Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Hello my dear writers and readers! It’s been a quick minute since I’ve written last and I hope you’re all doing well! And I hope you’ll all join me in enjoying these beautiful liminal days between the Christmas chaos and the start of the New Year! <3 It’s so important and valuable to take time to breathe (it really is vital!), and this space is the perfect time to regroup, look at where we’ve been, as well as look forward to where we want to be. Where I’ve been: It’s been a busy year my way! As I’ve mentioned before, my life has gotten a bit busier schedule-wise with a new job and responsibilities! Plus my kids are getting older which means I’m trying to keep up lol. But we’ve been settling into new grooves and so now has been a good time to reevaluate priorities and shake up habits that maybe aren’t the best fit anymore. Where I want to be: This year I’m practicing flux goals! In the past I would set daily or quarterly goals that were fairly static- however I’ve been experimenting ...

Sometimes I feel like I’m learning the same lessons over and over again. The cycles and seasons of life keep turning and there is always more to learn, do, discover, and re-learn all over again! It can be important and oh-so-valuable to lean into these truths and reminders of things we’ve learned before. Today we’re looking at four important truths for writers- and, in fact, for everyone. These are reminders to help us be living a healthy, balanced, productive, and happy life. <3 As writers, we want to write well. But it’s also important that we live well, both for our writing’s sake but also for our own! Our life is our creativity garden, our well that feeds our writing. We need to care for ourselves if we want to live a sustainable practice of creativity and not burn ourselves out. Here are four reminders to be caring for ourselves, which can cultivate and protect our creativity. 4 Life Reminders:  It’s Okay 1. It’s Okay To Say No Boundaries are important. Somet...

In case you missed it, I recently had the privilege of guest posting over at  The Novel Smithy . The Novel Smithy is a great community of writers with lot of helpful info, resources, and things happening! Non-Western Storytelling My guest post spends some time overviewing a few  Non-Western Storytelling models , which was a super interesting topic to dive into! So check it out if you haven’t already gotten the chance! I hope you have a great weekend wherever you’re at today. Happy writing and wellness to to you! 🙂 Originally published October 6, 2023 on Bethany-Henry. com.

Today we have the great privilege of having Lewis Jorstad with us to share about how to use the Hero’s Journey to outline our stories. Lewis is an editor and book coach who also leads the thriving writing community over at  The Novel Smithy . Without further ado- take it away, Lewis! Outlining an Epic Adventure With the Hero’s Journey Deep down, outlining a novel is my happy place—and the hero’s journey is one of the best tools for planning an epic adventure. Whether you’ve traditionally thought of yourself as a planner, or lean more on the pantsing side, there’s a lot of value in outlining a novel (even just the basics). It gives you space to step back and test your ideas, puzzle through tricky plot holes and questions, and build confidence that your story will work. It’s a powerful way to mitigate writer’s block too. When you have a map of your novel’s key moments, it’s a lot easier to keep moving forward when self-doubt creeps in. But, why outline with the Hero’s Journey? Though...

Today we have the privilege of having Deborah-Zenha Adams as our guest to teach us a bit about how we can use the concept of chakras to add depth to our fiction characters. Looking at chakras as a way to build characters is a new concept for me and I’m thrilled to explore this topic further! Without any further ado, take it away, Deborah! Finding Your Fictional Character’s Energy Motivators By: Deborah-Zenha Adams How an ancient philosophy of energy can help you create better characters It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing, characters are the lifeblood of your story. No matter how perfectly-plotted, tightly-structured, and wildly creative your story is, readers might not stick with it if the characters are hollow, bland, or just plain unbelievable. You get that. We all get that. Characters must be well-rounded and fully-realized, with both positive and negative qualities to make them realistic and relatable. So why do our characters still sometimes ring hollow? More importantly,...

Earlier in the month we took a look at the importance of crafting satisfying endings to our story. Today we’re backtracking a bit to look at the story’s start! The first page (and often the first sentence!) of our novel needs to hook our readers and introduce them to our story. It is  critical  that these initial paragraphs catch the readers’ attention and keep their interest. Once they read past that first line, the next few pages play the important role of setting up the story, introducing our main character, and at least hinting at a problem. Each piece of our story should keep the reader interested (and reading). Today we’ll break down strategies for crafting our first sentences and then look at how to structure our first pages. Note: Most of this work is best done during the revision process! We don’t need to get it perfect right away. It doesn’t make sense to agonize over the word choices of our first sentence in our first draft if it’s just going to be changed...