Cherry Pop Magazine || Issue I || October

Apricot Advice Corner

Hey guys! Mary here! In the following months, I will try my best in giving you some great advice. I thought this month's article could be about how to start your first book. It may just be me, but the love is my favorite season. It is filled with leaves, sweaters, pumpkins, and sometimes romance. When romance is around, it is almost too difficult not to start writing a book on what you experienced. Every season is filled with inspiration for writing and I'm here to give you a few tips on how to turn your ideas into a story.

Starting a new book can be hard and it sometimes fills you with fear. When I start a new book, I usually start asking myself many questions. Will my readers like it? Will I even get readers? What if they hate my after the book? What if my plot is too cliche? But have no fear, Mary's Advice Corner is here! Now, let's get on to the tips :)

The first tip for starting a new book is creating a plot. To avoid writer's block, I usually plan out my book in Google Drive or whatever you use. You want to include where the story takes place, how old the characters are, what the characters look like, etc.

Next, I suggest working on your writing. If it's your first time writing, you will want to work on it before actually publishing anything. Maybe give a fellow Wattpad friend a sample of your work and have them look over it. I have done it a million times and all have found a slight glitch in my work. It never hurts to have someone look over your work, which leads me to the next tip.

Get some to critique your work! I can not stress this enough. If someone told me to find another person to critique my work, I probably wouldn't be cringing at my oldest works here on Wattpad. So, GET A CRITIC!!!

You can start writing at any age you want, I'm not telling you otherwise, but it would be wise to wait until your writing has matured and your vocabulary expands. Me personally, I have trouble with speech and learning new words, but I did wait till I was thirteen to start taking my writing seriously. Between the book I have just recently published and the two I wrote about a year ago, my writing has improved drastically.

Now here are some shockingly simple pointers that a lot of people just don't get.

1. Starting small will help you a lot more than you think. It's not so stressful and, at least for me, keeps anxiety down

2. Have an outline. It is so much easier to write a whole story when you don't have to think what happens next. You can just peek at your notes and easily type out a quick chapter

3. Set a writing schedule. If I started this from the beginning, I wouldn't apologize in so many of my chapters. DO IT! It helps so much in getting your chapters done and published on time

4. Have different surroundings every time you write. New surroundings will keep the creative juices flowing through your mind and most likely help you produce exciting chapters

5. Embrace failure!!! I can not stress this enough!! If I knew when I first started Wattpad that the reads weren't just going to fly in, I would have dozens on books up on my profile. Right now, I only have three. I was embarrassed and freaked out at my lack of reads and my failure. But writers don't start out the best. They grow. DON'T BE AFRAID TO FAIL!

I hope these tips helped you and you follow a few. Comment what kind of advice you would like to see next month :)

-Mary