Tag Archives: Nanowrimo

Eight Things NaNoWriMo Writers Should Do Now

November 30, 2015 9:02 am ,

Eight Things NaNoWriMo Writers Should Do Now

It is November 30. And that  means …

Congratulations, NaNoWriMo participants!

You made it!

Before I go any further, let me set the record straight for anyone not familiar with the term NaNoWriMo.

Here is what it is not.

It is not the ghost of Robin Williams invoking Mork from Ork language.

It is not baby talk for I Don’t Want To.

It is not a term of endearment for a grandmother.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, in which thousands of determined writers attempt to bang out 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November.

To all my writer friends partaking in the challenge this year, I hope you found it to be rewarding. It is no easy task to write that much in one month.

I know from whence I speak since I was a NaNoWriMo participant last year and hit my 50,000 words. It took a lot of time … and a lot of discipline.

But in the process, I realized that you don’t have to hit 50,000 words to be successful. Even 1,000 should count as a success.

If you wrote more in November than you have in any other month, give yourself a pat on the back. Congratulations!

Last year, the day after I completed NaNoWriMo, I shared 10 NaNoWriMo Tips for Writers based on my experience. But as the days unfolded into weeks, I felt a little lost now that the structure of the writing challenge had ended and I was once again on my own.

With NaNoWriMo now over, what’s the next step? When I was in your place last year, I asked for advice. Of course, you will decide what works best for you. But here are some tips that were shared with me.

And whether or not you participated in NaNoWriMo, these are good tips for all writers.

NaNoWriMo is over. Walk away.

Put your manuscript to bed for a bit of hibernation. You’ve written a lot and you’ve been consumed for a month. You can’t be objective about it right now. Walk away and let it marinate for a couple of weeks or even longer. In the meantime …

Work on a different project.

Don’t let your writing chops languish while your manuscript does. Keep the energy going with something else.

Start to craft an elevator speech.

This will be important down the road as you pitch your book to agents and publishers. The value of doing it now is it helps you evaluate the components of your story. Is the plot strong enough? Are the characters multi-faceted? Does their motivation make sense?

Work on a second draft but understand this won’t be your last draft.

The cognoscenti advise NaNoWriMo-ers to write, not edit, and hopefully this is what you have done. The idea is to let the 50,000 words flow without worrying about how good they are. I was fairly appalled at how bad my first draft was and I think many NaNoWriMo’ers feel the same. That’s OK. Your second draft will be better, but not as good as the third.

Broaden your characters.

You may have done character development before you even started to write. That is what is recommended. I did not do that. My characters threw some curve balls my way and that helped me better define their personalities. I think even if you have planned out the wazoo, your characters will still evolve over the course of writing.

Think as a reader.

As you go through the editing process, try to think as a reader, not a writer. Do your chapters end with a cliffhanger or at least an incentive for you to continue reading? Is there enough action, pathos, drama or mystery? Is there extraneous jibber jabber that can go away?

Keep writing.

Don’t stop now! You won the race but the marathon is not over yet. The speed at which you progress is up to you, but don’t give up. A year later, my manuscript is now at 70,000 words. I am still on the second draft.

Talk about your work.

I haven’t shared my manuscript with anyone except for an editor yet, but I do talk about it if people ask. I can gauge the general interest in my story with their response. It also keeps me accountable.

So writers, carry on. You should be proud of your effort and commitment. Good luck with the next phase of your writing!

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A Checkup With a Developmental Editor

March 25, 2015 10:29 am ,

I once wrote a post comparing writing a novel to baking bread.

Now that my first draft is written, I can also compare it to giving birth after a verrrry long pregnancy.

And now, I realize that a round of editing by a developmental editor is much like a baby’s checkup at the pediatrician.

So, if you’ll bear with me through this metaphor, here is a summary of my baby’s first doctor visit:

Scrutinized by critical eyes, my baby was gently weighed and measured. A stethoscope was held to my baby’s heart. The pulse was strong. Eyes and ears were checked. Notes were written on a progress chart.

I breathed a sigh of relief when my baby was pronounced healthy and ready for the next phase of growth.

A Checkup With a Developmental Editor

Yessir, that’s my baby. My novel, that is.

