Hailey Hudson, Author at Craft Your Content - Page 2 of 3

All posts by Hailey Hudson

writing fiction and nonfiction

What Fiction and Nonfiction Writers Can Learn From Each Other

As a kid, I loved writing fiction—long, rambling, imaginative stories that didn’t have much structure. So when I took freshman comp in college, I got a rude awakening. An essay? With a beginning, middle, and end? Where I had to stick to the facts? I was in over my head.

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Every Writer Should Do Blackout Poetry… Here’s Why

It was a steaming hot June day on Main Street in a tiny north Georgia town, and my friend and I were in a used bookstore, browsing, and touching, and smelling to our heart’s content. She picked up an old book and said, “I’m going to buy this to make blackout poetry.”

I’d seen blackout poetry on Pinterest before, and I had only a vague idea of what it was. I nodded and kept browsing.

When we finished shopping, we went back to my friend’s college dorm to sit on her floor and draw. It didn’t occur to me until she picked up a paintbrush what she actually intended to do. I watched in fascination and horror as she confidently covered nearly an entire page in black paint, somehow leaving a beautiful poem layered with meaning from the page of a children’s storybook.

Blackout poetry is an unorthodox art form: You open a book and scan a page, looking for any words or phrases that catch your eye regardless of whether they’re connected. Then you use a marker or paintbrush to fill in everything except those words. The result might look something like a letter from WWII, with text redacted by a censor.

Once I got over the feeling that I’d be condemned forever for taking a paintbrush to a book, blackout poetry became my new favorite thing. Here’s why it’s a great activity for professional writers who may have lost their love for language in the 9-5 workday.

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creative networking methods

3 Creative Networking Methods Writers Need To Try

“Networking” is a red-letter word for many writers. Often, it invokes the image of a writers’ conference or cocktail event, with strangers standing around eating hors d’oeuvres and making small talk—which is a scenario many introverted writers want to run from (after all, there are reasons we work from home, right?).

But networking comes in all shapes and sizes, which is good, because it’s an essential ingredient for the success of any professional writing career.

The idea of networking is simple: You create and sustain as many relationships as you can in the hopes you’ll get some work from these relationships down the road. And it’s really not as scary as it sounds—networking is as simple as making friends!

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When Life Happens: A Totally Doable Morning Routine for Writers

You’ve probably read dozens of them—articles with titles like “Morning Routines for Writers,” “Daily Habits of Successful People,” or something else along those lines. They’re full of great advice that would probably enhance your morning if you followed them to a T.

But those articles assume a lot: that you’re healthy, have money, and can afford to take your time in the morning. Think about it—who actually has the time, money, and motivation to get up at 5am, run six miles, and then grab Starbucks every single morning?

Professional writers are busy. We’re trying to cram in blog posts and 1,000 words into our novel and answer all the emails in our inboxes, all while managing families, houses, possibly a non-writing job, and whatever else life throws our way.

At first glance, a lot of the advice in this article may seem like something you’ve read before, but take a deeper look. For each piece of advice, I’m going to give you a variation that’s faster, easier, and much more realistic, so you can still feel like you’re accomplishing something in the morning even when life happens.

Because, as we all know, it does.

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