Tag Archives: nanowrimo

News & Contests

Achieving your goals on autopilot

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I set goals all the time—and I’ve found the easiest way to achieve my goals is on autopilot.

I’ve posted this a couple times before, but I would be remiss if I let the season of New Year’s Resolutions pass without highlighting my favorite goal-achieving techniques!

“Autopilot” doesn’t mean coasting through the month, or setting absurdly low goals so I can achieve them, though. It means scheduling for me. I kind of beasted Nano 2011, and—especially the first week—I managed to do this without the world falling down around the ears. I’m the mom, of course, and I set the pace of the household. I do most of the housework. So how did I write 5000-6000 words a day (hours and hours of work) without running out of meals and clean underwear for the family?

Planning.

I was already used to one very useful phone alarm: a 15 minute warning to the time we need leave for school. So I decided to expand on that and use the phone alarm to remind me to do laundry (and switch it, fold it, and hand it off to the kids to put away), work with the kids to empty the dishwasher, read with the kids, start dinner and go to bed on time.

Dinners were also planned: I took the calendar for the month and planned out our meals (actually, when I did this for 2012, I planned for the rest of the year because I found so many great recipes—you can see the online ones on my Pinterest). Last year, I focused on quick meals, slow cooker meals, meals I’ve squirreled away in the freezer, and family favorites. Themed nights were also big helps: Meatless Monday, Favorites Fridays, etc. It took a couple hours to write it out, but then for the rest of the month, meal planning was handled and I could just look at the calendar to make out my shopping list.

Even blog posts (on four blogs!) were planned the month in advance. Topics and dates went on the calendar. I made up post drafts for each of those days with the topics all ready to go. I stockpiled topics and full posts. On weekends, I filled in the remaining posts and scheduled them to go.

It actually went really well—until I finished my novel. And then I let a lot of it fall apart. But all that advanced planning helped me to maintain a good routine, be productive and run the house better than I usually did.

So how can that apply to other goals?

Schedule them now.

If you want to write 1000, 2000 or 5000 words a day, pick a time and put it in your schedule. (Doing it at the same time each day can help, too.) Unplug from the Internet. Schedule a time with the fewest kids distractions around. I’ve used a handy browser plugin that would block certain time-wasting websites during certain times of the day—another helper.

5000 words a day was my goal during Nano 2011. I broke it into chunks and assigned each chunk a time: 1500 in the morning, 1500 in the afternoon and 2000 in the evening. This year, my words-a-day goal is a more manageable 2000 when drafting (3000 for playing catch-up right now), but I’m still chunking that down.

This works for other goals, too. If you want to read a certain number of books next year, start collecting recommendations. Figure out whether you prefer reading on an eReader/mobile device (if you have one) or paper book. I like library books since they come with built-in deadlines—and, oh yeah, they’re free. Then figure out how long you can take per book (on average).

If you’re trying to research a project, make a list of resources, get them and give yourself a timeline to read them.

If you want to lose weight, schedule your exercise sessions with yourself. Make up healthy meal plans in advance. Buy and prepare healthy snacks.

We all know that goals should to be broken down into steps to be achievable. But what it really comes down to is to just do it, to quote Nike. Little reminders and baby steps help me.

What does it take to help you just do it?

Photo by Kent Wein

Originally posted in January 2012

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Technique

Exporting from Scrivener to Word, happy style

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Even if I decide to spring for Scrivener, I still have some fairly awesome editing tricks that only work in Microsoft Word. So I needed to figure out how to get my first draft out of Scrivener as cleanly as possible—especially since the Nano version Scrivener trial expires tomorrow, and I definitely won’t get it before Christmas.

So after some experimentation, I figured out the best way to get my manuscript in Word format without requiring a ton of reformatting. Here’s a screen-by-screen guide to make it easy to export from Scrivener into Word.

Preparation

First, I put every. single. chapter. in its own folder. Even if it was only one scene (file), I made sure it was in a folder, all at the top level (though I think the level isn’t terribly vital). I also made sure the folders themselves didn’t have a scene written in them—only nestled safely inside. (I also moved my character notes, etc., into the Manuscript folder just in case I don’t go for Scrivener.)

That took about an hour. You don’t have to use that exact structure, but be sure to use something systematic and remember what it is!

If you want it to generate your title page, be sure to fill out the appropriate title page information (above Manuscript).

Begin the compile

Once you’re organized, click the Compile button.

