Category Archives: Writing Life

Technique, Writing Life

10 tips to become a better writer

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Becoming a better writer

Is becoming a better writer on your list of New Year’s Resolutions? (No? Want to go add it really quickly? I’ll wait.)

That’s a pretty lofty goal. And like most goals, it’s kind of impossible to achieve without breaking it down into individual steps. Here are a few.

Begin with a benchmark

Pull up a file of something you’ve written recently (first draft or completed project). Save a copy of it in a specific place: your email, online backup, Google Drive, etc. Add a reminder to your calendar on December 31, 2014, to read the file (and include where you put it!). We’ll come back to this.

Quick tip: don’t use a document you’re planning on publishing in that exact form in 2014, unless you like exercises in futility and frustration.

Identify areas you can improve

Most of us are acutely aware of our own weaknesses. What skills do you want to work on?

  • Plotting
  • Writing faster/slower
  • Specific areas: dialogue, description, backstory, voice, character arcs, etc.
  • Structural macro-editing
  • Line editing
  • Critiquing others’ work (or maybe your own!)
  • Publishing workflow
  • Connecting with a community
  • Marketing

Take a class

When you know what skills you want to improve, find a class to help you. You can look at writers conferences in your area or online, or you can seek out classes through websites. I highly recommend Margie Lawson’s classes, but there are dozens of websites and email lists that offer fantastic resources. (As always, do your research before you pay anybody for a class online!)

Find a critique group, partner or mentor

If you don’t already have a trusty group of critique partners, this will probably be the #1 thing to move your writing forward in 2014. If you’re not quite ready to share your work with other writers for critique, then perhaps seek out a mentor to help foster and improve your writing: maybe not even someone who’s published, but someone who you trust and respect. And ask nicely 😉

Read a craft book

Head over to Amazon or your local library and pick up a book on writing craft. Explore another genre, borrow techniques from another medium (screenwriting books rock), or focus on a particular technique (like, say, Character Arcs?), even research a topic or location—no matter what you look at, you’re guaranteed to learn something!

Read a novel

I do focus so much on my own writing and critiquing that I don’t have as much time for reading as I would like. But every time I take the time to read, I always wonder why I don’t do this more often 😉 . Still, reading novels not only refills my creative wells and gives me new ideas, but—because I can’t turn off my internal editor while reading—it also helps me improve my craft, looking at how the story elements affect me as a reader and how they’re executed, and how I can emulate or improve upon those techniques.

That actually sounds horrible and boring. But it’s not.

Practice

All that training and preparation doesn’t do you much good if you don’t take the time to put it into action. WRITE SOMETHING NEW and apply the skills you’ve learned.

Try something new

If you followed my series about my first ten novels, you’ll see that with every novel, I shared the lessons I learned, either in craft or career. And they usually include “this was the first time . . . ”

I have to explore new themes and techniques in my work, or I lose interest. But doing that is also one of the best ways to continue to grow your craft. So try writing from a POV you don’t normally use—first, third, omniscient, etc. Try a new tense. Take a new genre for a test ride. Do something different—challenge yourself and see how much you grow!

Let go of perfectionism

Can you actually get better if you let go of striving to be perfect? Yes, if perfectionism is keeping you from moving forward. Whether it’s silencing the inner editor while you draft, moving past your insecurities to query or publish your work, or obsessing over someone else’s awesomeness and deriding yourself—stop.

Let go of fear

Uh, yeah. I have four small kids, so I never, ever see movies in the theatre (hate paying for tickets, hate paying for food, hate having to leave my house…). However, I have four small children, so I have an excuse to see every Disney film in the theatres. If you haven’t seen Frozen yet, it’s pretty wonderful.

One of my favorite parts happens after newly crowned Queen Elsa accidentally reveals her magical powers (manipulating ice and snow), after hiding them for many years. She runs away and gains perspective about her fears and her powers, and sings an awesome song, and has some pretty awesome graphics to go with it:


If fear is holding you back, LET IT GO and create something wonderful

(It was nominated for a Golden Globe, so yeah.)

If fear is holding you back, let it go and create something wonderful. [Tweet this!]

Check back

At the end of 2014, take another example of your most recent writing: whether that’s the polished version of the file you picked out at the end of 2013 or a different piece (though I would suggest not comparing a 2013 finished product to a 2014 first draft). Read through all or part of your 2013 file and your 2014 file. What would you change about your 2013 file? Is it better or worse than you thought?

