Novelist

Fiction Writing Journal and Workbook (Review)

If you’re a hands-on person and you’re starting from scratch as a newbie writer or you need to capture and organize all your random thoughts and scribbles to prepare to write your next novel, then Robin Woods’ Fiction Writing Journal & Workbook is meant for you.

Fiction Writing Journal & Workbook by Young Adult author, Robin Woods, is organized with a reasonable, progressive flow to construct your novel, yet it’s easy to navigate back and forth between sections to suit your writing approach.

It’s full of all kinds of writerly information, graphic organizers, worksheets, and plenty of room for journaling to get your novel up and running.

So …

I recently decided to quell a trilogy plan I had been working on for a while that accompanied the current novel I’m querying. (Yep, I’m still hanging in there.) Instead, I am pressing forward with a sequel that can function as a stand-alone by branching a new love story from two minor characters in the first novel. In other words, I’m going with a two-part series.

My reasoning for this big change is because the premise for the third novel is just too exciting to keep it waiting, and the guts of the second novel could, with a little nip and tuck, easily serve up an overall better plot if I use that premise as the inciting moment and just move on.

Enter Robin Woods’ Fiction Writing Journal & Workbook.

It happened to be a happy accident that I was ready to delve into making sense of my independent sequel (is that even a term??) simultaneous to my long-time friend offering me a free copy of her workbook. Yes, you read that right, we’re friends, for, like, decades.

So …

Instead of just reading through the informational parts of the workbook and blasting an unbiased review all over the Internet once I’d finished (no doubt garnering some eye rolls and tsks or wonderings about whether friends ever really give friends ‘honest reviews’), I thought I’d show how I actually used the workbook and prove why I give it the maximum stars.

You see …

I have all these colorful spiral notebooks—a stack of them to be exact, and they have all kinds of disorderly information in them that, when pulled apart and mixed around, make perfect sense to me. Character studies, setting notes, plot points—you name it—and somewhere in my stack of madness there might actually be a method to this budding new sequel I want to pursue.

In addition to my teetering stack of stuff n’ stuff full of all kinds of random this n’ that I have accumulated over the last year, I also have lots of tidbits on my iPhone in the Notes App full of my thoughts-on-the-go, and I even have two Word Docsx outlines I had once planned for the trilogy plus oodles of rough draft writing to boot.

In other words, I’m hands-on and all over the place when I prepare to write. I just am.

And …

I was in need of a singular place to vet and compile before typing everything up into a functioning outline because I was dying to get this WIP rolling in the right direction.

Can you see how it was destiny? My mess and Robin Woods’ workbook were made for each other.

I was not kidding when I said BIG stack.

HUGE.

Just look at it. ———————————>

All kinds of random going on in that mess. Two books’ worth of ideas that I needed to boil down into one poignant, romantic plot …

… Then this happened.

I found this workbook satisfied my need to write things down in a journal. Don’t get me wrong—I love using my laptop for all parts of the writing process—but this workbook helped me scratch that itch to put pencil on paper, so that I could compile my final outline. The fact that it has everything I need in graphic organizers to help me reel in the stack of madness makes this workbook the bomb.

Here’s a peek at the table of contents to give you a better idea of what the book contains to help you organize your future best seller:

Robin Woods’ website, http://www.robinwoodsfiction.com, also contains lots of helpful information for writers of all genres. She’s a YA author of The Watcher Series and has six novels and one work of non-fiction under her belt. Definitely, check out her site, and, if you like a hands-on approach to organizing your fiction ideas, her book is the tool you need.

Pen and Paper: Journaling Love

When I was eleven, I scribbled out my first novella, I’ll Never Be the Same Again, on loose leaf paper and tucked it into a binder, forever creating my own destiny. I love writing. WRITING, not typing–I like typing, don’t get me wrong, and I happen to be fast at it–but writing, oh my, I get like a shark about to take a bite out of life…my eyes glaze over at the aroma of the crisp, fresh pages of a journal, and I feverishly tear into it with endless amounts of words.

I was that girl throughout school that rivaled Harriet of Harriet the Spy in every way, meticulously documenting everything that was happening to me every moment of the day–each glance I would capture in passing down the hall from the crush I’d have while on my way to the next class or all of the juicy details of the gossip my friends would share over lunch in the cafeteria. I was a “Dear Diary,” kind of girl for years and years. I also started plotting out and writing scenes for a full-length novel before I could even drive a car. I would write ideas down on anything I could get my hands on–gum wrappers, receipts, napkins–you name it. I even penned hundreds of poems and short stories, all by hand. Sadly, all of my stories starred my friends and their crushes, so I would let them keep them, and I never made second copies, so I’ve lost those first aspiring love stories, but all of the journals are still in my possession, locked safely away in storage, and someday, when I feel the muse coming, I’ll add YA (Young Adult) Romance to my types of genre that I write.

When I received my first word processor, my handwriting lifestyle changed. I gave into the lime green glow of the words and veered away from the handwritten means of self-expression. It was clunky and squealed out awful noises, but it made school a little easier, and seeing my words in print without having to type them on the family typewriter that had sticky keys was heaven-sent. It wasn’t until I actually graduated from college with my BA that I received my first computer. Yeah–I’m that old, just turned 44 last month, actually. This new computer of mine was too slow for the internet, but the word-processing capabilities allowed me to begin another novel along side the one that I had completely outlined and written scenes for in high school. A hundred or so pages into the new novel though, I upgraded the operating system, and I lost the book. I stopped writing for a while altogether in my dismay. When I finally came around again, I went back to good ol’ fashioned pen and paper until I owned a ‘real’ computer and another and another and…

I still journal in between bouncing writing around all of my Apple devices–my desktop, MacBook Air, my iPhone, etc. I’m covered when I have something to say. I no longer have to rummage through my purse for a gum wrapper like the good ol’ days of my youth. And, I still journal. In fact, my aunt-in-law blessed me with a new journal for Christmas that has a picture of my young daughters on the front cover along with the words, “Brooke’s Journal,” and, by the end of the day, those crisp, fresh pages had lured me in, and I had filled several of them up with an outline of a new Romantic Comedy novel that I plan on turning into an eBook once it’s written just to have “Indie Published” under my belt as a writer.

There’s something special about the pen and paper. I’ve even studied graphology a little bit–the way people write revealing how they feel, what their personality is like, and who they are hidden in the curlycues of their writing. My penmanship is atrocious. Even I can’t read my writing sometimes. It’s very loopy like an endless string of smiley faces, and it comes as no surprise to me that when analyzed it means that I’m open, positive, always moving forward, and generally happy. Yeah, that’s about right. I can easily go into a rage like any impassioned writer could, but overall, if I’m writing something down to be analyzed, it’s likely that my eyes are glazed over with the joy that comes with handwriting anyway and capturing that thrill in my scribble is bound to happen.