I’m currently working on Spring of Spirits and my thesis. The fiction is suffering a little under all the work I have to do for my thesis, especially since the thesis costs so much (creative) energy already!

What frustrates me is that I’m still coming up with good ideas for stories. Usually, they just pop up in my head, and I’m like O_O Manon, that is brilliant! And then I’m totally, 100% frustrated with myself for being stuck, writing the other stuff. I feel a hint of the fresh air of a new story, but… I can’t. I shouldn’t. I should finish what I’m working on now, first.

Source: ellzalmighty @Flickr

So when I think of something cool, I make sure to write this down as quick as I can so I don’t forget, and store them all in an “ideas” doc. I call it my secret pot of gold.

I know some have more trouble to find what to write about. The following is a list of a few things where I usually get my ideas from, and could maybe help you too.

1. Watch Movies and TV shows

Yesterday, I was watching an episode of Castle. A certain element of that episode really appealed to me – and I thought… “what if I would combine that with a different genre?” and BAM! There was another golden idea. Just out of nowhere!

When you’re watching a movie or an episode of a good TV show, allow yourself to dream a little about where you would take the story, or about a specific character, what places he could go… Or take a specific element of it, maybe something you’re not used to working with usually and just think about all the things you could do in the genre (e.g. I don’t write crime novels, so I tend to dream about what I could do with such stories and how to implement that in sci-fi). What also helps is mixing movies: what if The Matrix happened in the Alice in Wonderland world? Or what if the Batman movies were set in a post-war fifties era? Change the scenery around.

Well fuck, I am getting more and more ideas as I’m writing this.

2. Travel

A bit more expensive than watching a movie or tv show, but traveling often does the trick for me. I am greatly inspired by traveling to foreign places and taking in the scenery. I based a story in Venice after I travelled there, for instance. I was also very much inspired by Egypt, and got more than one idea during and after my time there. Be creative, and again, during your brainstorm/daydream sessions, don’t hesitate about mixing genres. That usually takes the originality of the idea up a notch, too. Don’t let yourself be bound by norms or set notions about what your story should be about or like.

Source: CubaGallery @Flickr

If you don’t have the liberty to travel, watch documentaries about countries, or do research about a country. Infuse yourself with it. Use Google Earth. Go places digitally. I haven’t been to India, but my current story is set there. What also helps is to find and connect with people from the country you haven’t been to so they may help you get some of the cultural aspects right.

Also, the places you travel don’t have to be as exotic as the couple I just mentioned. You can be inspired by a small town near to you. Just open your mind to it!

3. Use Other Story Material and the News

Someone once said that the best story ideas are usually stolen from other, older stories. The Hunger Games for instance? I bet Suzanne Collins watched the Japanese Battle Royale when she got that idea. There are many examples of immensely popular stories that are a lot like other stories. Every kind of story can inspire ideas. Or watch the news – there’s enough crazy going on in the world to produce some idea (and here, the same counts – don’t be afraid to inject some fantastical element into this).

Be sure to deviate from the source material though. You don’t want to make it too obvious that you “stole” your story idea. Add or detract elements, add some spice to it. Change the characters around. Use other perspectives. You know what I mean. You don’t want to plagiarise, you just want to be inspired.

4. Daydream

My final and golden tip… Daydream. Daydream a lot. Just let your mind wander for a bit every day. I know it can be hard because it needs a certain level of relaxation, and I know our contemporary lives are hella stressful. But I know you have to commute to your job, or ride your bike to college. I’ve found that traveling to places are usually the best times to daydream, and I’ve gotten many ideas while riding my bike. Just let your mind wander about the things I mentioned above, and you’ll get ideas soon enough!

Let yourself be inspired by the landscapes you pass as well, even if you’ve already seen them a million times before. If you see a small cabin on a field, just think about what could happen there. Or if you see a certain shady looking car – what’s its story? I drove by a large industrial area a few weeks back by night…

Source: Gerard Mengerink @ Flickr

How inspiring is that view? I got quite a few ideas since I had just read Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker.

