I am delighted to welcome to the blog today a dear friend of mine, Jennifer Wilson. I met Jen at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School a good few years ago now, and I loved her historical Kindred Spirits series. Today, however, we’re talking about her nonfiction A Novel Approach series.
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Hello Liz, and thanks so much for hosting me as part of the Black Friday Sale!
I am delighted to share that the first three ebooks in my A Novel Approach Series are just 99p/c today, and for the remainder of the weekend.
The series of books came out of a series of workshops I held about six years ago now, which I hosted at North Shields Library, where I also run North Tyneside Writers’ Circle, a monthly writing group, and the origin of many of the prompts shared in the series.
When Lockdown hit, and any chance of in-person writing groups or workshops vanished for a while, it was a real blow to our group, but I did my best to keep things going online for a bit, keeping prompts going and so on.
It was during those early weeks that I realised my own creativity had taken a slump, so I decided to turn the series of workshops I’d run into a non-fiction book of the same name.
That one book then inspired me to write the second and third books in the series: 31 Days of Writing, and (originally!), 31 More Days of Writing, both filled to the brim with prompts to keep writers going, mostly taken from the prompts I’d shared with the group over the years.
This year, I decided to challenge myself even further, and write a prompt for every day of the year, in A Prompt A Day. It certainly was a challenge, but by going back through all my old notebooks, and my own writing, I think I’ve come up with a nice range of stretching prompts, which can work for writers of any style or genre, whether poetry or prose.
That fourth book in the series is released on 1st December 2025, and I’m really looking forward to the launch!
To give your readers a taste of the prompts you can see in A Prompt A Day, here are five of them, and don’t forget, there are PLENTY more in the book itself…
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A popular trope in story-telling is to make somebody ‘a fish out of water’, putting them in a situation utterly alien to them. What situation would make you feel like this? Write about the emotions you would likely feel, and how you might cope (or not).
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Have you ever thought about the relationships between writers and their characters? Write a letter from a famous character to their creator. Are they happy? Complaining? How might the author respond?
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Write a set of instructions, as a recipe or ‘how to’ guide, for a daily practice, such as making tea, but make it beautiful, as though creating a piece of art, or important ritual.
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Write an advert! The twist here is that the advertising text should be for something abstract, nothing you could actually buy in the world today, for example peace, love, or revenge… How might a company sell their product? Who is their target audience?
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Think of a situation in which you have felt powerful, at any scale. Describe that moment in your writing today, capturing the feelings that were going through you, as well as the scene in which the moment was set. Bring it alive.
I absolutely love creating writing prompts, and hearing the various directions different writers take it in. I know you’ve run a range of workshops too, over the years, and there’s something almost magical about seeing a room full of people scribbling away at a prompt that you’ve set them. Even more fantastic for me is when I then turn up to a local spoken-word event, and hear the kernel of a writing prompt that I know I’ve given out at Circle, and see what the writer did around that. Sometimes, you hear hints of it at the workshop, when people share their work, but hearing the final piece, with editing and thought applied over time, is just so encouraging.
Anyway, I hope that if your readers do take advantage of my Black Friday Sale offer, they find themselves inspired to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and that the words will flow for them.
Happy writing!
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Thanks so much, Jen, and best wishes for your forthcoming launch! I shall be sure to preorder today, and you can do so too, just click on the cover image below.
If you’d like to follow Jennifer, you can do so through these channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifercwilsonwriter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifercwilsonwriter/
Website: https://jennifercwilsonwriter.wordpress.com/
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