Tag Archives: nanowrimo

Writing Life

Is writing fast a valid career plan for you?

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Every year around NaNoWriMo, the same articles start springing up: how to write faster. Why I’m not doing Nano. Why I am doing Nano. Nano is anathema to real writers. Writing fast can only produce schlock. Writing fast is not a valid career plan.

I disagree. But I’m biased. Of my last five novels, four were written in a month or less (a piece), some during NaNoWriMo, some not. So far I’ve published two of those novels—one fast one, and the slowest novel I’ve ever written. Both were finalists for an award.

There is the general idea out there that something done fast is shoddy, as if someone who writes a manuscript quickly is required to throw it up on Amazon the next week. But that just isn’t the case.

I see no reason at all why anyone can claim that writing fast isn’t a valid career plan. (There are authors out there who write fast, publish quickly, and rake in the dough. Sounds like a career plan to me, though it isn’t quite mine.)

But writing fast isn’t for everyone. How do you know if writing fast is a good idea for you? Here are five factors to consider.

107/365 [Flying Fingers]

This ain’t your first rodeo

Writing a first novel this quickly is probably not a great idea. (Okay, I did write my first “novel” in about four weeks, but it ended up being pretty short. I also wrote it longhand. You don’t have to be like me.) It takes practice to develop the necessary storytelling skills and basic writing skills to come out of a fast draft with something workable, or even the beginnings of something workable.

Once you’ve established your writing skills and storytelling skills, you can tap into those strengths to help you write faster and come out with something that’s just as coherent as most “slow” first drafts.

You love the immersive experience of writing

I love getting lost in my own story. When I’m drafting, I live and breathe my characters’ lives. I imagine new scenes all the time. I practice dialogue. I research, I design, I plot.

If you live and breathe your stories while drafting, writing faster and writing more makes that experience even more immersive. You’re really living your characters’ story, perhaps almost in real time.

Plus, once you’ve made it through those few weeks, you can get the house clean and caught up on laundry (ha!).

You can make connections

One of the big advantages of writing a book in two or three weeks is that you’ve lived all the events in your recent memory. You might not be able to hold every detail in your short term memory, but your subconscious sometimes hangs on to important symbols, characters, events and story threads that you might forget otherwise, and have to come and weave in later. If you’re good at making these kinds of connections, writing fast could make you even better.

You can shut up the inner editor

You can’t write quickly if you’re rewriting every sentence five times. (If you type and think fast, you might be able to get away with rewriting the occasional sentence 2-3 times. Not that I’ve done that. . . .) But no matter how fast or slow you write, during drafting you should usually turn off the inner editor—not the “subject-verb agreement” portion of your brain, but the nagging self-doubts that can shut down your creativity.

You’re willing to put in the time to edit AFTER drafting

Only a Sith deals in absolutes, but I’m going to go to the dark side for a minute: ALL FIRST DRAFTS NEED EDITING. Whether you labored over your first draft for three years or three weeks, there are things you’ll have to go back and fix. (In fact, I’d argue that if it’s been three years since you began your novel, you might not even remember some pretty important pieces, and you might need some serious rewriting.) Most of my fast books have required medium-to-major rewrites. All of my slow books have required medium-to-major rewrites.

In my experience, the quality of a manuscript isn’t necessarily correlated with the speed at which it was written. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask Arthur Conan Doyle (A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes’s premiere), Alexandre Dumas (The Knight of the Red House), Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Stephen King (The Running Man), Jack Kerouac (On the Road), Fyodor Dostoyevskiy (The Gambler—while also writing ) or Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). These books, many of them bestsellers and/or classics, were written in anywhere from 66 hours to 4 weeks.

Maybe writing fast will work for you; maybe it won’t. But it’s definitely a viable career plan, and I enjoy writing that way (most of the time), so I see no reason to stop, NaNo or no.

What do you think? Do you write fast? Have you ever tried it?

Photo by The Hamster Factor

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Technique, Writing Life

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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Technique

8 ways to rev those writing engines to win Nano!

Remember how I’m excited for Nano? Yeah, I am. Sometimes I forget, too. It’s okay.

I’m a fairly fast writer, but I’m also the mom to four small children. My husband is great and super supportive, but with a full-time job, he can’t exactly run the household for me. And then family came into town, two of my kids got sick, the baby stopped sleeping . . . I’ve got a lot on my plate, so I try to maximize my writing time.

In honor of week three of Nano, here are . . .

My best productivity tips!

Brain dump & planning your day

Sometimes I’m juggling so much in my brain—the to-do list, the next scene I’ll be writing, the menu, the groceries, that cool title idea—that I have a hard time speaking, let alone writing. I keep a running list of things I want or need to do in a little notebook, just to get them off my brain.