START with Novel Standard Manuscript Format or Times 12pt with Bold Folder Titles. The automatic output is not how I format my manuscripts nor is it the standard format that I’ve seen from publishers and agents (“Standard” claim notwithstanding), so I customized it to provide a clean manuscript I won’t have to heavily reformat by hand.

CONTENTS

Make sure all the appropriate files (folders & files) are checked—no check mark, no file. If you forgot to check the “Include in compile” check box on the scene, you can fix that here. Also, if you put any of your notes in the compile, you might have to check those as well.

Because of the way I was customizing my manuscript, I UNchecked all of the Pg Break Before and As-Is boxes. (Honestly, I don’t know what the second one does.)

SEPARATORS

This is where you need to remember how you organized your files and folders. The way that I organized mine, I could be sure that if there were two files next to one another, they were scenes in the same chapter, so they needed to be separated by a # or a *** or whatever you use. If a folder came before a folder, they were part of the same chapter. I didn’t have any folders next to folders, but when a file came before a folder, it was the beginning of a new chapter.

So under separators, remember how you’ve organized your files so you can tell it how to separate them. If you use the same system as me, here’s how I set up my separators.

Text Separator: Custom: # (or ***) — Two adjacent text files are always two scenes in the same chapter, so they’ll need a break like this.

Folder Separator: empty line — For me, I didn’t have this in my manuscript, so it didn’t matter.

Folder and Text Separator: empty line — The way I organized my files, there was never any text in the folder itself. This separator, then, controlled only the break between the chapter heading (CHAPTER ONE) and the beginning of the text. The default setting puts the chapter heading on its own page (but there’s another setting you have to tweak to fix this).

Text and Folder Separator: page break — With my organization, a folder that followed a file was always the beginning of a new chapter. So, new page.

FORMATTING

If you have formatted your text in Scrivener—using italics, or bold, or changing the fonts—uncheck Override text and notes formatting.

If your chapter (folder or file) titles are descriptive and part of the manuscript, make sure that the Title box is checked—but if you want Scrivener to automatically number your chapters, uncheck Level 1+ folder Title.

I tried clicking OPTIONS… and telling it to Place notes after main text. I was expecting this to put the Document and/or Project notes after the appropriate section, but I didn’t see those notes. (Mine weren’t very extensive so I just ported them by hand.)

UPDATE: A Scrivener rep stopped by with this handy tip in the comments. To export your notes:

You need to check off “Notes” in the Formatting pane grid. It’s to the left of “Text”. The option to place notes before or after the main text is irrelevant until that checkbox is on. When Notes are added, they will be presented in the preview editor, and can have independent formatting applied to them from the main text.

Now, if you’re using the same organization (i.e. folders hold chapters), and you do NOT want the chapter header on its own page or in Courier New, select the folder. Click the Modify button below.

This opens the menu to format the chapter headings. Adjust the Page Padding if desired (I believe this is the number of lines it skips before and after the chapter heading). Want “Chapter” instead of “CHAPTER”? Click on Section Layout…, select the Case tab and change Title Prefix to Normal. You can also click the A to set the font, size and other options.

TRANSFORMATIONS

To export to Word, you don’t need it to transform these things—smart quotes, em dashes, etc., have long been “standard” in manuscript format (as has TNR, but hey). So I recommend unchecking everything here.

I didn’t use Replacements or Footnotes/Comments, so the only other customizations were with . . .

PAGE SETTINGS

The default for the running header font is Courier New, even if your MS is in Times. So by Header font:, click on Choose… to change that. (It generates a header of Last name / TITLE / p#.)

If you’re using a title page, make sure Not on page 1 is checked. If you’re not using a title page, that’s up to your discretion.

Almost done!

COMPILE FOR

On every screen, just above the Compile, Save & Close and Save buttons, there’s a Compile For pull down menu. You can select Word and have it save as a .doc automatically.

Click the Compile button and voila! A clean manuscript!

Important note! Scrivener does not hyphenate compound numbers in automatically numbered chapters. So, basically 21-29, 31-39, etc., are misspelled, and you’ll have to add the hyphens by hand. But seriously, that was the least time consuming part of all my experimentation.

I consulted this post on compiling from Scrivener by Gwen Hernandez, author of Scrivener For Dummies, but figured out a whole lot with six experimental compiles.

What do you think? How do you compile from Scrivener?