What do you think? How have you become a better writer? How will you work to improve in 2014? Would you like monthly challenges & assessments here to work on becoming a better writer?

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News & Contests, Writing Life

November (and October) accountability; December goals!

Whew. November. Am I right? It was such a whirlwind I totally forgot to share my accountability and goals, like I usually do on the first Friday of the month. So here’s some catch up.

GoalsOctober accountability

  • Complete edits on & read aloud Spy for a Spy.—CHECK
  • Proofread Spy for a Spy.—CHECK
  • Pull together promo materials for Spy for a Spy. (sensing a theme?)—CHECK This spilled into November, but it got done in time!
  • Research & plot Nano novel—I think this spilled over into November, too, but CHECK
  • Maybe write another novella? Have to do something to stay sane amidst the marketing and editing 😉 Bahahaha. SANITY IS OVERRATED
  • Edit the novella I wrote last week.—Totally lost heart after editing my brains out with Spy for a Spy. I’ll probably move this to next year.
  • Edit Character Arcs & do all that pre-launch publicity stuff.—CHECK . . . ish. I did a little pre-launch publicity, including sending out ARCs to some lucky readers and reviewers, and I edited and re-edited Character Arcs, finally launching at the end of October. Whew!

November accountability

Goals reconstructed from memory . . . this is why I normally share these things here!

  • Format Spy for a Spy in ePub, mobi & print. (Yes, I do this all myself. I’ve got mad skillz, and I’m cheap. It’s a great combination.) CHECK
  • Launch publicity for Spy for a Spy: blog tour, launch party on Facebook & Twitter with Julie Coulter Bellon, giveaway with Julie, coordinating tons of generously donated prizes. CHECK. Again, I do this all myself (I mean, I did the blog tour. Julie & I worked together on the party & giveaway). It’s a lot of work, but it’s also a ton of fun.
  • Sale on I, Spy along with a BookBub promo and the launch. CHECK. Along with the blog tour, this generated some fairly fantastic results sales-wise. You know what’s more important than sales numbers? Happy readers. I hope I’ll have some of those soon! If sales of Spy for a Spy are indicative, things are going pretty well. 🙂
  • Once all that’s out of the way, win NaNoWriMo! CHECK, but you already know that.
  • Finish my NaNo novel. No joy. Family visit, sickness, and some attacks of ennui sapped my writing energy like creativity kryptonite. Lamesauce.
  • There were probably other goals in here. I forget what they were. Made my best turkey ever, though!

It felt pretty crazy, and there were days when I wrote absolutely nothing, but I’m pretty happy I was able to win NaNo (with tons of support from my family, of course!).

December goals

  • Now finish my NaNo novel. I’m in the final quarter. Fingers crossed I can pound that out today and tomorrow. (Do-able word count-wise, but do I know enough of the plot to figure out how to get there? As a reminder, my previous outlines have sometimes detailed my final act as “They vanquish the bad guys and overcome their obstacles to find love against all odds.” True, but not very helpful in expanding that section to ~20,000 words.)
  • Polish up the NaNo novel a bit. Spackle in the gaps, especially the entire sections of the main plot I skipped saying “Figure this out later” when I had to switch the timeline around, and the scene that was going to take too much darn research to write during Nano.
  • Write up the 2014 business plan, goals and production schedule.
  • Think about my conference presentations for next year. If I’m feeling really ambitious, outline them.
  • Enjoy the holidays with my family. I’m working hard to make Christmas a family-centered, Jesus-centered celebration in our home, especially since this will be the first year ever we won’t be traveling to be with extended family during the holidays.

While it’s hard to beat the satisfaction of typing “The End,” I think my favorite goal for the month has to be that last one.

What’s up for you this month?

Photo by Celestine Chua

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Writing Life, Technique

Why NaNoWriMo is and is NOT what it’s all about

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Remember last week, when I was all, “I only have 7000 words left! I can do it!”

Note to self: Never. Never. Say. That.

This is when you catch the stomach flu on November 29.

