit it: I haven’t been working on my novels as much as I should. I could blame it on all the other projects that I’ve been busy with lately, but in the back of my mind, I still keep telling myself I should be working on my novels every day, even if it’s just a little bit at a time. Hopefully I can get back on track this year. Like many aspiring writers, I dream of the day when I can finally say I published a book!

3) Read new books. Guess who got Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy for Christmas? Hint: she’s so excited to read these books that she’s blogging about them right now! I’m looking forward to reading some great new books this year, and maybe even adding them to my list of book reviews!

4) Connect with more writers. I really should be networking more. After all, if I want to be a successful author, it’s essential that I connect with as many other writers as possible. I’ve already met some very interesting people in the past year; I hope to meet many more in the year to come!

5) Keep having fun! Need I say more?

So what about you? What are your hopes for 2014?

The Year in Review: Writing in 2013

by Naomi L. | December 25, 2013 | Blog, Creative Writing | 2 comments

Merry Christmas! It’s the last Wednesday of the year, so to finish off my creative writing posts for 2013, here’s a brief review of what I’ve enjoyed most about my writing experience this past year. Enjoy!

Learning about blogging (and more importantly, that I can do it)

Of course I had my doubts about blogging before I started. What blogger hasn’t? But being active in the online community has turned out to be an amazing learning experience. I figured out blogging pretty quickly (the basics, at least), and I’ve learned that I’m surprisingly capable of maintaining my own site. But the best thing I’ve leaned about blogging is that it’s a lot of fun, and I look forward to writing many more posts in the foreseeable future!

Developing discipline

Honestly, when I started this blog, I wasn’t sure I’d have the discipline to write consistently for a long time. I knew the passion of writing would keep me going strong in the beginning (and it did), but as with many of my hobbies, the fire tends to burn out after a while, leaving me with a choice to either continue with an activity that now feels like work or just give up altogether. More often than not, I simply bail, but blogging has turned out to be different. Having made a commitment to my writing publicly keeps me motivated to stay on course, and with that, I’ve been developing a stronger sense of discipline. To my surprise, I’ve found that this actually helps keep the fun in writing, and more importantly, it will certainly be useful when I write my novels!

Discovering new ideas

If there’s one thing the Internet is full of, it’s creativity. Being active online has been great for brainstorming, since there never seems to be an end to the interesting ideas I find. From reading blog posts to trading writing prompts to sharing opinions, being part of the blogosphere has kept my mind active and the new ideas flowing. Could I ask for anything more?

Meeting new writers

This is one of my favorite parts of my writing experience this year: meeting other writers on the same journey as me. Sure, we all may be at different stages, but the important thing is that we all understand what it means to be a writer. We know the joys of building worlds out of words, the sorrows and frustrations of writer’s block, and the satisfaction that comes with finally typing the last period in a story. We all know the ups and downs of writing, and for that, we find strength in supporting each other through the process. In a way, we’re all in this together.

And that concludes my creative writing topics for 2013! Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Here’s to more wonderful writing experiences in 2014!