Writing down your dreams is another good one too, though I usually forget my dreams fairly fast, and I’m usually too groggy and cranky to write my dreams down in the morning. But for some people it helps to get story ideas, so maybe that’s something you could try, too!

I hope these tips will get your idea generating juices going! If you have some other tips to share, please do so in the comments.

Over the past few years I have written many, many academic papers. I think with all the practice, I can finally say I really know how to write one. Today, I’m going to tell you how to write an academic paper (or article) like a boss. Writing a paper is all about the preparation. It doesn’t matter what kind of piece you’re writing – a review, an essay, a research report, thesis, dissertation – proper preparation will help you write the thing in a jiffy.

Preparation

Preparation #1: Look for Good Sources

Start with searching for good sources for your paper. Not only is the actual content important, also make sure to look for sources that show you how to write an article such as the one you will be writing. It will give you an idea of what to include (and perhaps even more important: what not to include). Don’t read them just yet, just scan them.

Preparation #2: Create an Outline

What I usually do is, after I’ve checked out source material, is create chapter and paragraph headings in the order I want to write them. Note: at this stage, this is not set in stone at all – if during the writing you feel you need to change the order around or that you’re not happy with some of the paragraphs or chapters, don’t hesitate to ditch them. This is an outline – a guideline, not a rule. What is especially important is that – for most papers and articles, you include the following:

• introduction
  • introduction of the topic
  • your research question
  • an outline of the contents of the rest of the paper
• middle
  • further introduction and outlining of the topic
  • your arguments
  • research results
  • methodology
  • theory
  • et cetera
• conclusion
  • a short summary of the introduction and middle
  • your conclusion
  • very important, something you should never forget: a concise answer to the research question you posed in the intro
  • a final thought or comment or recommendation to end the paper
• sources

Fill in this outline to your needs, and you’ll have a great guideline while writing later on.

Preparation #3: Do the Reading & Researching

Read all the things! Read your articles, books, and all the other sources you gathered. Make notes, mark passages. This can be a lot of work, especially with thick, wordy books. If you need a little help on how to get through this quickly, read this blog post: “How to Gut a Book“. Also, while you’re working through these sources, jot down the references (name(s) of author(s) and year) beneath each paragraph/chapter in your outline so you know which sources to use when. Also, if you haven’t started it already, this is the stage you’ll have to start your research.

Writing

Writing #1: Go!

Start writing. It doesn’t matter what part you start with, since you already have your guideline. To get the writing juices flowing, I usually start with the part that interests me the most – once you’re writing, the rest usually comes more easily too.

Writing #2: Keep Your Personal Opinion Close, But Your Sources Closer

Arguments for and against your statement

Yes, a personal opinion is important. But whomever will be grading your paper will not be overly impressed if that’s all you use to build your argument. While you shouldn’t be afraid to state your own opinion, make sure to use – good – sources to support your argument. However, if you want to sound like an academic professional, avoid pronouns – some teachers/professors don’t mind if you use them but I’ve been hit on the nose for it too many times to not get nervous of the pronouns – hurray for conditioning! Don’t just use sources that support your argument! Search for sources that don’t agree with your statement, and do your best to counter their arguments – also with the help of other sources. Keep in mind that the phrases “on the one hand (-> your argument)” and “on the other hand (-> an argument that counters your that you’ll counter)” are praise-worthy to many a professor.

Writing #3: Keep Track of Sources

What has always helped me greatly to save time is to keep track of my references during writing, especially when I use a big pile of sources. So whenever you jot down an in-text reference, make sure you type out the entire source in your sources section after the end of your paper. This is something you’ll want to accustom yourself to, because there’s nothing professors like less than plagiarism, even if you didn’t intend it to be plagiarism. It’ll cost you points, trust me. No matter what kind of reference style you use (I’ve always used APA), make sure you get the style right. I’ve never actually had points deducted for it myself, but former fellow students of mine have: they just didn’t italicize a title or journal name, or forgot a period somewhere. Don’t just depend on the reference generators you can find online either – I’ve found they make too many mistakes (and I know because I know about every APA rule by heart).

