One Third NaNo Check-in

Since today is a nice even number, thanks to our decimal system, as well as a nice even fraction of the month, I thought it a great time to check in on that frantic writing beast that is NaNoWriMo.

This is a pretty critical time in the life of a NaNoer. There are three main possibilities of where you are at, and I’ll look at each of those and the way forward.

1. You’re behind (<16,667 words). This may range from lagging a bit (say, 15kish) to “oh gods what am I doing” (say, 0) or anywhere in between. You’re probably frustrated about being behind. You thought you were going to slay the great NaNo beast, and instead it’s kind of kicking your ass. You may be thinking about giving up—you may have given up already! But in any case, things are not hopeless! Even if you are in our “oh gods” category, you could hit 50k by writing 2,500 words a day from here on out. That is completely doable. Besides, chances are you’ve written more than zero words, so 2,500 per day is the absolute, worst case scenario. Now let’s say that you’re in the lagging category, sitting right around 15k words. This could be a potentially more dangerous zone, believe it or not. You’re only 1 day of words behind. There is absolutely plenty of time to catch up—and you know it. So stop telling yourself that you’ll catch up later. Remember, the end of November tends to be busier than the beginning for a lot of people. Catch up now. No more excuses, you are within striking range!

2. You’re right on track (16,000-17,000 words). Good job! You likely have a schedule and a plan and are sticking to it. Maybe you hit exactly 1,667 every day and are chugging along. Maybe you’re a bit more erratic, but every few days you make sure you hit that goal line. Maybe you just had one really good day on November 1! In any case, you’re on track. Keep doing what you’re doing, but beware of burnout. You haven’t left yourself any margin, so you need to be good about sticking to your plan/schedule. But don’t worry too much, pat yourself on the back, and keeping NaNoing strong.

3. You’re ahead (>16,667 words). Congratulations! You’ve been a whirlwind of writing for the past 10 days. Maybe you want to finish early enough to enjoy Thankgsiving pie in peace. Maybe your personal goal is >50k. Maybe you’re just so in love with your new novel that it demands to be written and you must comply. You probably don’t need much advice, but I’ll just caution you against resting on your laurels. Building up a buffer so that you can enjoy a weekend off is great, but when that weekend stretches to 2 weeks…just remember, you haven’t won until 50k! (I mean, officially. I think anyone who participates has won!)

So there we have it. No matter if you’ve written 0 words or 49,999 words, your November writing adventure can end in that elusive win—or not. It’s up to you, and I have full faith!

 As a bonus, here is a pep talk I made a couple years ago, in case that sort of thing helps you. Happy NaNoing!

In a Month?!?

As the leaves change and the weather cools—at least in theory, somewhere, because it’s sunny and upper 70s here in my paradisiacal home!—there are a lot of big events coming up. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Veteran’s Day, etc. etc. But one that looms large in the writing world is not just a special day or religious event (well, maybe the latter!), it’s an entire month dedicated to consistent and/or feverish writing. Yes, my friends, I am speaking of the dreaded/anticipated NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know, NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is a time when writers pledge to produce 50,000 new words during the month of November.

There are a lot of diverse opinions out there about the benefit, utility, and enjoyability of NaNoWriMo, and I won’t go into those here. If you’re not interested in NaNoWriMo, just know you are not alone and have a nice day. =) If you are interested, keep reading! (For the record, I myself am not doing NaNoWriMo this year. For one, it has never helped me produce usable work, and for two, I need to be editing not drafting right now.)

NaNoWriMo can be intimidating, especially for a first timer. A first draft in just a month?? Please. Don’t I have like, a life? (Answer: Not during NaNo!) So let me offer a little advice, heavily grained with salt since I am a multiple-time participant and zero-time winner.