My novel is a work in progress now, not merely a figment of my imagination. I kind of took a leap when I participated in NaNoWriMo last November to get the ball rolling.  I reached my goal of 50,000 words knowing that this was just the beginning.

Every writer has his or her own method, and I’m not the most organized person in the world, although I try hard to be. So in preparation for the month of intense writing, I did … nothing.

I didn’t outline. I didn’t develop my characters. I had an idea and started to write on November 1. My goal was to write about 2,000 words a day. And, to my surprise, the words came easily. I reached the 50,000 word goal line with several days to spare.

The upside to that was my story flowed in unanticipated new directions. The downside was that I got lost in a thicket of too many characters and plot lines that went nowhere and chronology that made no sense. I needed a road map. Hell, I needed a forest ranger who could lead me out of the brambles into the clearing.

I reached out to my writers’ circle and got hooked up with a very good developmental editor to whom I entrusted this wildly flailing bundle of not-yet joy.

What is a developmental editor?

A developmental editor will take an overview of your manuscript and assess the organization and big picture, and then suggest changes to make it work better. I knew I needed this help because I was too close to my work to be objective.

From the time I hit Submit til today, when I received her feedback, I tried not to think about it too much, because when I did I dissolved into a pile of insecurity. I guess I really must be a writer now, because that insecurity kicked in big time.

A Checkup With a Developmental Editor

I felt insecure about my story, about the caliber of my writing, my chutzpah in even thinking I could write a novel. I was open to criticism of the book. I just didn’t want to be criticized as a writer.

I didn’t want her to tell me to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And she didn’t.

Instead, she had examined my baby with extreme care and thoughtfulness. As I read her extensive notes, I nodded in affirmation. Yes, yes, yes. This is exactly right. With her checklist of suggestions to guide me, I feel confident heading into the next phase working on Draft #2.

My developmental editor will remain nameless, but someday her name will be front and center in the Acknowledgements section at the end of my novel. That visual makes me smile.

For now, thank you, thank you,  nameless developmental editor. And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do.

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How to Bake a Novel

January 29, 2015 11:36 am ,

Baking and writing have some similarities, it occurs to me as I plug away at my manuscript.

I bake, I write.

For me, both have been passions and creative outlets since as far back as I can remember. After all, I did proclaim “books is wonderful” at the tender age of four, and years later would make that the name of my blog.

And baking? To this day, each time I bake bread I am transported to my childhood and my maternal grandmother.

How to Bake a Novel

Nana lived clear across the state, so her visits to our house were infrequent and highly anticipated. After giving us big hugs at the door, she wasted no time in changing out of her travel dress to her “house dress” and, on top of that, an apron that she tied around her waist.

And then she got to work.

Her mission? To supply us with enough baked goods to last until her next visit. Clearly, there was nothing commercial that could compare to her bagels, onion rolls, coffee cakes and mandel bread. We shouldn’t have to be deprived. And did we protest? Of course not.

Her week-long bake-a-thons filled the house with continuous sweetness and and yielded enough goodies to take up most of the room in our full-size freezer.

Watching her in action was awesome, but I wanted to be part of the production line. “Let me help,” I begged, and she obligingly gave me a turn at kneading the bread dough until my arms got tired. When the dough had risen and was ready to be formed into loaves, she tore off a glob for me.

Together we would bake “gingerbread” man – ginger-less, of course – plucking off pieces of dough that I rolled out with my little rolling pin. I smoothed them out, gave them symmetry, rolled and re-rolled and pinched and prodded, poking in raisins for eyes and buttons. After the gingerbread men had baked and cooled, Nana made a thin icing out of confectioner’s sugar and water that we piped on for a final flourish.

This is pretty much what I’m doing now with the novel I started during NaNoWriMo last November.

The NaNoWriMo sages tell you that you shouldn’t worry about creating a masterpiece during the 30 days of writing. Rather, the goal is to “get it down.” That is, get 50,000 words in your manuscript. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

In the end, like a glob of bread dough, you will have something to work with.

And that is what happened. I made my bread dough.

Indeed, my 50,000 words did not have the smoothness, the elasticity of a well-kneaded hunk of dough, the perfection needed to move onto the next step. It needed a little of this, a bit of that, and then another bit of this.

