NaNoWriMo and Me!

NaNoWriMo and me. Sounds ominous, like a showdown at the OK Corral. In a way, it is. NaNoWriMo can trigger a deluge of creativity, or show you just how much time you can waste fiddling about, waiting for a good idea to emerge.

I am a NaNoWriMo novice. I found out about it two years ago, but was too nervous to enter. I thought everyone knew what it was, until so many of my online and writer friends kept asking me why I was now secluded in a mysterious project with a funny name.

To quote the website: “National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word (approximately 175-page) novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30.”

Sounds easy? Wait, there’s more!

More from the website: “The very first NaNoWriMo took place in July, 1999, in the San Francisco Bay Area. That first year there were 21 of us, and our July noveling binge had little to do with any ambitions we might have harbored on the literary front. Nor did it reflect any hopes we had about tapping more fully into our creative selves. No, we wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands. Because we wanted to make noise. Because we didn’t have anything better to do. And because we thought that, as novelists, we would have an easier time getting dates than we did as non-novelists.”

Novel idea (no pun intended).

By 2012, they had a huge(ish) organisation, zillions of participants worldwide, an office and a website, and masses of publicity. Not bad for a fun gig!

The rules are simple:

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.

• Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).

• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!

• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.

• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.

• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

Helpful tips include:



Eat lots of chocolate!

• Begin procrastinating by reading through all the great advice and funny stories in the forums. Post some stories and questions of your own. Get excited. Get nervous. Try to rope someone else into doing this with you. Eat lots of chocolate and stockpile noveling rewards.

• On November 1, begin writing your novel. Your goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, local time, on November 30th. You write on your own computer, using whatever software you prefer.

• If you write 50,000 words of fiction by midnight, local time, November 30th, you can upload your novel for official verification, and be added to our hallowed Winner’s Page and receive a handsome winner’s certificate and web badge. We’ll post step-by-step instructions on how to scramble and upload your novel starting in mid-November.

That’s it in a nutshell. So, how am I doing four days over the halfway mark? I have written a grand total of 31 949 words! I have no idea how to capture a screen image, but here it is in figures. The amazing little calendar on the side of your NaNoWriMometer works everything out for you (no more calculators) and at the end of each day’s writing, just log it into the cute convenient boxes.

Your Average Per Day: 1,681

Words Written Today: 0

Target Word Count: 50,000

Target Average Words Per Day: 1,667

Total Words Written: 31,949

Words Remaining: 18,051

Current Day: 19

Days Remaining: 12

At This Rate You Will Finish On: November 29, 2012

Words Per Day To Finish On Time: 1,505

So, I am ahead, just a little bit. I did not do any writing today (see note further down about malevolent fates) so I HAVE to catch up tomorrow to get back onto schedule. I have never written like this before! No more dabbling around tweaking here and there. One is expected to forge on, relentlessly like a juggernaut to complete the final words—THE END— on 30 November.

The organisers give you loads of gadgets, badges, goodies, and help. They also give you regular pep talks, too. Along the lines of:

1) It’s okay to not know what you’re doing. Really. You’ve read a lot of novels, so you’re completely up to the challenge of writing one. If you feel more comfortable outlining your story ahead of time, do it! But it’s also fine to just wing it. Write every day, and a book-worthy story will appear, even if you’re not sure what that story might be right now.


Nervous writers should plan in advance.

2) Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December and beyond. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it’s hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn’t. Every book you’ve ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.

3) Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

3.5) There will be times you’ll want to quit during November. This is okay. Everyone who wins NaNoWriMo wanted to quit at some point in November. Stick it out. See it through. Week Two can be hard. Week Three is much better. Week Four will make you want to yodel.

And we’re talking the good kind of yodeling here.

Pep talkers include Neil Gaiman (Coraline), Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries), Sue Grafton (Alphabet murder series), Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus), Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Lemoney Snickett (A Series of Unfortunate Events), and loads of other awfully clever and famous people.

Audrey says: “National Novel Writing Month was a chance to jolt your story onto the page, to use the magic of a deadline to whap out your novel. Now that it is December, I hope you will kick back, have a cup of coffee, reread your 50,000 words, ponder a bit, and then… go for a walk. And on that walk I hope your novel will unclench itself in your brain and let you begin the long, slow, delightful work of rewriting it.”

I started with a great, big, whopping over 4000 words on day one. Wow, I thought, I’ll be finished by next week. Alas, it doesn’t work like that. Somewhere along the line, all sorts of malevolent fates conspire against you, the writer. All sorts of domestic problems or necessities, like shopping, (What happened to the food I bought last week? You ate it?? Why????) just intervene in a most annoying way. In the past, I would have carried on, and not sought to make up the word count I had missed. Aha! Suddenly I had to catch up what I had neglected.

No mistake about it—NaNoWriMo makes you work. I’m loving it!