At the start of the week, I make up a grid for the rest of the week, divided by day and time period (morning, afternoon & evening). I write in any appointments, then I slot in tasks and to-dos from my brain dump list.

And of course, I put writing on my list.

Write first.

My best writing days are almost always the ones where I get up bright and early and pound out half a chapter before breakfast. Not only does it give me a jump start on my word count, but it also sets me in a writing mindset for the day, even if I have to leave it for a couple hours to get stuff done.

Most of all? It feels good to accomplish something first thing!

Plan.

Just like I plan out my week, I like to plan out my novels. I plan on a large scale, using pen and paper. I brainstorm ideas for scenes, then use a planning roadmap from Save the Cat and Story Engineering to help arrange them in a good order (which I give away as a freebie for joining my email list, if you’re interested).

Go for the triangle.

If you really want to maximize your writing time, you’ve got to read 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love (and it’s 99¢—what have you got to lose?).

Author Rachel Aaron outlines the analytical process she used to take her daily output from 2,000 words to 10,000 words on a consistent basis. One of her most important breakthroughs was realizing that when she put together three sides of a triangle, she could write amazingly fast. She goes into far more detail in her (short, read in a day) book, but the three factors that helped her were:

  • Planning out the scene she’s about to write
  • Writing at the time of day and for the length of time she’d found to be most productive (not by feeling or guesswork but cold, hard data)
  • Getting excited to write the scene

The few extra minutes of prep can make a huge difference!

Eat, sleep and shower.

Not taking care of yourself during Nano (or any other fast writing time) is a surefire way to burn out, hate life and resent writing. Just don’t do it.

Boost your brain’s creative powers.

If you’ve got a routine to get into your creative place, do it! I used to use Minesweeper . . . until I was playing more than writing. There are some other things you can do to help boost your brain’s creativity:

  • I’m serious about the eating and sleeping. Your brain needs nutrients and rest.
  • Physical exercise. Increases your blood oxygen levels and gives you a boost of the happy hormones.
  • Menial housework. Dusting, vacuuming, dishes—anything monotonous that lets your mind wander through your plot problems.
  • Showers. Keeps you clean and gives you a chance to sort through your subconscious. A waterproof notepad might help, too.
  • Naps and notebooks. Many people have really great bursts of inspiration as they enter a dream state while falling asleep. I keep my brain dump notebook by my bed to take notes. I’ve also heard of creative people who’d purposefully lay with a pencil, notepad or even a spoon in their hand, so as they relaxed while falling asleep, they’d drop the item and startle themselves awake, so they could use that great idea they were sure to have.

(More on making your brain more creative coming soon! But . . . after NaNo.)

Sprint.

Whether you find a writing buddy in person or online, timed racing is one of my favorite ways to rack up the words. I’ve found that an in-person sprint is more effective. (For example, last year I got 1200-1300 in 20 minutes at a live event, and in a typical 30 minute Twitter sprint, I’ll get 600-1200.)

Swing for the fences

Once upon a time, I thought 2000 words a day was pretty impressive. Then I came upon Candace Havens’s Fast Draft method, and Rachel Aaron’s book (mentioned above), and tried to push myself, and I found I could do 5000 words a day—a week day, with the kids home and guiding homework and making dinner and even keeping up with the laundry (something I can’t seem to do half the time anyway!).

Then, a couple months ago, I decided to re-up my challenge level and shot for 10,000 words on a regular day. I almost made it, too, but I ended up doing 8000 words two days in a row. The next day, it took me all day to write the last 2000 words in the novella. It’s all about how you frame your goals!

I started Nano on the 14th and got all the way to 43,000 words by the 23rd. Then everything went crazy, and I’ve only gotten 700 words this week. But I can do this—and so can you! Let’s catch up!

What do you think? How do you up those word counts?

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Technique

Recapture your NaNoWriMo mojo

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I’ve finally jumped into NaNoWriMo! Since I didn’t start until the 14th, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I hit 15,000 words Saturday and hope to keep chugging along this week. (And I’ll also be sharing my favorite Nano productivity tips!)

nano-2013-Participant-Vertical-BannerI hope you’re a bit farther along in your goals—in fact, maybe you’re starting to hit the 30k slump. Here are a few quick ways to recharge and reconnect with your WIP.

Write anything. When you’re really not sure what comes next, even writing the most boring, mundane scene might inspire something much better!

If you liked it, then you should’ve put a pin on it. As long as you don’t get sucked into the gaping maw of dessert recipes on Pinterest (it’s so . . . beautiful!), putting together an inspiration pinboard can help you when you make it, and when you look back in a few days.

I’ve slowly been collecting pins for my Nano project for a while, but here’s a sneak peek:
sad3pinboard

(This is about using a pinboard for your own inspiration. Pinterest is also good for author marketing, but that’s a little different.)