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Technique, Publishing

Will Scrivener work for you? (& NaNoWriMo Finale!)

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About to win Nano? Congrats! Don’t forget to verify your word count, or you won’t get your winner goodies—and one of those goodies is a coupon for 50% off the writing software Scrivener, which brings it down to $20 for Windows and $22 for Mac. On the Nanowrimo page, just click on My NaNoWriMo and select “Validate my novel.” Then cut and paste your text into the box.

On Scrivener, you’ll probably have to compile first. I had mine just output to an RTF file . . . and then I had to “adjust” it a little to match the word counts across Scrivener, Word and the Nano site.

Speaking of Scrivener, I tried it for Nano, and I’m honestly not 100% sure I’ll stick with it. Here’s what I thought—and we’ll discuss how to figure out if it will work for you!

What I like about Scrivener

I do like having character sketches and a little bit of my research (although there wasn’t much for this book) right there. Most of my research this time around was deep background, so it wasn’t worth saving. (Would this be enough X? Yes, great, moving on.)

One of the major features seems to be the ability to drag and drop a scene or chapter to a new location in the story, which I don’t really do with most of my books, probably because I largely write in sequential order. More often I have to move little parts of scenes, and then it’s still cut-and-paste. On the other hand, I decided I didn’t care for where my scene breaks fell in the last quarter of the document, so I merged the entire quarter into one file, and I’ll be able to split it up later.

I liked using the cork board and outline views to make sure I was going in the right direction, and to have my outline and notes integrated into the same program/document-type-thing? as my actual draft. It was also nice to be able to see the scene card and make notes on the scenes (and the whole project) in the same window as the writing screen. The full screen view was also nice for focusing, especially when I used my working timer.

I hear Scrivener also has excellent output for ebook formatting. Another great advantage is that if you’re writing a series, you can copy your characters, settings and research to a new project with ease, keeping things consistent.

What I don’t like about Scrivener

For me, the biggest problems with Scrivener were mostly software problems. I found a few “quirks” in the program annoying, especially that Outline view consistently forgot what columns and widths I meticulously set. It was a little slow on start up (perhaps comparable with Word there, though) and displaying the full manuscript in scrivenings mode.

Of course, I also didn’t like the feeling that I was only using a tiny fraction of the program’s potential—or, conversely, that I just had no idea how to use some of the features. (I still don’t quite get how the Collections are different.)

But really what it comes down to is: is this really that much better of a program than Word? As far as the word processing itself, I have to think the answer is no. Features like a decent built-in Autocorrect a decent spelling dictionary and more do make a different to me.

For me, I think the bottom line is Scrivener does more than Word, but it doesn’t do what Word does as well as Word can.

Will Scrivener work for you?

Some of deciding whether Scrivener will work for you depends on how you use your current word processor. For example, I use Word macros for editing my gesture & word crutches. To my knowledge, Scrivener doesn’t have an equivalent function, so if I use Scrivener long term for drafting, I’ll probably go to Word for editing.

Also, my critique partners use Word and I can be sure they’ll get exactly what I send them when I use the same program. If you do your editing online, or use the track changes and/or comments features on a lot of your editing, then Word might still be a necessity, too.

I used Scrivener on a new manuscript, and I think that helped my opinion. From what I’ve heard, importing an existing manuscript can be a challenge, and if you’re not yet committed to the program long-term, it doesn’t make sense to go through the effort.

The best way to tell if Scrivener works for you? Give the free trial a shot first.

Last year, the 50% off winners’ coupon was good through the following October. Of course, I didn’t get around to actually USING the free trial until November… Good thing I won again . . . if I decide to get it.

What do you think? Have you tried Scrivener? What do you like about it, and what don’t you like about it? Join the conversation—and tell me about your Nano!

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Technique, Marketing

Nano inspiration: Animoto

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This entry is part 15 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Warning: if you’re not done with Nano (or don’t have a comfortable bumper), you might want to file this away to read and experiment with another day.

If you are done with Nano (or nearly so), I have a free plotting/revision roadmap which you can get just by signing up for my newsletter (which is also pretty awesome, if I do say so myself).

All right, with that out of the way, today’s little bit of inspiration comes courtesy of my friend Deanna Henderson. She taught a class on creating a book trailer for free using Animoto at an online conference from iWriteNetwork last month. It took me 45 minutes to an hour total to make trailers for this year’s and last year’s Nano novels—once again, I didn’t bother with the instructional video, and hunting down good photos takes time.