1.       Don’t switch it up TOO much. NaNo is great for shaking you out of a rut or bringing new ideas to fruition. It can be a great time to play around with new formats, new plots, new genres even! But if you take on too much—remember, you are writing 50k words, which is a challenge on its own!—you can face disappointment, burnout, and failure. If you’re going to try a new genre, maybe use your favorite and most comfortable POV/tense. If you’re going to experiment with a new format (e.g. an epistolary), maybe stick to your normal genre. And this is a big one—I really really don’t recommend switching up the base of your routine. I, for example, am an outliner. And probably much farther to the outline side than most people. Last year I decided to pants NaNo! Because NaNo is fun and I wanted to try something new! Yeah. It didn’t work. My plot went nowhere, I fizzled out after 12k words or so, and it soured me on an idea I’d been wanting to write for years. So. Change up some things, but don’t change up everything!

2.       Don’t get lost in the community. Writing is often a solitary, lonely pursuit. One of the great things about NaNo is the amazing sense of community. You can see it on Twitter, on the NaNo forums, and anywhere else writers like to congregate. You can find write-ins where you actually write in person with other real live writers! (I’ve never done one but always wanted to.) Gaining access to a new network, making new writing friends, and expanding your circle can all be great benefits of NaNo. But they aren’t the heart of it. So enjoy the forums, offer condolences and support and ideas and receive them in return, tweet your heart out, but do that after writing, not instead of it!

3.       Do celebrate your milestones. I know I just said that the heart of NaNo is to write 50k words, which is true. But 50k is a hell of a lot for most people to write in a month. Maybe you only get 25k. “Only,” I should say, because 25k is awesome. Is it more than you would have written otherwise? If so, pat yourself on the back, admire all those new words, and don’t get down on yourself.

4.       Don’t rush. Okay this one is not quite NaNo, but more post-NaNo. NaNo can be a time of great productivity. You can get so excited about your shiny new manuscript that you forget an important fact—publishing is a long, slow process. Writing a first draft in a month is a great way to shorten that timeline (it would take me about 4-5 months to write 50k on average when working on a first draft), but it’s still only a first draft! For one thing, 50k is generally too short to be pitched as a novel. For another, you just wrote that in a caffeine-fueled haze of inspiration and determination—you aren’t going to see it clearly. Set it aside, work on something new, and make sure you do your due diligence in revising before you even start thinking about agents (or small presses or self-pubbing)!

5.       Do remember the other 11 months. As stated, publishing is a long, slow process. If you write a 50k rough draft during NaNoWriMo, then pat yourself on the back, put up a winner’s badge, and sit back to enjoy some time off until the next NaNoWriMo…well, you’re not going to get anything but a pile of rough drafts. If that’s what you want, then great! Seriously, writing for yourself is awesome and I commend it. But I think most of us have goals of publishing and an audience, and that is going to take more than 30 days of feverish writing a year. So if you’re getting so burned out by NaNo that it’s going to wipe out the next several months of writing for you, don’t be afraid to take a deep breath, set it aside, and do what is right for you! 

Some NaNoWriMo resources:

• Special Scrivener offer: Get a free trial version of Scrivener until Dec 7 (longer than the normal 30 day trial). If you win NaNo, you can purchase for 50% off—even if you don't win, you can still get it 20% off. Lots of writers swear by Scrivener!
• It's not too late to plan your novel! I love Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method. It's a great place to start, and it can help you have a rough outline ready in only a couple hours.
• There are a lot of word count apps out there, but I happen to love good old Excel. There are lots of great spreadsheets out there (just Google "NaNoWriMo spreadsheet"—easy to update to 2014 as well), but one of my favorites is this one made by NaNoWriMo user jodotha. Or you can make your own!
• If you're more of an analog type, try this printable calendar. There is something deeply satisfying about taking a marker and crossing out boxes as you go!
• One Page Per Day is exactly what its title promises. You can sign in with your Google or Twitter account and receive reminders to do your daily page. If you get intimidated by blank Word docs, this could be a great tool for you to break it down into manageable chunks.
• When/if you get stuck, Plinky offers prompts to get those creative juices flowing.

These are just a few of the many tools out there that can help you get through NaNoWriMo. But the writing itself is still on you! Luckily, I know you can do it—or at least enjoy trying.

Good luck!

August...September...October...damn...2013?? Wrap-Up

Okay, so...yeah. It's been forever. I know. I set up a repeating to-do on Todoist for a blog post, and every day I get a reminder telling me how overdue I am. I am now up to 102 days overdue. Oops.