Fortunately, the bug ran its course quickly, and I refrained from typing out the incoherent lists of disgusting food that I never eat that in my delirium I thought would be a good way to reach my Nano goal. (Uhhh??) Once I was well enough to sit up and wrap my brain around the story I’d barely touched for a week, I did what every author has to do:

I put down one word after another. One sentence after another. One paragraph after another.

Until, at about 5 PM on Saturday, I hit that magical 50,000.

nano2013-Winner-Facebook-Profile

But in the end, the number? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have 50,000 words toward a new book. And that’s awesome.

Know what else is awesome? 25,000 words toward a new book. 10,000 words toward a new book. 500 words toward a new book. Whether it takes you a week, a month, a year—writing a book?

It’s incredibly awesome.

Sometimes, when you do something over and over, when you get fast and proficient at it, you forget how remarkable it might be to normal people. This will be my 11th finished novel. Four of the last five novels were written in under a month (if I finish this one by the 13th, that is). I’m an author; writing books is what I do—but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. Awe-inspiring.

So whether you “won” Nano or not, if you got new words in November, congratulations!

And whether you “won” Nano or not, you probably have work still to do. Whether that’s stringing together the words and sentences to form your story or making those words and sentences shine, NaNo is just the beginning!

What’s on your writing plate this month?

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Writing Life

And we’re off! Scheduling your way to Nano success!

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NaNoWriMo can be a pretty crazy time—crazier if you don’t plan ahead. No matter when you do it, doubling or even tripling your work time isn’t easy, at least not if you’d like your life to, you know, not fall apart.

Planning in advance is one key to making it through Nano without alienating everyone around you. Plotting your book, of course, helps, since you don’t have to stop to ponder where your story is going next and how you’ll get there.

But there’s another kind of planning that can make or break your Nano productivity: your schedule. For me, I went through and wrote down everything that I needed to do in a day to keep the rest of my life from falling apart (and if my life falls apart, my four kids’ and my husband’s lives most likely will, too, and that’s not fair to them, no matter what month it is). We’re talking meals, face time with my kids, and the bare minimum housekeeping tasks. I also wrote out some things I need to do weekly and monthly, and a few one-off tasks I need to finish (Christmas shopping for our Christmas-at-Thanksgiving celebration).

I assigned a time for the daily and weekly housekeeping tasks—and I found I had a surprising amount of time left for writing once my schedule was in place—and if I follow the schedule, not only does it afford me more writing time, but my house actually runs better and can even be cleaner than it normally is!

But now I have to be careful not to squander that work time. My friend Kathleen Brebes won Nano 2010 in thirteen days and she had some tips on scheduling for success:

A big helper to finishing my novel in thirteen days was that I had made a pact with myself not sign on to the internet until my daily writing was complete; I didn’t even check AI stats [our writing group] or Nano stats until my daily writing was finished. But, I did keep up with my daily housework schedule and DayMinder Agenda. However, the second week of Nano, I didn’t walk or lift weights; I only stretched daily. And, I made sure not to neglect my spiritual and familial commitments.

from A Succor for Writing . . . by Kathleen Brebes: Succor: My First NaNoWriMo.

Now, if a first-time Wrimo can hit the goal in 13 days—and still make time to keep her house running smoothly—I hope we can all get inspiration from that.

What do you do to keep on your writing schedule this month? What do you let slip—and what can’t you let slip?

Photo by Dru Bloomfield

Originally from Nano 2011 & 2012

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Writing Life

Novel eight!

This entry is part 9 of 13 in the series All my novels

The other day I was reading an interview with Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, with some frequently asked questions about everyone’s favorite writing month. One of them was “I’ve already done NaNoWriMo. Why do I need another unfinished manuscript in my drawer?” He responded, basically, that you never know when your next novel will constitute a major breakthrough in your life or your craft. His breakthroughs, I believe he said, were novels six and twelve.

That answer resonated with me, because I knew right away which were my breakthroughs: novels three and eight.

The book stats

I, Spy coverTitle: I, Spy
Genre: Romantic suspense
Inspiration: A song on the Dollar Tree sound system. You can find some pretty cool stuff amid the junk at the Dollar Tree, but this is easily the best thing I’ve found.
Writing dates: Idea: 13 Feb 2012. Writing: 10 March – 31 March 2012.
Length: First draft—70,000 words. Final version—84,000 words.
Back cover copy: Canada is probably the last place you’d expect to find an American spy. But even idyllic Ottawa has its deadly secrets—and so does CIA operative Talia Reynolds. She can climb through ventilation shafts, blend in at the occasional diplomatic function, even scale buildings (small ones). But there’s one thing she can’t do: tell her aerospace engineer boyfriend Danny about her Top Secret occupation.