As I wade through the morass now, I am smoothing out the phrases that didn’t make sense, prodding and prompting a better description of my settings and characters, garnishing a scene with a gloss that makes it shine.

It can be both frustrating and exhilarating, depending on the quality of my ingredients. So each step of the way I have to inspect. Be critical. Make changes to get it as perfect as it can possibly be.

And when I know I’ve hit on something just right– just like when my bread dough rises perfectly — it is immensely satisfying.

How to Bake a Novel

I know that Nana would understand exactly what I  mean.

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10 NaNoWriMo Tips for Writers

December 1, 2014 10:06 am ,

Goodbye Thanksgiving, goodbye November, goodbye NaNoWriMo.

And hello to my novel!

NaNoWriMo Tips for Writers

I did it. I wrote my 50,000 word novel last month, a hugely gratifying experience for me. To  everyone who participated — whether you reached your goal or not — congratulations on putting in the work.

This was my first time doing NaNoWriMo. My preconceived ideas turned out to be wrong. It was not stressful; it was fun. It didn’t involve late nights and lame excuses.  And it helped me realize a lifelong dream.

http://gty.im/117601520

I share these NaNoWriMo tips that you can use anytime, not just November, and hope that they might encourage any struggling novelist (as I was pre-NaNo). If you are determined to do this, you.will.do.it.

Disclaimer: these NaNoWriMo tips worked for me. Not saying they will for everyone.

NaNoWriMo Tips

  1. Accept that your first draft will be kind of awful. An awful first draft does not mean you can’t write.

And it should be kind of awful. Because your focus should be getting it all down on paper (or computer screen). You will pretty it up later. This is a different kind of writing than what I’ve been doing with my blog posts and essays. You can’t fret over each word. Get it out, get it down, and leave it be. For now.

  1. You don’t have to outline.

I may get criticism for this because I know most writers do it. I’m not a good outliner. Never have been. So I had an idea in my head of where my story was going but kept an open mind and just let it flow. That worked for me.

  1. You don’t have to write chronologically.

Like, start with the prologue, then Chapter 1, Chapter 2. I did not do that. I jumped around and wrote chunks of the story as they came to me, and then fit them together, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.

  1. I did not spend a lot of time getting to know my characters before I started to write.

Again, this is probably blasphemy. And certainly I will be spending plenty of time on character development during the editing process. I found that the more I wrote, the more the characters’ personalities emerged. I have a much better idea of who they are now.  I also added new characters as I went along.

  1. Characters really do talk to you.

I had heard this but thought, oh, come on now. But it’s true. I let them have their say and believe me, they did, along with some surprises. One of my minor characters turned out to be a major character. Several characters demanded a sex life. I had not been prepared for that, but how could I deny them?

  1. Discipline is good. But so are breaks.

I was strict with keeping a schedule. I think this is important but the actual schedule depends very much on your free time and biorhythms. Being a morning person, I started writing around 8 and stopped around noon to eat lunch and take the dog out. And often on that walk I would come up with fresh ideas, come back and do a little more work. When I needed a very short break I would sneak a peak at social media. But I didn’t stay for long.

  1. Writer’s block is not inevitable. But there is help out there if you have it.

I was lucky. I had dreaded the thought of writer’s block but it never happened. And yet, I was prepared for it. I learned about online resources to spark your creativity or give you writing prompts or even put you on a tight schedule with rewards/punishments, like Write or Die. Or if you work well with a little background noise, there is Coffivity that recreates the white noise of a coffee shop. The NaNoWriMo site has tons of help, and of course the Facebook groups of NaNo writers were my go-to for support and encouragement.

  1. An artificial deadline can work wonders.

So why had I been unable to do this my whole life and in one month I did? I didn’t really have a deadline, but completing the NaNo competition seemed to drive me.

  1. Tell your friends and family you are doing this.

I did, because I thought it would keep me accountable. I knew it would be embarrassing to  come up short, and having a cheering section definitely helped me keep going. So tell everyone that you will have done x amount of work by Jan. 1, or whatever date is reasonable.

10. You really can do this.

Trust me, you can. Because I never, ever thought I could do it, and I did. It wasn’t painful. It was exhilarating. And now I can mold this lump of clay into a real book.

Do you have writing tips that you can share?

 

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