The Writing Sampler

By Bryan Cohen

Sometimes we don't need to read an entire book to get the gist of it. Even skimming the surface of a non-fiction book may be enough to get our butts in gear as writers, artists and other creative people. Bryan Cohen has written multiple books that have sold over 2,500 copies between them about writing and motivation.

The Writing Sampler is a collection of excerpts from these books, giving you a little taste of each one. It also includes a collection of other essays about writing, motivation, happiness and even making money leading to over 29,000 words of helpful tips and tricks to get you started in your writing career or just to get you out of a rut.

The book includes excerpts from: 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More; Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life; 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade; and Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job.

The author hopes to give you just enough of a taste to inspire you as a writer for a lifetime. With several writing prompts and forward thinking ideas, this book can quickly push you past your writer's block and into the published future!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryan Cohen
• Release date: Jun 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458042484

Bryan Cohen

Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor, director and producer who enjoys dabbling in both theatre and film. Bryan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art with a minor in Creative Writing. He has written or co-written the plays Chekhov Kegstand, Something from Nothing, Kerpow! and The Morning After. He founded the website Build Creative Writing Ideas in late 2008 and he currently serves over ten thousand users a month. Bryan is a full-time freelance writer and he currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Book preview

The Writing Sampler

By

Bryan Cohen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Bryan Cohen on Smashwords

The Writing Sampler

Copyright 2011 by Bryan Cohen

Discover other books by Bryan Cohen:

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34347

Sharpening the Pencil: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50078

500 Writing Prompts for Kids: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50319

Writer on the Side: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52955

Smashwords Edition License Notice

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Table of CONTENTS

Introduction

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More

Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life

500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade

Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job

May 2011 Blog Tour

About the Author

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Introduction

I am a big believer in giving people cheap and practically free stuff, especially when it comes to information. Several motivational writers of the past like P.T. Barnum (you know, the circus guy?) made sure that his work was public domain so that anybody could read his tips and tricks about life for free. While I’m not quite ready to enter the public domain quite yet (I might wait until I can purchase my first elephant), I am interested in giving people an inexpensive sample of my work to get a basic grasp on my writing and my philosophies.

The Writing Sampler is a sneak peak of all four of my books on writing: 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More, Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade, and Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job. If you own one of those books, you will be getting a look into the basics of the other three. If you’ve never heard of me before, then this is your chance to try before you buy.

I wouldn’t call myself an expert in the field of writing motivation, but I’m definitely a student into the destruction of writer’s block. When a writer is having writer’s block, it’s typically easy to see why. It could be the result of emotional turmoil, a malnourished stomach, an unhealthy dose of fear (which I would say is 90% of all writer’s block), or any number of temporary conditions. I personally believe that all temporary conditions like these can be demolished by taking care of yourself in one or a combination of different ways.

Prescriptions for Writer’s Block

Here are just a few of my recommendations for particular types of writer’s block.

Fear: Face your fears by doing what it is that terrifies you about writing. Repeat once a day for thirty days.

Sadness: Focus on the people and things in your life that you are grateful for. Think about your own positive qualities. Smile, laugh and repeat.

Low Energy: Eat some fruits, vegetables and raw nuts to keep yourself fresh throughout the day.

Lack of Ideas: Try out a few of the prompts in the two book excerpts in this volume.

Distractions: Remove yourself from the distractions. Continue writing.

Most of these prescriptions are relatively obvious. Which means that the real way to get through writer’s block is: step back, identify the problems, use your brain and then listen to your brain. If I had followed this simple advice when I left college, I might have written a dozen books by now. Thankfully, I stumbled upon it through extensive reading, listening and other types of learning. If you are thick-headed like myself (which is an apt description for me, just ask my friends and loved ones) you may need some more convincing.

The Top 10 Ways to Use These Books

Here is a little Top 10 list of what I hope you’ll be able to do with The Writing Sampler. Even if you only use these samples of my books on writing to do one of the ten methods listed, I think that your writing might be better for it. While I don’t have a fancy celebrity reading this list, like David Letterman might, feel free in your head to put these words into whatever celebrity voice you wish.

1. Take an Idea, Run with It

This Sampler contains over 60 prompts from my book 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More. My hope with these prompts is that you read one of them that can inspire you. I once received a message from a writer who took one prompt and wrote 20 pages right off the bat. I’m not saying you’ll be as fortunate, but one idea can quickly lead to others until you have an avalanche of thoughts rumbling down the hill and onto your page. Let me think of the first idea for you with the prompts and then you can do as you wish from here on out.

2. Come up with a Goal or Goals

I include a good chunk of my goal chapters from my Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job and Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life here in the Sampler. Why is this topic so important that I discuss it in two of my books? In short, having clear, positive goals dissolves writer’s block. Goals provide a direction that can push you past procrastination and fear, the two biggest obstacles to consistent writing. Use the tips and tricks in the Sampler to both create and implement these goals.

3. Create Writing Drills

To become a writer you need to write. If you’re out of practice the first thing may not be to enter into lengthy, tiring writing sessions. You may want to wade into the shallow end of the pool by devising a few writing exercising. Try writing for 10 minutes with one prompt each day for an entire week. The following week, try upping the ante to two prompts and 20 minutes and so on. Of course, you don’t have to solely use the prompts to create these exercises. Sprinkle them into your drills as you see fit.

4. Write with Kids

This book includes around 40 prompts from my 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade. In that book, I suggest that parents and teachers try writing along with their kids using the same prompts. This inspires a sort of monkey see, monkey do effect, helping your kids to enjoy writing because they see their mom, dad, teacher, older sibling or guardian doing it. Writing with your kids gives you something to talk about and share together. Also, if you set a time to do it every day or several times a week, it trains both of your brains to get into that writing mindset. If you don’t have kids of your own, you can write with a niece or nephew or a student that you tutor.

5. Create a Challenge

I love setting large, seemingly impossible goals for myself to achieve. A few months ago, I set the goal of writing 2,000 words a day for the entire month. I didn’t allow myself to take any days off, including the weekends. While some of the days were tough, the benefits of this challenge, which included finishing off three separate books, were indispensible. Try setting a challenge for number of words, how many minutes you write, how many days you write in a row or something similar. You can use the prompts for this purpose or you can use some of the other exercises within for goal-related challenges.

6. A Writing Purpose

In my book Writer on the Side, I talk about how the next logical step up from setting a goal is creating a purpose. Personally, my writing purpose is to inspire others from my words to help them to push back any blocks they have created for themselves in their lives. Your purpose might be to create engrossing adventure novels so that people enjoy them. You may want to create a wild, imaginative world so that children will be encouraged to read. Whatever purpose you choose, it is very important to choose one.