5 Easy Steps to Better Writing

John Yeoman has a novel approach to writing—he suggests a lazy 5-step program to improving your writing. Lazy? LAZY???? Does the word even feature in any dedicated writer’s vocabulary? Aren’t writers supposed to slog all hours that God gives in order to squeeze out some creative scribblings that may or may not be the next Amazon bestseller? I must admit, I feel guilty if I miss a day of writing. I read the phrase “It’s like having permanent homework” somewhere and it’s true. However, John has some very good advice in his article, which I have reproduced here with his kind permission.


A Lazy 5 Step Program to Make Your Stories Glow
Yes, and a thousand writing mavens on the web will hustle to reveal it to you. Truth is, there’s only one formula that succeeds, time and again. And here it is... the 5-step program that most top authors use, although they’ll rarely spell it out for you.

#1. Don’t be afraid to write dross: We’ve all heard that we must write every day, and it’s true. But what shall we write? Perhaps we’re developing a story or novel. We know where it should be going, but we’re stuck for words. Solution? Write garbage. And write it fast.

Drop in the first phrases that come into your head. Your object is not to write great literature—just to get that wretched episode finished! There’s no point in playing word games. Not just yet. Probably you’ll junk that whole episode anyway at the final ‘cut’.

Amazingly, the garbage approach works. We have no problems going back to a page of rubbish and, with an amused sigh, editing it into something sensible. Writer’s block? Forget it. There’s no anxiety in this approach so our mind stays calm. We can hack out 1500+ words a day, without pain. Make it your goal to draft total nonsense for an hour. How can you fail? You can then have fun improving it later.

#2. Study television dramas: Now you have a great excuse for watching television. Study how the actors in sitcoms and soaps behave. Every five minutes, somebody will insult, distress or romance somebody else. Watch their faces, lips, and body movements. Also hear how their voices change. Jot it all down. True, the actors overact. But you could use that body language, toned down, in your stories.
Also take careful note of every ‘scene hanger’, the way an episode closes. Maybe it’s an unresolved question or note of alarm. That uncertainty will tease us into the next scene, even across a commercial interlude. Adapt those scene hangers and you’ll soon have a wealth of ways to link the episodes in your own stories, so the reader stays hooked.

#3. Act as a walking tape recorder: Christopher Isherwood inspired the phrase ‘I am a camera’. It described his work. He had reproduced, without judgement or interpretation, what he actually saw and heard in post-war Berlin. You can do that in conversations that you overhear. Take a discreet note of every colourful turn of phrase. Folk say the most amazing things that you would never be able to invent for yourself.

Okay, we know that ‘real’ people do not speak the way they do in books. But you may be amazed at how often people fail to complete a sentence, or reply to a question, or even speak coherently at all. Almost all communication is done ‘between the lines’. If you get that sub-text into your stories, your characters will seem ‘real’.

#4. Find something boring to observe: Boring? Yes. Here’s a wonderful way to make a walk productive. Stop at random, wherever nobody can see you. And just look. Are you staring at a shop window? A poster? A car-filled motorway or a placid park? And is the scene boring? That’s wonderful! Why? Imagine what a child would make of that scene, if they had never seen it before but possessed an uncanny gift with words. A bare brick wall becomes a magic landscape. A mundane street is an adventure to be explored...

Write a description of that scene, using all the five senses—as if you had never seen anything like it before. And pack all that sensual detail into one sentence. Now is not the time to be lazy. Use words that precisely convey the uniqueness of that moment. In effect, write a haiku.

True, this is a tough exercise. How can we describe, say, a graffiti-covered wall in words that make it fascinating? But it’s the key skill of a great writer. Master it and you’ll be able to ‘switch on’ this habit of perception instinctively.

I once had lunch with a popular UK author. ‘Look over there,’ she said. ‘Who?’ ‘The man with a face like a pork pie.’ She was describing her publisher, who had just entered the restaurant. I wager that phrase found its way into her next novel (if not her conversation with him). Point is, she couldn’t stop herself using colourful phrases, even in casual observations!

#5. Acknowledge that your story will never be perfect: Can you write a perfect story? Of course, not. Nobody can. Even Shakespeare’s plays have lines that make no sense at all, even to scholars. (Perhaps he was drunk...) Point is, you have to re-write a story at least a dozen times before it’s fit to present to anybody, let alone a publisher.

One painless way to do this is: get your story as good as it’s ever going to get (you think). Then drop it into a closet for a month. Drag it out and try not to laugh at how bad it has become, all by itself. That wonderful paragraph you spent hours on? Dross. And why do your characters drone on, and on...

The ideal time to re-write a story is when it has spent a year in limbo. Of course, you can’t afford to leave a story on the shelf if you write for a living. Professional authors have to make do with getting their work 80% perfect and letting their agent and copy editor tidy up the rest. Still, everything they submit will have gone through the ‘closet’ process a good many times.

Yes, there is a sure-fire formula for writing stories that succeed. It’s the one above and it has been around since stories began. Of course, no formula will work unless you have some writing talent. If you have, it’s just a matter of developing good habits, like those above. It's how every pro author started...

John's free book How to Win Story Contests for Profit and free 14-part course in story writing for the commercial market can be found at:

http://www.writers-village.org/writing-ideas.php

I selected this post to be featured on Book Blogs. Please visit the site and vote for my blog!