It worked for a year, keeping Danny in the dark, keeping him away from danger, keeping her secrets. And then Talia finally catches a hot case: Fyodor Timofeyev. Russian. Aerospace executive. Possible spy?

She can make this work, too—until Danny needs her at the same time her country does. And when Fyodor targets Danny? Suddenly her schedule isn’t the only thing suffering. Now to save her secrets and her country, Talia must sacrifice the man she loves.

What I learned from this book

A few quick facts: this book was the second book I fast drafted. Coincidentally, it was also the second book I took the time to not only revise and edit, but to polish to the point of publication. This was the first book I’d set somewhere I’d actually been (Thanks, Dad!), which helped in coming up with the locations they visited. Though this was my third novel in first person, and it was my first in present tense. Once upon a time, I was not a fan of either, but as I was working on the first chapter, parts of the narrative would just flow better in first person.

But really, the thing that dictated both the person and tense of the book—the reason this book was a breakthrough for me—was the character’s voice. This voice was one of the strongest I’d ever contended with written. Before I started writing, I knew I wanted the book to be funny and . . . “loose,” but I hadn’t figured out exactly how to do it. Frankly, it just kind of popped into my head with the first sentence of the book. I was so excited to latch on to it, I had to get it down right away. BUT I was saving this idea for a NaNo-like challenge that started the next day, so I wouldn’t allow myself to write it down. So I grabbed my phone and recorded it.

I won’t keep you in suspense: the fabulous first line is “I don’t do catsuits.” (Go ahead, read some more from the first chapter.)

The voice was sometimes so strong that I had to reel it in a bit, because the interior monologue interrupted the flow of the action or dialogue. And other times, while reading it aloud in critique group, I’d start rambling on in Talia’s voice, and my CPs would tell me what I’d said was so funny I had to include it.

This book was also what I used in an advanced deep editing course from Margie Lawson. I’ve loved her previous classes, and I still apply the EDITS system to everything I send to critique partners. But this time, I went through every. single. page. of my novel hunting for ways to tighten, power up, refine and beautify. I think it shows 🙂 .

And of course, since this became my first published novel, I learned a whole lot about the publishing process! I learned how to make an ebook. I learned how to make a print book. I learned how to get ISBNs, a business license, an awesome cover designer, editors, blurbs . . . everything.

The publishing side is a lot of work, but I do love that I can have everything in my book exactly how I want it. Or so I keep trying to tell myself as I haul myself through the publication process on two more books. AAAGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Which novels were your “breakthroughs”?

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Writing Life, Works

Lucky! Number! Seven!

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This entry is part 8 of 13 in the series All my novels

After a maaajor crash and burn novel, I needed to quit writing, perhaps forever. And then fall (the season) came, and with it, NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month.

To this point, I’d never done a full NaNo. I made a sad attempt in 2006, but stalled out in the first chapter. In 2010, the year before this, I did a “Half-No” where I added 25,000 words to my ill-fated sixth novel. I’d written a book pretty quickly before: 90,000 words in 8 or 9 weeks, spanning over November (2008), but I started in October (five years ago today, in fact!), so it couldn’t count as official even if my word count was enough.

I like to challenge myself, so doing NaNo wasn’t enough. I heard of Candace Havens’s “Fast Draft” method, where you write your first draft in two weeks. I finally found the right characters to use for an idea that had been bouncing around in my brain for over a year, sketched out a plot, threw that away, took a deep breath, crossed my fingers, and dove in.

The book stats

Title: Bloodstone
Genre: Uhh . . . action/adventure romance, I guess? It’s a lot like National Treasure.
Inspiration: Umm . . . I think it was partially inspired by a History Channel pseudoscientific special on Vikings in the Americas. Also, some notes on a passage of scripture.
Writing dates: 1 November 2011 – 14 November 2011
Length: Just over 78,000 in the first draft; sitting at 85,000 right now.
Elevator pitch (or a little bit longer than that): Professor Cora Warren has an archaeological dig to conduct; her student Jack has his own agenda: an unbelievable archaeological theory. But it’s not his theory that challenges Cora’s faith the most—until they unearth an artifact that will drag them through a thousand years of incredible history, give them both a reason to believe, and bring them face-to-face with a secret society hellbent on keeping the treasure and the glory for themselves.