Here’s last year’s Nano novel trailer:

Animoto offers paid options, which let you make longer videos, download your videos to your computer and generally just more, but the free options will let you create a 30-second video with your own photos, music and script and share it on the Internet. Not bad for free!

Here are the instructions from Deanna’s blog, with [commentary from me]:

These can be for anything; book trailers, author profiles, blog tours etc… let your imagination be your guide.

Step 1: Register your account. Go to www.Animoto.com

Step 2: Choose a style/template for your video [Note that the templates marked “Pro” are not offered in the free plan. Stick to the ones without the “Pro” label. I used Water for the one above, and Inkwell for this year’s.]

Step 3: Click on the small type below the purchase button that says Make a 30 second video for free

Step 4: – OPTIONAL – Watch the Animoto tutorial video, or close the box, continue to step 5

Step 5: Add pictures and/or video clips **Only use pictures you own the copyright for** [Big, HUGE life-changing tip: you can find FREE, licensed photos on Flickr (and several other places). You can use the advanced search’s Creative Commons options, or you can simply to go this search link and type in your query. If this is a book trailer, be sure you’re using works that are licensed for commercial use. Some of the photos require you to attribute the photos; I do this in the description section of the video for all the photos in order. You’re welcome.]

Step 6: Add desired text. [I’m just full of the hints today! It seems you can get more “slides” if you skip the Header portion.]

Step 7: Drag text to desired location. [You can drag and drop the elements of your video.]

Step 8: Add music. [Seems like a lot of the music that comes with Animoto is super upbeat, so if your novel isn’t, may I recommend “Redrum” by Ugress? For the video at the top, I used a song I licensed for something else.]

Step 9: Preview your video, it will take a minute to buffer first, be patient. When you watch it this time, the quality isn’t as high as it will be in the final product, don’t worry.

Step 10: Title your video, and give a description. [Where I put the photo and music credits]

Step 11: Click the Produce button.

****

Wait

****

Wait

****

Wait

****
Step 12: Now you can watch your video!

On the video’s display page, there are also buttons and links to share your video via Facebook, Twitter, and email. If you want to embed your video on your site (like I have here), Click on the “More” button beside the other sharing buttons. From there you have options to share via Pinterest, Twitter and a few popular blogging platforms. You can also use the “Embedded video” tab at the top of the popups to get the code.

Last year’s video only took a few minutes because I only had to find 2 new photos, plus one I’d already Pinned. This year’s took much longer with all the image and music hunting. I’ve already shared this year’s video, but here it is again:

Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.

And the truth is: I totally watched this when my motivation was lagging as I was writing the MS. I think it’s especially helpful for that purpose because it gets down to the core conflict that made me want to write the book in the first place, so it was a great source of inspiration for me. I tracked down the song as well, since it had become linked with the book in my mind, and found it was free to download. So when that came up in my playlist, I was motivated all over again.

What do you think? Would you use Animoto for your inspiration video, or your book trailer? Come join in the conversation!

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Technique

Nano: Moving forward

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Ever get to that point in your novel where you know on a high, plot level what you want to come next (characters D & K turn to O for help, character X will actually turn out to be good, etc.), but you have no idea to get from where you are to there?

Yeah, story of my writing life.

As I was preparing for my Nano blog series last year, I saw a great post on tips for marathon writing by Kaye Dacus. I just might have to put one of her tips to use:

. Write Something . . . Anything

When you sit down for that scheduled writing time and you stare at that flashing cursor waiting for the words to come, and they don’t, DO NOT walk away from it and give yourself the excuse that you’ll just double-up on words tomorrow. Why do you think I’ve ended up writing the bulk of two of the last three novels I’ve finished in two weeks or less?

When I was writing what would become my first completed manuscript a little less than ten years ago, I got to a point at which (being a seat of the pants writer with no synopsis, only a vague story idea) I had no idea where my story was going. But I wanted to write. I needed to write. So since I’d just gone to the grocery store that evening after work, I wrote one of my characters doing the same thing. I had him get his basket. I had him pick out produce. I got him through the store all the way to the frozen-food section—where, surprisingly, he ran into another character; and, all of a sudden, I had a scene that moved the story forward again.

It sounds mundane and like bad writing (and it’s probably something you’d end up cutting most of in a revision), but not only are you working at that creative pump, you can also learn more about your character by doing something like that.

