My New Website Is Ready!

Hey friends!

My new website is officially live!

I’m pretty happy with it. An Introvert’s Pen is dedicated to exploring and celebrating the craft of storytelling. It’s full of cool articles and story starters meant to help and inspire writers. But I won’t spoil it all now. You can find my new internet home here.

*exhales.* I suppose this means that I’m wishing GabrielleRPollack.com farewell. *sniffs* You guys have made this blogging thing crazy awesome. I wish you all the best in your writing journeys and hope to see you on An Introvert’s Pen.

Gabrielle R. Pollack

Random Note About Subscription Stuff: I am sharing the posts from An Introvert’s Pen through a newsletter instead of with the WordPress subscription system I use on this site. Sooooo, if you would like to keep up with my new website (and get free writing prompts and a writerly newsletter) sign up here.

Farewell for Now

Hey guys!

I know the title may have panicked you a little, but don’t worry. I’m not giving up blogging permanently.

Just for a little while.

I have important blogging-related decisions I need to make and changes I must research. Though I love posting each week, it takes up a bunch of time that I need to organize and learn.

That said, I won’t post again until the second or third week of November. 

I’m going to miss you all. You guys have shown me such amazing support, and I appreciate it so much! I hope that this break will improve my blogging abilities so I can bring you guys even better stuff.

Thank you for understanding, and I hope you have an amazing October. 🙂

Gabrielle R. Pollack

My 9 Somethings for September

Hey friends!

I hope life is treating you well! My month was a rather calm one but not without its quirky happenings. 🙂 Welcome to my 9 Somethings for September!

Something Related to Writing

I’m done with Ridgeline!

*yells from the rooftop* *dances in the rain* *throws glitter that sticks to my wet hair*

This story is one of the most natural books I’ve written yet. I outlined but didn’t force myself to stress too much over scene structure and theme, like I’ve done before. There’s a bunch of issues (it’s the first draft, after all), but I’m still thrilled with it. 🙂 The current word count is 68,757.

I also had a major breakthrough regarding Rook’s new book, Ceasefire. The story had been missing a certain something I couldn’t name, but when a new idea hit me, the whole thing came to life. 🙂 Was I brainstorming when I should have been writing Ridgeline? Maaaaaybe.

I’m planning on writing Ceasefire during Nanowrimo. 🙂

I had two articles published on SE this month!

Don’t Let Pressure Kill the Joy in Your Writing and How to Use Details in Action Sequences. *beams with pride*

Don’t Let Writing Be Your Identity

Hey friends!

Over half a year ago, I published this piece on Kingdom Pen at the start of the new year.  As a Christian, it’s still a struggle for me to remember my identity lies in God’s grace, not my writing, so this article is still something I deeply relate to.

That said, I thought I’d tweak it a bit and share it with you today. 🙂

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Fiction writers are extraordinary people. They slave away at their craft, earning their talent through years of hard work and endless dedication. They pour emotion and soul into their manuscripts. Their stories naturally become a part of them.

As fallen artists, we often associate our identity with our work. We don’t realize it, but we attempt to measure our value by the quality of our writing, our place in a certain writing group or stereotype, or the approval of readers. Misplaced identity grows harmful thought patterns that drain our joy. Writing becomes a drain, not a labor of love.

Harmful Pattern #1: Comparison and Jealousy

This is a trap many writers, myself included, fall into without a second thought. We read the work of others on a regular basis, whether we’re critiquing, beta reading, or casually flipping through the pages of a book. Sometimes the characters are extremely vibrant, the settings practically breathe with life, and the themes leave us speechless. We unconsciously hold another writer’s product beside our own work-in-progress. Our characters whom we adore suddenly seem mediocre at best, flat at worst. Our settings are cliché and our theme is only meaningful to us.

You Know You’re a Fiction Writer #4

Writing is a solitary craft, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to relate to others (especially other writers). That said, here are 18, “You know you’re a fiction writer” statements I hope you can connect to (and perhaps laugh at 😉 ). 

You Know You’re a Fiction Writer…

1. When you pity your characters at the start of your story because you know what they’ll go through later,

2. When you thought writing was for introverts but realize in order to sell books, you must meet lots and lots of people,

3. When you are one of the most unproductive human beings to ever stare at a computer screen,

4. When you pause at stop signs for an extra second or two because you have to document an idea before you drive on,

5. When you steal your friend’s phone to text yourself ideas because you don’t have yours within reach,

6. When you write something like, “The people were depressed because they were sad” and realize you should have picked another career,

7. When you write something like, “He walked into the room with the stride of a man wishing for death and the broken nobility of a dethroned king hiding behind his eyes” the next second and wonder if both those sentences came out of one brain,