Editing

Editing #1: The Big Picture

Read the entire thing through. Check the order of your paragraphs – is it logical? If not, change it around. Are your arguments decent and convincing? Have you presented enough for/against arguments? Have you answered your research question properly? Have you fulfilled all of your professor’s requirements for this assignment? Make sure your big picture is right, that you’ve covered everything you wanted to cover. If not, get back to writing.

Editing #2: Copy-edits & Grammar

One of the most useful tools I’ve ever used in my entire academic career is Paperrater.com. This little tool gives you so much more info than your average document processing software. You can select the type of paper you’re writing, the academic level you’re at, and it will generate info on how you scored on grammar, vocab use, transitional words use, spelling, and will even grade all this. I wrote a review about this great tool – you can read it here. I personally never settle for anything less than an A.

Editing #3: Sources, sources, sources

Yes, more about sources. It’s important, people! Check one final time if your in-text references are all decently presented, and that your list of sources is perfect. Look closely – I usually pick out a few tiny mistakes (i.e. I used a comma instead of a period, or I forgot to italicize something). It’s a hateful job, but it needs to be done.

Final Round of Perfectionism

If you’re a perfectionist like I am, your last bit of work on your paper will pertain to the physical looks of your paper. Give your paper a nice layout, don’t use Comic Sans but use a font that’s plain and easy to read, make sure you have a shiny, yet professional looking title page and don’t forget page numbers. Or your name. Or the date. Or the number of words, if your professor requires it. Usually font size 12 and line spacing of 1,5 and  is required. Justify the text – it looks nicer and less chaotic. And don’t forget to indent the first sentences of paragraphs.

A Last Tip: Use Google Drive

I have one final tip for you: USE GOOGLE DRIVE. It saves your document every few seconds, which is a blessing. I have lost much work because a pc crashed (which luckily is a little less common these days, but you can never be too careful), or because I accidentally closed Word (I get twitchy fingers after hours of working), or just because I was hungry, got distracted, closed my laptop and it went to sleep on its own, and destroyed all my work in the process. Loss of work looms around every corner, seriously. The only thing with Drive is that it doesn’t allow for many layout options, so to make it look nice I usually download the doc when I’m done, pimp it in Word and save the completed work as PDF (and upload it back on Drive to back it up). It’s a bit more work, but a lot less than if you’d lose your work.

Also, many universities and colleges require you to work on group assignments – this is also where Drive comes in really handily. Nothing is more annoying than working on a Word document, having to send it around, downloading new docs again with tiny edits, and then eventually have someone hand in an old version by accident (it happened to me before). In Drive, you can work with a group of people on one doc, it even has a chat, it keeps track of edits, and you can use comments in the text to highlight and make a note to tell people to change it around. It works splendidly. It made my life so much easier when I was working on my bachelor thesis. So, just do it.

That’s all I have for now! I hope this helps you – now go write that paper, you can do it! If you have any more tips and ideas for my readers, please feel free to share in the comments. Questions are also always welcome .

I took a year-long break from blogging – not proud of it, but I had to recharge. Before I took my break, I blogged about 4-5 times a week for about a year (yeah, no wonder I got a blogging-block). Back then I was always quite concerned with my website audience, and often checked my Google Analytics. Actually, I had a little plugin for my Google Chrome that would keep me up to date of my numbers all the time. I was a little obsessed.

Then, my break. I didn’t even look at the website for a while. When I returned a year later, I checked my Analytics, and was absolutely flabbergasted.

I still got 6000 unique page views per month. 

That’s quite the crowd. In the existence of this website, I have attracted one hundred and twenty thousand individuals to my website. Yeah, that’s a bit daunting. Whether or not these people return to my website in my opinion is not very important – they find my website, read my blogs and see my work!

