Bethany Henry: Writing & Wellness

Certain stories are passed down from generation to generation: they are read to children at bedtime, assigned to classrooms, and selected at book clubs. These stories become favorites, cultural touchstones, and classics for various reasons. Maybe it’s the characters, the scenery, the groundbreaking ideology, or the plot. Something resonates with the readers and makes the story powerful. And not only do these stories get read and reread, but they are also retold! Retellings of these classic stories is a giant genre despite taking a hundred different forms. These retellings can be fun, powerful, and  tricky . Today we’re going to look at how to we can write these stories well. Why Retellings Are Fun I love retellings of classic stories, particularly Shakespearian though I’ve enjoyed a few Austin adaptions recently as well. And of course fairy tales are always fun. Okay, okay, so I love them all 🙂 And I’m not the only one who has a soft spot for retellings! There are several reasons ...

Descriptions are a vital piece of writing. We are storytellers, after all, and that means we need to show our readers what’s going on, pull them into the world we’ve created, and evoke emotions and connection. Description is a large part of how we do that. Despite being vital, it’s not actually something all writers (including myself!) are naturally very good at.  Like many things, improving our description-writing game can take some work. Which is why we’re here today, so hold on tight because we’re going to cover a lot of ground! This guide will go over why description writing can be hard, 10 techniques for writing good descriptions, 3 pitfalls to avoid, how to describe characters, and a few practice prompts. Writing Good Descriptions: Why It’s Hard If writing descriptions is easy for you, pay no mind. (In fact, please let me know your secrets!) But for the rest of us, you’re not alone. Sometimes writing descriptions- even really simple ones- can feel extremely difficult. Everyon...

New year, new goals, fresh starts . What do you want to do this year? Who do you want to be? What do you want to leave behind? I’ve been rethinking goals and priorities and it’s both challenging and refreshing to contemplate changes. What would it look like if we could shape our lives how we wanted to? What would be an ideal situation for our writing and creativity? Throwing pesky things like “real life” aside… what would we do if we could do anything? We don’t need to keep things the same as they’ve been before or try to match certain expectations… while these can provide guidance at times, sometimes it’s valuable to take a step back and brainstorm with a blank page ahead of us. Dreaming and dreaming big is important for helping us realize what we care most about and what we may want to focus on. Obviously real life does exist which is why along with our writing goals we should also keep self-care, time management, and things like boundaries in mind. ...

The end of the year is approaching and I hope we’re all taking a bit of time to rest and reflect. These may be simple practices but they are so important! And they also prepare us for looking forward. There isn’t anything magical about goals that are set on January 1st but it’s a decent time to consider what we’re doing and why. Goals can be powerful ways of identifying our priorities and focusing our attention. With that in mind, today we’re looking at questions to ask when looking back at the past year as well as a few prompts for the year ahead. Reviewing Where We’ve Been 10 questions to ask about the past year: What has gone well? What has gone not-so-well? What have we felt fulfilled by? What or who has encouraged us? What has drained us? What would we like to do better? What do we want more of? What did we not get a chance to do ? What went according to plan? What surprised us? Looking Forward To What’s Next 4 prompts for the year ahead: What 1-3 tasks are the most important thin...

Last week I talked about the importance of reading for writers and the various types of benefits books can have. Which got me to thinking about what I’ve been reading lately and what’s on my to-read list! Hopefully we will all be getting a bit of time over the holidays to do some reading, right? Let’s make this happen! Here are some of my reading lists for you to enjoy and hopefully feel inspired by 🙂 Bethany’s Reading Lists Best of the year: Since 2021 is drawing quickly to a close I suppose it’s the perfect time to look back on a years worth of reading! I was lazy in my record keeping and only counted 67 of the books I read- the real number is higher. Overall I read a wide range of books with a maybe more than average amount of fantasy novels. Based on no specific formula, here were a few of my favorites: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown I read this book slowly over the entire year- there is so much in here! And every bit of it is gold. This is a book to buy, to wri...