Happy New Year friends! I can’t believe it’s almost 2018! Where did the year go? And where have I been? Holy-you-didn’t-blog-for-months-Batman!

It’s true. I’ve been distracted.

I took a job teaching 9th and 10th grade English at a local high school and BOY-OH-BOY I have mad respect for teachers. This job is HARD!

I want to be making more videos and blogging … but alas, my weekends are filled with stacks of homework to grade and lesson plans to create.

The struggle is real.

In order to make 2018 completely awesome, I’ve made communicating with my FABULOUS writing community (all of you) one of my New Year’s resolutions!

To kick things off, I just posted three new Ingrid’s Notes videos that I made over the summer and never posted. Yesssss!!!!

We may be surrounded by winter’s chilly weather right now, but we can all dream about summer as we watch these videos which were filmed on-location at Lake Powell in the blazin’ hot sun. You know you always wanted to hear me ramble on about midpoints while I float around on an inflatable donut …

Midpoints video: What do you do when you find yourself drowning in the sea of act two? Let me tell you about the screenwriter’s best kept secret — the midpoint — and how it can re-energize your manuscript and help your novel stay afloat.

How Stories Affect Us video: It’s naive to think that stories don’t affect the reader. In fact, they are incredibly powerful in teaching us how to be human and how to live. They create our belief systems. But how can stories also trap us and keep us in a negative spiral of indecision and inaction? In this video, I talk about the power of stories and how they manifest our realities.

Handwrite Your Novel video: You can handwrite your novel while on vacation in Lake Powell. You can write anywhere. All you need is a pen and paper and a sense of adventure. Plus, fun photos of Lake Powell in this video!

I hope your 2018 is ready for you and all the creative awesomeness you’re bringing to the table.

Stay awesome. Keep writing. And make this the best year yet!

Hugs,

Ingrid