(Kaye has more great tips in her post!)

What do you think? What do you do to “prime the pump”? Aside from six round of Bejeweled on Facebook, of course. . . .

Photo by Polycart

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News & Contests

Nano check in!

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(And Marketing Monday break)

We’re a little over halfway through November. How are you doing on your goals?

I hit 50,000 words on the 10th! (Which, amazingly, isn’t as good as last year. Aren’t you supposed to get better at these things?) I’m still plugging along, though, only clocking 8000 words last week. I’m hoping to finish today or tomorrow—hence the brief hiatus for Marketing Monday.

When we come back to Marketing Monday next week, I’m hoping to delve into offline marketing techniques (gasp!). But before we move on, I want to make sure there isn’t anything I’ve missed.

Stay tuned this week for more Nano tips and fun announcements coming Friday!

What online book marketing tactics are you most interested in? Anything we haven’t covered so far? And how is your Nano going? Come join the conversation!

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Technique

Nano tools: Write or Die by Dr Wicked

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Twitter can be great for sprinting with a writing friend. But sometimes, I just don’t feel up to publicly admitting my word counts, and other times I just can’t turn off the distractions.

When I just have to power through some words to hit my goal and the rabbit hole of the Internet keeps sucking me in, I turn to Write or Die by Dr Wicked. (I think the name pretty much illustrates the concept, eh?)

“Dr. Wicked” offers an online version and a $10 desktop version of his Write or Die app. The concept is pretty simple: it’s a text box and a timer. You can program it with a time goal or a word count goal, and then you get typing. You can also get it for the iPad for $9.99. To use the web app, go to the site, click on the Web App tab in the sidebar and enter your goal.

If you stop for too long (the exact length of time depends on what “level” of punishment you pick), the screen background turns pink, then red—and then an annoying sound begins to play (a crying baby, “Mm Bop” by Hanson—seriously). I’ve heard that in the strictest mode, if you stop too long it starts erasing your words.

It’s kind of a last resort when my mind is on the fritz, but looking at my outline to figure out where I’m going and forcing myself to get those words down is sometimes the kick in the pants I need.

The only drawback: the online version has to be formatted when you put it into your manuscript. Here’s how I do it. Since I’m writing on the Internet, I skip lines between paragraphs. I paste the words into Notepad, and make sure Word Wrap is turned off. Then it’s easy to take out the extra returns (and insert tabs if you’re putting those in). Then I paste into Word and Find and Replace the quotes (just use the plain quotes in your Find and Replace box; it turns them into Smart Quotes automatically) and apostrophes, and if you used em dashes (convert two hyphens to —). And voila! It’s pretty again!

What do you think? How do you force yourself to get the words out when your brain wants to wind down?

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Technique

Nano tools: Twitter

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Despite its reputation as a time wasting distraction, Twitter can be a great help for productivity during NaNoWriMo. This particular tool can be a double edged sword: it’s easy to get drawn into the time-suck that is Twitter, but if you’re careful about how you use it, Twitter can be a big help.

Twitter can be a great place to find little bits of encouragement, but my favorite use for Twitter during Nano is finding sprint partners—and better yet, partners for word wars!

About 20 minutes seems to be a good length for a sprint, and the faster your sprint partners, the faster you seem to go. At my writers’ retreat last year, I had periods where I’d struggle to get a couple hundred words written in an hour or two—and then with a twenty minute sprint, I’d pound out almost 1300 (almost: 1299). I didn’t win, but I didn’t care! That was a heck of a lot better than I’d done in the last hour! The sense of accomplishment from pounding those words out makes it all worthwhile.

Since most of us don’t live with twenty writer friends full time, finding sprint partners can be a challenge, unless you turn to a place like Twitter.

If you’re worried about using writing as a competition, note that I actually really hate competition and the feeling of competitiveness. It’s a rush, but for me it’s not a good one: usually. But when I’m sprinting with someone—especially someone whom I know can write a LOT faster than me—it pushes me to go faster, and gives me a productivity boost that’s pretty hard to beat. And yes, it’s just plain fun.

My friend Julie Coulter Bellon is doing her first Nano, and she’s hosted a writing sprint on Twitter and her blog from 8 to 9 PM MST for the last two Wednesdays. I’m really hoping to be ready to write and join in next week!

Do you sprint? How do you find partners?

Twitter image by Scott Beale

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