How come I got these kinds of ratings? I know you too want more than just your mom, dad, significant other and grandma to read your blogs. So, let me tell you.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Yes, you have probably heard about Search Engine Optimization about a million times. But trust me, don’t discard this one! It’s probably the most important reason I get so many visitors. Google is my friend. See the evidence here:

Traffic sources (of all time)

Almost 60% of my visitors find me through search engines. And most of them find me through Google. Look:

Search Engines Data (of all time)

How good a friend of mine is Google? About 94%. I’d call that a best friend.

SEO can be really complicated. I’ve mostly come across complicated explanations that make my brain hurt. Algorithms schmalgorithms, I say. My trick?

The WordPress SEO Plugin

All you need to do is install this baby on your WordPress (or, if you use a different content manager, I am sure they have SEO plugins for those as well), toy around a little with the settings (not too much or you blow stuff up), and make sure you fill in the WordPress SEO details for every post. It will even give you a page analysis on what you can do to improve your SEO. Once you’ve done that, you are set!

2. Don’t underestimate StumbleUpon.com

Almost 30% of my visitors finds my website through referral websites. In the following table I want to focus on StumbleUpon.com for now.

Referral Data (of all time)

SU.com is number one of all referral sources! It has sent me about 10,000 visitors which is pretty impressive.

StumbleUpon needs people to add a certain page to their database (I won’t go into detail too much, if you are interested in exactly how it works, go visit their site). So what I always do is, as soon as I’ve published another blog post, I upload my page to their database. You can install a StumbleUpon plugin into your web browser (Chrome, Firefox) and make it even easier (click the thumbs up button in the bar to go to the add page). Or, if you have social media buttons added to your blog post, add SU.com as well and use that one.

You’ll be directed to an “add page”, where you can add your blog. Fill in the details as carefully and fully as you can and select appropriate tags (I usually skip on the comment though). That’s all there is to it! From there, people will automatically stumble upon your site through SU.com’s randomizer.

I admit it’s a hassle to have to add each blog manually to SU.com, but as you can see, it pays off.

One last tip: make sure you don’t change the URLs of your blogs after you’ve added them to the SU.com database – once you do, it can’t find your posts anymore.

3. Don’t overestimate Facebook and Twitter

As you can see in the table above, Facebook and Twitter combined lead only about 7% of my audience to my website. Harrumph. That’s not very many. I spend a lot of time trying to write good tweets, deciding which hashtags to use, etcetera. Perhaps these numbers are more an indication of my sucking badly at social media, but … Somehow I do doubt it.

I know you reach more people on Twitter than on Facebook (even more so now that FB has their immensely stupid Promote rules, limiting your audience even further). But I think that (and this is from personal experience) people have a “READ MY BLOG PLZ” overload, from all the blog-shares going on on Twitter. I very rarely open a link to a blog anymore, and if I do, it must have really appealed to me. I’ve become a lot more efficient with my time, lately, and not spending hours reading random blogs I found through Twitter is part of that. I can imagine others feel the same.

But, are all my efforts to spread the word through social media futile? No, certainly not. And this is why.

Why this isn’t a reason you should give up on social media

Look, my data aren’t really useful for a generalization (the external validity is rather low). Your data would probably look quite different compared to mine. I took a year-long blogging break, and during that time, I did not really share anything on Twitter or Facebook, either. So, people technically and practically couldn’t find my stuff on there!

What I think really speaks for the use of the social media is the following (click on them to enlarge)

As you can see above, although Google and Stumbleupon send me a lot of visitors, these people tend not to visit the site for long. They visit one, occasionally two pages. The amount of new visits is high, but the bounce rate is, too (80% of the Google visitors closes the page after just a few seconds, deciding this was not what they were looking for).

However, the stats for Twitter and Facebook show something entirely different. They more often visit two or more pages, they tend to take their time to read on the site, the amount of people who return here more often is actually higher, plus people are much less likely to close the page after a few seconds.