Dude. I love this book.

107/365 [Flying Fingers]

What I learned from this book

First and foremost: as soon as I got up on November 1, I dove into this book. AND WRITING WAS FUN AGAIN! It had been two years since I’d written something that I loved and enjoyed, and had it flow. I’d forgotten the joy of drafting, and how much my soul needed that creative energy. I also got to revisit one of my favorite conflicts in romance: forbidden love!

To date, this is the longest I’ve gone from initial idea to actual writing. In fact, I was sure I’d given up on that idea, that it didn’t have the spark or passion I’d need to sustain a novel. The characters I’d initially sketched out for the idea just didn’t connect with me: the “hero” had such an obvious agenda he came off as flat before I ever even gave the guy a name. Having let the ideas percolate so much—and building on something that has as much background as Vikings in America—gave me a lot of fuel to write very fast!

And speaking of writing fast, I wrote real fast. I wasn’t sure if I could really do the Fast Draft method, especially since I don’t write on Sundays, but sure enough, I hit “The End” on November 14, averaging 6500 words a day. This was majorly helped by my first ever writing retreat, where I wrote . . . darn, my records are on my old laptop still. But it was many words. Plus, I got to be there to receive the acceptance letter for what was to be my first published novel (third manuscript), and to get to share that news with friends in person was very cool. (There may have been a request for a cartwheel. I may have fulfilled that request.)

Writing fast also had some other advantages. I thought I’d end up with a super sloppy first draft, and yes, in some ways I did. However, having the entire novel in my head helped me to weave together threads that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise, instead of dropping them and fixing it in revision. It really felt like weaving a novel, like all the craft and structure mechanics I’d spent the last four years beating into my head were really coming together. It was far from perfect—and I think it’s going to have to undergo a second round of revisions still—but it was surprisingly good.

COVEROne of the craft and structure mechanics that really came together for me during this time was the concept of the character arc, and most especially how I needed to use that arc at the climax. This was a major craft breakthrough for me, and I’m excited to share it with you in Character Arcs, coming next week! (You can add it to your Goodreads now. Just sayin’.)

This novel was also the first time I got to experiment with different timelines, something I love to read. I watched National Treasure to analyze the structure of the genre and I was struck that the beginning of the movie is a flashback (uh, sort of?) depicting part of the history of the secret/legend they’re pursuing. I ended up using three storylines throughout: one in Puritan times (the first time the stone is unearthed), one in the mid-nineteenth century (forming the secret society), and one modern (finding stone, coming up against secret society, romance, character arcs and more). Plus a scene in Viking times (remembering the creation of one of the clues).

Man. I love this book. I’m going to love it so much more when it’s shiny and perfect. Sigh.

Tell me about one of your favorite manuscripts!

Photo credit: The Hamster Factor via Flickr & CC

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Writing Life

The year I quit

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This entry is part 7 of 13 in the series All my novels

Have you entered the contest to win a $25 gift card &
free books yet?

After my fifth novel, I took a break. Which ended up being a lot longer than I’d planned. I got a rejection back for novel #3 and set about revising and rewriting it. The first chapter went on to win a contest to get fast tracked in the submission pile at several publishers, but then I got my teeth kicked in and sent it through three more rounds of readers and revisions.

"Journal of Universal Rejection" coffee mugAs you can imagine, the constant revising and rewriting drove me nuts. I’ve never been one to make sweeping changes based on one reader’s feedback, always waiting for consensus, consulting with people I trust, weighing out the options, but there was a ridiculous amount of work put into the revisions.

Meanwhile, I went and had a baby (my third). Frankly, that pregnancy was a very difficult time for me, but that’s a whole other post. On top of all that, I had no new projects for nearly a year. I wanted to move a bit slower—I was tired after writing three manuscripts in a year, and I knew it would be difficult to get back into writing until the baby was a bit older. I made it three or four months before I just had to write again.

