Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Setting goals for the New Year is a great thing to do! First things first, though. Before we set new goals we should intentionally reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re at. Both the reflecting and the goal setting are equally important. Let’s start with goals for a second. Goals are vital for accomplishing things. We’ve talked here about goals before and how they help us move toward what we want in life. Goals help us make plans and do more than otherwise possible. We can use our goals and plans to turn our dreams into reality. But how do we even know what we want? How do we narrow down the millions of possibilities in the world? And  how do we balance  out our writing goals with the other aspects of our lives? We need to stop and reflect on our priorities. At the very least we should be taking our physical and mental health into consideration. Taking time to reflect helps us identify how we’re doing. We need to know where we are so we can make a plan to get wh...

Many writers put the pro in procrastination. But is that always a bad thing? Procrastination for Writers Procrastination and I are old friends. My house is never so clean as when I have other things I really should be doing. Phone calls to make? Suddenly I’m organizing the house and clearing out old stuff I haven’t looked at in years. Have big important life decisions to think about? Instead maybe I’d better wash the dishes, schedule my dentist appointment, and take out the compost.  Yet I’m also really passionate about setting goals. And I’ve found that the best way to actually accomplish results is to create work habits and stick to them (no matter how many other things I think I should be doing instead). So what gives? Being all gung-ho about goals and my writing schedule has helped me accomplish far more writing than I ever thought possible. But life doesn’t always fit into schedules.  Sometimes our writing time gets interrupted. The season of life is just crazy ...

Strong story structure is what holds our stories together. It doesn’t need to lead to formulaic or weak stories, instead gives our stories the strength and emotional resonance with our readers to be even more powerful. So far in this series we’ve looked at the hook, inciting incident, key event, and midpoint of our novel. We’re closing out Act 2 and moving toward our climax. It can be tempting to speed forward and skip to the end… but we’re not quite ready for that.  First we need a moment with our character at a crossroads. What is the Crossroads There are several crossroads that happen within our story. A crossroads is when our characters will face difficult choices and need to make hard decisions. One such moment is as we transition from Act 2 into Act 3. Act 2 ends with the stakes higher than ever. We’ve just come out of our midpoint and things don’t look good and they certainly don’t look easy.  Which is what makes this crossroads so important....