Morale of the story? Although you attract tons of people through the search engines, they might find your blog post didn’t really match their search query and will close your site immediately. However, the ones that decide to click on your tweeted/shared link on FB or Twitter do so because it appeals to them. They take their time reading your site, and quite likely also return if they like what they see.

So there are pros and cons to both SEO/SU.com and Social Media: with the former, you reach a lot of different people, with the latter, you reach less people, but you reach the people that are already interested in you and/or in what you write.

4. Lastly, write a lot (but not too much)

My last tip is to write a lot. I have published many posts that attract people. Another tip: write about a few topics, don’t limit yourself to one. You’ll attract more kinds of people. But make sure it’s not too haphazard – my posts have always been related to what I do in my academic career, what I find interesting and stuff that I use for my books. If it’s too far removed from what you think would make your blog readers buy your book, they won’t buy it (and this applies to any kind of business, really). It’s as simple as that.

On the other hand, don’t write too much, or you’ll be burnt out like I was. Four to five posts a week is doable with more people, but trust me, two to a maximum of three is more than enough on your own. And you’ll appear as more stable and trustworthy to your returning reader, too.

And then, one very last piece of advice: don’t expect major changes in your stats overnight. For instance, Google’s algorithms work in such a way that once your site is visited more, it will put you on the top of the search results more often. That takes time – give it that. Don’t check your analytics every day, because you’ll be obsessed and disappointed, like I was.

Well, that is it for now! I hope this is useful to you. If you have any questions, please ask .

If you have any tips for me or other readers, please share them in the comments section. What do you do to attract people to your site?

Two weeks ago, my Master’s program started. It is amazing and I’ve already learned a lot, but it is so much work. I have to hand in papers every two weeks for one course, present at the end. For the other course, I have to hand in a research proposal, interview some shady criminal or someone related to the crime, and then write an enormous research report. Oh, and I have to present that too. I think in the past I mentioned I suck at presenting (or, at least, I think I suck which makes me all sorts of nervous –  thank you brain).

Despite the huge workload, I know I’ll make it. Right now I feel like my hair’s going grey on the spot due to the stress, but there are very serious consequences if I don’t meet the deadlines: I would fail the course, and would have to do it all over again, next year. Plus, I’d be seriously embarrassed.

Now, how can it be that I have no trouble at all meeting my study’s deadlines, while I have so much trouble meeting the deadlines I set myself for my fiction writing?

It frustrates me to no end, and although I’ve tried NaNoWriMo, ROW80, writing partners, tools, etcetera… I simply shut off, and never meet the deadlines I set. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing, no, I love it. I love to produce words and story. But I just can’t put myself to it – and that I hate. It’s exhausting and demotivating. Somehow I always think of something “better” to do – and afterwards I’m always sorry I didn’t write.

I think I have so much trouble because there are no serious consequences if I don’t meet my deadlines. I think I suffer from severe demotivation (“who cares about my writing anyway?” and “my writing probably isn’t good enough anyway” are recurrent thoughts when I consider my writing career). Lately, I’ve been thinking: how do I motivate myself?

Negative and/or positive reinforcement, anyone?

During my psychology studies, I always learned that humans are actually as easily conditioned as the average pet. Basically, all our actions and reactions in some way stem from our conditioning, and we are conditioned usually through positive or negative reinforcement. So, now I’m wondering: how do I condition myself to write?

I don’t want to reinforce myself through buying myself gifts. I don’t have a long wish list and I don’t collect anything, and I hate junk. I don’t want to reinforce myself with snacks or candy, either, I know myself, I love my candy way too much: I’d be as round as can be within the year.

At some point in the brainstorm process, a little lightbulb went on over my head:

What do I enjoy most of everything?

Most of all, I enjoy being with Tim and doing fun things together. What if I plan a fun outing with him after every major deadline? Like, going out for dinner, or going to the movies, or go to the zoo or to the beach… Something that I can easily cancel. If I don’t meet the deadline, we don’t go. If I do, we go: on our Deadline Date.

Overly Attached? Me?