Sing. Sing a song. (Or just listen.). I typically have a set “writing” playlist with a mix of classic rock and movie soundtracks, but I add songs to it based on the scene or the book I’m writing.

Daydream about your cover. Okay, I’ve been known to use this to procrastinate, but I have fun making up mock covers for my books. (And for obvious reasons, I hire a professional to do mine.) But if you can take 10-20 minutes to capture the vision of your book in visual form, why not?

Make your own book trailer. Grab four or five photos and a two- to three-sentence summary of your book and make a cool-looking trailer in just a few minutes. That’s sure to help inspire you!

Reconnect on a story-level. If your problem runs a bit deeper than fatigue, take a few minutes to assess and reconnect with your WIP. Your characters will thank you for it when you don’t kill them all off in a terrible plane crash because you’re grouchy.

Take a day off. I know, it’s sacrilege to propose such a thing in Nano, especially if you’re falling behind (or starting late), but sometimes this really helps. I take every Sunday off and though sometimes it’s hard to stop when the fire is going, it always makes me even more ready to go on Monday morning. Plus, tons of my plot problems work themselves out while I’m away.

I also took a day off after my launch. I was going to plunge right in the very next day, but I wasn’t confident yet. Although I really wanted to start November 1, by November 13, the doubts had set in. I’m pushing through and not worrying about all the stuff I know is missing, because I can layer in all that later. In fact, it almost feels good, knowing exactly what I’ll need to do to fix this. You know, some of it.

You don’t have to hate writing, life and everything to make it through Nano alive!

What do you think? How do you recapture your NaNo mojo when your motivation is flagging?

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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, 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

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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Technique

Michelle Davidson Argyle’s Secret Sauce: Why Wasn’t I Getting Any Better?

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by Michelle Davidson Argyle

michelledargyleWhen I started writing again after a five-year break, it was like riding a bike. I jumped in headfirst, but I was soon thrown off balance. Everything was a bit wobbly, and it took me a full year to get to a place where I was riding straight without fear of breaking my neck. The last thing I wanted to do was make a fool of myself, so I worked on one project until I realized I wasn’t going to get far if I didn’t start working on something different. Let’s say I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Of course, this leads into the biggest change I made in my writing—altering the way I think about writing. You see, when I started writing again, I picked up the first book I ever wrote and started rewriting it. I kept writing and rewriting, over and over and over. My belief was that the more you work on a novel, the better it will get and the better writer you’ll be. But I was frustrated that nothing I did would make the book what I wanted it to be. I was working so hard. Why wasn’t I getting any better? That’s when November rolled around and I heard about National Novel Writing Month. Intrigued, I thought, why not?

I have to admit, doing NaNo was really difficult for me. All I wanted at the time was to get my first novel published. I wanted to query like all my friends were doing. I wanted to be a good enough writer to move forward to the next step. Little did I know that the ‘next step’ was to throw out that first novel and move on. Luckily, NaNo kept me so busy that it forced me to do just that. I fell in love with another book and didn’t go back to that first novel for a long time.

I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned as a writer is to recognize that gut-feeling when a book needs to be set aside. It could only come with getting obsessed enough with a project that it was hindering me, and then forcing myself to try something new. If it hadn’t been for NaNo, who knows where I would be right now. That first novel finally did get published (in fact, it’s my most successful novel so far, in terms of sales), but it was published only after I learned a lot more about writing by completing other novels first.

If I have any advice for writers, it’s to listen to your instincts. If you’ve been working on one project so long you can hardly see straight, you’d probably better make yourself put it away for a long time, or even forever. In my opinion, writers should write, not tinker like I did for so long. I’ve found that the more novels I complete, the more I learn and the better I get. The longer I spend on one novel doesn’t seem to get me nearly as far. I am not expanding my mind to different ways of thinking, different characters, different viewpoints, and different ways of experimenting with structure and telling a story. For me, at least, only new projects have been able to do that.

I think what helped me the most when it comes to getting a book published to write more and more. I’m still growing as a writer because of this, and I think most new writers are smart if they learn when to move on and work on something new.

Special thanks to Jordan McCollum for inviting me here today!

About the Author
Michelle Davidson Argyle is a mother, artist, and writer who lives in the Rocky Mountains with her sword-wielding husband and energetic daughter. She writes contemporary Young Adult and New Adult fiction (and other genres when she feels like it).

Michelle’s latest release is Pieces, sequel to her YA novel The Breakaway. Two years after watching her kidnappers go to prison, Naomi Jensen is still in love with one of them. Jesse will be released in a few years, and Naomi knows college is the perfect distraction while she waits. But when her new friend Finn makes her question what is right and what is wrong, she begins to wonder if Jesse is the one for her … until she discovers he’s out on parole. Naomi must sort through her confusion to figure out where love and freedom truly lie-in Finn, who has no connections to her past, or Jesse, who has just asked her to run away with him.

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