Writer's Block: Imagined or Real?

Writers block: does it exist? Anyone who has ever experienced it will nod their head vigorously and say yes, of course it does. Other writers will smugly say they have never experienced it. There are differing viewpoints on exactly what one should call the phenomenon of when ideas grind to a halt, plots get stuck, and why one just can’t seem to move the action or the characters forward. Advice to Writers offers some interesting viewpoints of writers from Toni Morrison to H.G. Wells to Irving Stone on what they consider to be writer’s block and what to do about it. Some are very amusing.

Whatever one does or doesn’t like to call it, many authors get to a point where they’ll do anything except sit down and write their book. Carrie Lofty, a romance writer with a passion for history, has a new take on an old problem: it's called 'fiddling' and when writers don't want to write, they fiddle. Let's hear it from Carrie who has the solution to the writer’s habit of ‘fiddling!’

Are You a Fiddler?
By Carrie Lofty

I like to think that I've been writing romance since I was 13, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. Although I finished a romantic screenplay at that age, I wouldn't complete another work of romantic fiction until September of 2006. In the interim, I wrote a series of fantastic, incomplete 100-page attempts. Some didn't even make it to 100 pages. I might finish a few chapters, or a chapter … or a scene.

To say that I hit a wall would also be inaccurate. I've never had writer’s block. After all, the ideas were always there. And that was the problem! I would dive headfirst into a new idea only to be distracted, a few days or weeks or chapters later, by a newer and shinier one. My husband threatened to stop listening to my writing discussions if I changed stories again.

This carried on until that fateful summer in 2006 when my husband flew to Virginia for an internship. I stayed behind in Madison, Wisconsin with our two daughters, who were then aged two and three. I wanted desperately to finish a novel so that I, too, could have a career that would take me around the country. And more importantly, I wanted to prove it to myself that I could finish. I couldn't stomach the idea of being a wannabe who always talked a good line, but never actually finished their “some day” novel. What I had been doing was obviously not working. I would write a chapter—then print it out, eviscerate it, revise it, reread it.

In essence, I was a fiddler.

After the initial burst of inspiration wears off and the hard work of actually finishing a 300+ page novel begins, hesitant writers are left with only one recourse: to fiddle. Revising, creating note cards, reading craft books, rereading—all of these can be useful skills and techniques, but only if they are used productively. I was using those same techniques to delay. After all, it looked like I was working!

I believe it stems from fear. The new, bright, shiny, beautiful idea in your head can be an intimidating muse to live up to. While first drafts are messy and unwieldy, the idea in your head looks more like a polished novel or a big-screen movie. The contrast between those two—what you’re attempting to create and what you imagine—can be so dissonant and daunting as to cause a fatal case of fiddling. It's fatal to your chances of finishing a book, that's for certain.

How did I break the cycle?

I started with a very reasonable goal. I would write 1000 new words every day. No matter what. Rain, shine, cyclone—no excuses. The first night was the hardest. I wanted to go to bed. I wanted to give up, go back, and mess with what I had already written. But I persevered. After days of practice, and then after weeks of success, those 1000 word slogs began to add up. I finished my first draft in 88 days.

Granted, revising the sucker took four months. I was still learning, and that first draft was truly horrible. But I had done it. I had finished my thought. I had resisted the urge to fiddle. What's more, by the time I typed “the end,” the beautiful bright-and-shiny idea that I'd started with didn't glow quite so fiercely. It didn't hold as much appeal. I had moved the flawless “one day” idea out of my head. Now it was a tangible “that day is now” novel. My sense of accomplishment and pride was far outweighed by distress about how many revisions it still required.

So…are you a fiddler?

Do you have so many ideas, all of which you hope to get to “some day”? Do you often start a project, only to abandon it part way through in favor of a newer, better idea? Do you obsess about research and character backgrounds, or reread and revise chapters—all to the detriment of producing new words?

Then I would suggest that you need an intervention. Set yourself a small, reasonable goal to produce new words every day. No matter what. Do not reread what you wrote the day before. Once you’ve filled up your pages, you can go back and fiddle to your heart’s content. And if a new, fantastic idea comes along, use it to motivate yourself into finishing this idea first.

That’s my take. I hope you glean wonderful things from it. But just like eating healthy or exercising or quitting smoking, the real impetus to make lasting changes in your writing habits begins with you.

Carrie’s witty and observant reflections on life can be found at her website and if you’re fascinated by historical romance that takes risks, then check out Carrie’s latest book Scoundrel’s Kiss (and enjoy!).

Some Top Advice

Alan Rinzler (Consulting Editor) has a great post that suggests perhaps one of the reasons you can’t finish that novel is because your plot is not clear. His advice is simple and clear: get your outline right.

Matthew Stibbe (writer in chief at Articulate Marketing) suggests that concentrating on writing will get you over your hurdles and offers 22 ways for staying focused on your writing.

Have you overcome your writer’s block? Got any great suggestions? Please let readers know.