In my defense (and because, fuck, no one reads this anyway), I had a lot of shit going on. After 1.5 years of 3000 mile long distance, my boyfriend and I moved in together here in San Diego. I had to find an apartment for the two of us, and then I flew out there to help him with the drive here. Then moving in. Considering I just put my artwork up on the walls two weeks ago, a blog post was not so high on my list. Not to mention holidays, weddings, and a vacation to Kaua'i to ring in the New Year.

Not pictured: Me thinking about writing. At all.

So, having been so long absent from the detailings of drafting and editing and gnashing my teeth, what has the result been?

Well. I did finally finish the first draft of novel 6. Huzzah! That was my goal back in July, but I didn't actually finish until October. Still, that was the goal I set last January for the year, so it's a pretty big deal to me. Also, it meant that I had November free to start something new. Yup, I attempted NaNoWriMo 2013! I failed, by a lot. Total words was only 12,256. All in all, that's a horrible NaNo but a great normal month, so I think it was a successful experiment. Unfortunately, I was also attempting to pants. I am not a pantser, and I realize now what a mistake that was. It means that my work on that idea has come to giant halt, because the story is just all over the place, and I have no idea what the next step is.

2013 had some ups and downs for me, and it ended on a long down for productivity, but since it was the year I finished novel 6, I am going to count it as an overall success.

Total in 2013, I wrote 69,969 words. I wrote those words over 90 writing days. Last January, I said I thought it would take me another 70k to finish the draft (I was about 13k off due to some words being for different projects, but close), and I hoped to have 86 writing days. So suck it, 2013. You tried to defeat me, but I did it!!

Looking forward into 2014, I hope to average at least 100 words every day, with 40k as my goal for the year. I hope to write at least 129 days this year (a 50% increase over last year's goal). And, most importantly, I want to sell or be close to selling novel 6 by the end of year. I plan to be done with my re-writing and editing by the end of April, and I think that gives me some time to get some serious eyes on it and some offers. Is 2014 going to be the year? We shall see...

NaNoWriMo 2012: You Can Do It!

I wanted to make a post about NaNoWriMo. (On a side note, how is it time for NaNo again? I swear this just happened--where does the time go?!) I am not attempting this year. I know I wouldn't be able to make it, and setting an unreachable goal is worse than useless. It actually just makes things worse. So I've set my own goal for the month (10k, not quite on track but still determined), but I want to let the real NaNoers (NaNites?) know that they aren't alone.

Because I had some time on my hands (okay, yes, I was procrastinating my own writing), I made a little pep talk video:

Here are the twitter accounts I mention following: Jon Winokur, Daily Writing Tips, Fuel Your Writing, and Dictionary.com. (And, of course, my own twitter!)

You can find a library near you, or of course just stick to Starbucks. Venti decaf skinny vanilla latte with extra foam, anyone?

Whatever form inspiration and perseverance take for you, I wish you all the best of luck with NaNoWriMo or any of your other writing goals this month!

NaNoWriMo

As October winds down, I find myself facing, yet again, the Big Question--to Nano or no? I've attempted NaNoWriMo before, but I've never been too successful at it. I find that it's no different than my usual self-motivation. The impetus to write copious words dies after a few days. Then I get disappointed in myself...and that's just a vicious cycle.

On the other hand, it might be a good chance to get a new novel kicked off. As I'm approaching the finish line for Novel 1 (okay, so I've only finished 5 chapters of the 18 chapters in the 2nd of at least 3 drafts--it's more done than not done!), I want to get working on something new. I'm thinking something scifi, as I've been in the fantasy mode for a while. I have a few ideas, but nothing that's really chomping at the bit to get going. So Nano could be a good chance to force a new draft into gear. But it could also fizzle and make me hate yet another of my ideas, as happened during my last two attempts.

Not to mention that most of my month of November will be spent doing a rather exhausting exercise for work. So I guess I won't be even fooling myself into thinking I'll Nano this year. Instead, I think I need to focus on finishing this draft before moving onto my next project. I've never been a good multitasker!