The book stats

Title: Façade
Genre: Historical romantic suspense
Inspiration: a what-if question based on a commercial for a new TV series
Writing dates: September-ish 2010 – February-ish 2011.
Length: Right around 68,000
Elevator pitch: A female Soviet diplomat and an American spy must work together in post-war Paris to save the peace treaty negotiations—and her father—to forestall another world war.

What I learned from writing this book

I learned that I can still write! Or . . . not. I started with an idea I loved (still do), but I could tell the style was going to be more demanding than my previous, more conversational novels. Read: I wanted this to be more literary. That put a lot of pressure on me, so I set a goal quite low, probably 500 words a day. I didn’t want to pin myself down to too rigid of an outline. I needed to let this book take its own course and its own time, I thought.

This was my first novel since the very first to be written in first person. In fact, I did more than one first person narrator, and even added in sections with a third-person present narrator to heighten the tension but . . . this book just never worked. The longer that booked dragged out, the worse it got. I did a “Half-No” in November to add 25,000 words to it, and then I think we limped along until about February to get to its final word count.

I tried. Again and again I tried. I scrapped the middle section and tried to rewrite it. But every time I came up against a wall. To this day, I still don’t know what to do with that middle section. I really like the first couple chapters. I really like the last third or so. I really don’t know how to get from A to B. That’s a major blow to a writer’s confidence: after writing several books that did work, I somehow thought I knew what I was doing.

You never really know what you’re doing.

I still submitted the first couple chapters to contests, and at first I did well: first place. The highest score in another contest, out of all entries in all categories in the first round—in fact, out of 334 points, I got 332.

But then the final round judge, an editor at a major house, read my first few chapters and synopsis and really didn’t like them. She used an exclamation point to express how bad they were and placed my entry dead last. (It really didn’t feel like an “honorable” mention.) I pitched the book to an editor at a different house, and she was very nice and encouraging, but wasn’t interested. She offered to recommend some agents for the book; her assistant never returned my email.

Once again, I was left with a single foundering project. My other book was out on submission, but . . . I was so done. I wasn’t even sure I would be interested in accepting an offer at that point.

Then something happened to our family that only happens on television. Again, this is a whole ‘nother post, but a particularly unexpected death took place in my extended family. With that kind of suffering in the world—with the people I’ve known and loved all my life—I couldn’t face made up people and their problems.

It came down to this, I realized one day walking out of the library: I started writing because it made me happy. It wasn’t making me happy anymore. At all. So I gave myself permission, and I quit. Perhaps forever. But at least through the end of summer 2011.

this is what I am doing!

I don’t know if I’d take back any book I’ve written, but if I could forget a year in my writing career, October 2010 to October 2011 would probably be it.

Have you ever quit writing?

Photo credits: Journal of Universal Rejection mug—Tilemahos Efthimiadis; quit button—Tizzie, both via Flickr & CC

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Writing Life

NaNoWriMo is (almost) upon us!

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There’s still time to prepare!

Anybody else getting anxious for November? I know I am. I’m so excited I have to DO something, so I’m brainstorming scenes for my book:

SAMSUNG

In addition to the #Plot101 Twitter event (still going strong!)(explanation here), I’m also lurking around the forums of the NaNoWriMo site. Feel free to add me as a writing buddy. You might be able to find me under the nano-2013-Participant-Vertical-Bannerenigmatic name of JordanMcCollum. That 0 word count is bugging me…..

As I’ve worked on all these things, I’ve had to review all my favorite plotting methods and character posts—on others’ blogs, and on my own. So if you’re getting ready for NaNoWriMo, here are some writing resources on my site that I’ve been thinking about and studying, and I hope they might help you prepare, too.

The plot thickens, my series on plotting, highlights plot structures and methods including the three act structure, Larry Brooks’s story structure, the Snowflake method, the Hero’s Journey, and now Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat (also available as a PDF, but it hasn’t been updated to include the Save the Cat posts).

Creating sympathetic characters—while you can edit a great deal of sympathy into your characters, keeping these things in mind as you write can help you get it right the first time.

Backstory—figuring out your character’s life story, what to leave out, and where to start your story.

Tension, Suspense and Surprise—vital elements (I mean, these things often keep me going through a first draft!), though they can be a bit tougher to get right on the first try.

And, depending on how you write, you might be able to try out some new techniques with Deep POV or dialogue—or save those for editing.

Are you NaNoing? What are you doing to prepare?

Updated from Nano 2011 & 2012

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