How you can apply this? Honestly, this doesn’t need to be a date in the classic sense. If you’re single and don’t want to risk any guy/gal you like with this (cancelling at the last moment “because I didn’t meet my deadline”… that’s risky!) , just ask the person you like to be with most that isn’t a love interest!  And, if you’re married and sometimes your old lady/man feels like they’re coming short in attention, this could even be a great fix for that, too. .

Tim and I are still in the trial period. I first have to decide and try what will be a good deadline for me, because as important as motivating yourself through reinforcement is, it’s as important to set a deadline that you will actually be able to meet. Set a manageable deadline: otherwise you’re going to achieve the opposite of everything we’re trying, here. So, it’s time for serious schedule-scrutiny!

Sheesh, I have poured my heart out here (and it’s become a wordy blog!). I’ve been seriously struggling with this for the past year, and I’ve been wondering if I’m the only one. Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section, I really would appreciate feedback. And if you feel the same, we can feel sorry for ourselves together – and then work on getting better, together! If you’re going to try the Deadline Date, I’d love to know, too!

Or, if you’ve any other tips at all to motivate yourself, please do share because I (we?) would love to know!

Today I thought it would be nice to publish something that’s quite outside my “zone”. Lauren Bailey is a memoir writer and she has some interesting tips for you – I thought they were insightful even though I don’t write memoirs!

Memoirs can be scandalous, endearing, adventurous, romantic, and funny—all at the same time if the author’s actual real-life story pans out that way. Essentially a memoir is non-denominational genre that can help its readers travel in time, typically in a more “authentic” way than fiction can. Maybe that’s why biographies and memoirs have seen a steady spike in sales over the last decade— since 1999, books sales in this genre increased from $170 million to $270 million, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Some experts predict sales will only continue to increase.

Because of their importance, some higher education institutions like the American school Hunter College even require their students to include a memoir “proposal” as part of their non-fiction writing program applications.

That said, while getting involved in memoir writing can pave the way for much success, sometimes they can be difficult to write—after all, where do you start? Which life-changing incidents do you choose to include? Which ones do you omit? Who will be your target audience? How do you know if you’re even remembering these moments accurately? Are you embellishing?

There are tons of questions you may ask yourself while writing your own personal memoir, but there is one thing that is certain: You don’t have to start from the beginning. Some of the best memoirs omit the introductory years and go straight to a specific point in time. Others backtrack and introduce the younger years in a later chapter if it makes sense to do so. But again: you don’t have to start at the beginning. Well, where should you start then? Finding a poignant point that will be able to give your readers a good sense of what your memoir will be about and the tone of the entire work can be a challenge, but there are a few writing exercises my college writing professor taught me that might just be able to help you locate your beginning and all of the pivotal points to include in your memoir. The key: answer the writing prompts listed below within two pages. This will help you tailor which details are important, and which ones aren’t.

1. Describe a decade of your life, 10 full years. From 18-to-28 years old or 30 to 40 years-old, you choose. See what you consider to be the most interesting moments in that time frame.

2. Describe a time where you were forced to dress inappropriately.

3. Describe your most embarrassing moment.

4. Describe a time you had to apologize for something you did not do.

5. Describe a time when you knew you were about to get in trouble.

6. Describe an obsession or an addiction, something you have to have.

7. Describe the reason for the last time you shed tears ( or the last time you laughed).

8.  Describe some personality or physical traits you inherited or passed on that you’re proud of (or perhaps ashamed of).

9. Describe your biggest lie

10. Describe something you own in excess

11. Describe truth, something you can’t deny

After writing these prompts, it’s important to see what you have—are there any aha! moments or golden treasures that you might’ve found by digging deep in the time vault? Pay close attention to minor details you described and see if any of them sound like a good starting part for your memoir.

Does anyone have any other tips?

Lauren Bailey is a freelance writer for the education website www.bestcollegesonline.com, although she her true passion is autobiographical writing. She aspires to have her own memoir completed within the next year. She welcomes your comments.