One of the skills of a talented writer is to look at common daily occurrences and find depth and meaning behind them.
To find a hidden beauty, understanding, and most importantly... a story.
Whether we notice or not, our life experiences carry over into our writing quite significantly.
It would be impossible not to be so.
There’s a character who acts suspiciously similar to your Karate instructor, a villain’s hideout that looks awfully like your elementary school, and the main character’s inner battle has a lot of overlap with the difficulties you are going through in your life right now.
Taking inspiration from your life is only a bad thing when you are using it as a replacement for your lack of creativity.
Creative writing without creativity isn’t a story. At least, not a good one.
But when you don’t use your life experiences as replacements for creativity, but instead use them to add personal heart, depth, and knowledge about things only you know and feel, your story can be greatly enhanced.
In the final month of The Library of Lost Memories Contest, we will be uncovering...
Using Life Experiences for Writing
Maybe you have felt betrayed in your life. And in the story you are currently writing a character gets betrayed.
While writing the how what the character is thinking and feeling through this betrayal, you can tap back into the emotions you felt when you were betrayed and that scene in your story will feel so much more authentic and heart-wrenching.
As you are channeling your own personal emotions into your writing.
So in this final month in The Library of Lost Memories, we explore more of how we can take advantage of our experiences for our stories.
Per usual, here is the steps on how to do that:
1. Find a story you are interested in
2. Find the what inspiration the author took from their life to write the story
3. Write and submit an article on it!
This is an opportunity to learn more about how authors utilize their own experiences for their writing, and what we writers can learn from them to improve our own writing.
If you want access to submission guidelines, a mini article writing guide, and other article prompts, click here!
It will seriously help you along your article writing quest.
Here is a quick video where I cover exactly what this theme of the month entails and an example of what kind of article we are writing this month:
Step-by-Step Directions
For submitting an article for this theme of the contest
1. Click HERE to sign up to receive this and future month's article prompts, a mini article writing guide, and submission guidelines
2. Open the email from KP with Google doc Link
3. Click the link and choose an article from the list you'd like to write
4. Research and write your article following the KP Guidelines
7. Send your article to Kingdompensubmission@gmail.com along with your bio, and an optional profile picture (Deadline For June's Theme of the Month: June 30th)
8. If your article is accepted, apply Google Doc edits within a week after edits are suggested
9. Celebrate and look forward to the day your article will be published!
FAQ
Here's a little FAQ for any questions you might have!
Is there a certain amount of articles you need to submit to participate in the contest?
Not at all! You can submit as many or as little articles you'd like. They will all count towards the contest.
When does the contest close?
July 1st, 2022. So you have April, May, and June to write and get accepted for publishing.
Does the theme of the month mean the month the articles are written, or the month the article are published?
The month the articles are written!
So right now it's April and the theme of the month is Memories of Old. This means you write your articles related to the topic of Memories of Old in the month of April.
And if the article you wrote gets accepted, it will be published the following month.
Do I have to write an article based on the article prompts provided?
Not at all! They are just there to help you out a bit if you are unsure what to write about.
If you have article ideas you want to write about that aren't on the article prompt sheet, go ahead and write and submit them! Just be sure to follow the KP article guidelines on the submissions page!
How do I know if my article will be published?
Within 48 hours, you will receive an email saying that we got your article and it's under review!
And within a week, you will get another email saying whether or not your article is approved for edits and publishing.
If you are accepted, there will be suggestions and comments on your google doc page with edits that need to be applied.
Once you apply the edits, you will get one last email saying the date your article will be published!
And that's it! This is the finale of the contest, so let's not let it end without a fight! Let's push our creativity and writing skills to the test with this last month.
How have you taken inspiration from your own life for your writing?
Let me know in the comments!
Become an Unstoppable Writer!
