Blognowrimo

Ready, Set, Write!

2015-11-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

This is it. The moment we've all been waiting for. The sun has dawned on November 1. It is time to begin your 50,000-word adventure.

Welcome to week one!

Week one is often celebrated as the easiest. Endless possibilities stretch ahead of you, waiting to be discovered. Your imagination, finally unleashed, will pull you through your first chapters with the limitless energy of a kid at Disneyland. Your first 10,000 words will fly by in a blur of excitement and adrenaline. Magic flows freely through your fingertips.

But for some—like yours truly—week one is actually the hardest.
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Nanowrimo Progress Tracker

2015-10-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

It's important to keep track of your progress throughout your month-long noveling adventure, not only to ensure that you're staying on track but to take motivation from your especially productive days. Nanowrimo.org provides a few stats as you update your novel's word count, but a spreadsheet can offer much more.

I've used progress tracking spreadsheet made by others in the past, but they never suited the way I track my progress—by total word count, not words written per day—and typically had more bells and whistles than I needed. So this year, I decided to make my own, and I'm pleased to share it with you!
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The Five Best Lessons I've Learned From Nanowrimo

2015-10-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Each year I've participated in Nanowrimo, I've come away from the experience not only with 50,000 words, but with a deeper understanding of my own writing process and the art of writing itself. While every lesson I've learned from Nanowrimo is priceless, there are a few things in particular that I wish I'd known before my very first foray into month-long noveling.
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Silencing Your Inner Editor

2015-10-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

You open a new document and poise your fingers over the keyboard. You're going to write a novel, and it's going to be great. But first, you need to think of the perfect opening line. You write a couple of words... but they're awful. You delete them and start again. And again, and again, and again. You write a dozen different opening lines, but they're all terrible. This writing a novel thing is harder than you thought. Maybe you aren't cut out for this, after all. If you can't even get the opening line down, what hope do you have for the rest of the book?

Sound familiar?

Word Count Calendars

2015-10-22T08:30:00.000-04:00

To reach 50,000 words by the end of November, you need to write a minimum of 1,667 words per day. That isn't an easy number to multiply in your head—and who has time to do math, anyway? It's much easier to keep track of your daily targets when they're just a click away on your desktop!

Making word count calendars is one of my favorite things to do to get ready for Nanowrimo, and this year, I'm thrilled to share them with you!

The Tools of the Trade

2015-10-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

All you really need to write a novel is something to write with... and maybe an idea or two. But ask any Wrimo what's in their survival kit, and they'll list off twenty or thirty things that they can't live without in November. So, what should you put in yours?
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Finding Time to Write

2015-10-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

50,000 words. That's a lot of words, and they take a lot of time to write. And time is a commodity most of us have little of these days. How on earth can you fit writing a novel, in a month, into your already packed schedule?

Well, we're writers. We're creative. We can figure it out!
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The Nanowrimo Community

2015-10-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

I attended a midnight premiere of the final Harry Potter film a few years back, and as you might expect of a midnight premiere, it was packed with only the most devoted and zealous fans. From start to finish, the audience's reactions to the movie were raucously enthusiastic, as we cheered, jeered, laughed, and gasped in one voice... except during one particularly heart-wrenching scene, when the entire theater was silent but for sniffling. It was unlike any other movie-going experience I'd ever had, because I was sharing it with a roomful of people who loved Harry Potter just as fiercely as I did.

Nanowrimo is a lot like that. You aren't just writing a novel, you're sharing an experience with hundreds of thousands of others along for the same wild ride—people who are just as passionate about storytelling as you are. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: one of the greatest things about Nanowrimo is the community.

Ten Reasons Scrivener Rocks!

2015-10-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

I started using Scrivener four years ago, and I haven't stopped talking about how great it is since. It's completely changed the way I approach writing and revising, and as a result, the quality of my work has vastly improved. I tell every writer I meet that they should give Scrivener a try. Today, that writer is you!

The Wonderful World of Outlining

2015-10-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

I wrote my first two Nanowrimo novels with varying levels of pantsing, and while I crossed the 50,000-word finish line for both, neither came anywhere close to an ending. Pantsing, I discovered, was not for me. I prepared a rough outline for my third Nanowrimo, and while it did help, it still wasn't enough. Every year since, my outlines have grown ever more extensive, resulting in ever more coherent manuscripts. And I've enjoyed outlining my novels almost as much as I've enjoyed writing them. I have become an extremist planner, and I'm not afraid to admit it!

If you, too, are an extremist planner, there probably isn't much I can tell you that you don't already know. But if you're new to outlining or want to expand your outlining abilities, you've come to the right place! I briefly touched on a few methods of outlining your novel in my last post, but today we're going to take a closer look at each.

Pantsing versus Planning

2015-10-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

One of Nanowrimo's mottoes is "No plot? No problem!" For some, that works well, but for others... not so much. Today we're going to talk about the great debate: pantsing versus planning.
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It All Starts With an Idea

2015-10-01T06:00:00.000-04:00

So you're going to participate in Nanowrimo. Fantastic! Now comes the question that has plagued writers since the dawn of our age:

What are you going to write about?
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Five Reasons to Write a Novel This November

2015-09-17T09:53:00.000-04:00

The air is growing cooler, the leaves are changing color, and your favorite coffee shop suddenly has pumpkin spice everything. This can only mean one thing.

It's almost time for Nanowrimo!

Sponsor Me

2015-09-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

For fifteen years, Nanowrimo has supported aspiring and veteran writers alike in telling their stories. But that's not all!

Nanowrimo is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose programs work to empower and encourage writing and creativity around the world. The Young Writers Program promotes writing fluency and creative education in more than 2,000 classrooms. The Come Write In program provides free resources to libraries, community centers, and local bookstores. Camp Nanowrimo is a semi-annual virtual writing retreat designed to provide the resources, tools, and community needed to complete any writing project, novel or not.

But they can't do it without us.
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The Broken Brick Road

2015-09-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

I have long wanted to write a retelling of a classic story, and last year, I finally took the plunge with The Wizard of Oz. But instead of simply putting my own spin on Dorothy's adventure, I decided to shift my focus to her daughter. What would life be like for a girl whose mother was convinced she had traveled to a magical land over the rainbow? What would happen when that girl discovered Oz was real? And what if it wasn't the wonderful place her mother had told her it was?

These questions, and a few thousand others, gave rise to The Broken Brick Road.

Welcome to Blognowrimo!

2015-09-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

I first heard about Nanowrimo in 2006, but it wasn't until the following year that I convinced myself to give it a try. I scribbled down a plot, roughed out some characters, and imagined what my novel would look like sitting proudly on bookstore shelves. On November 1, I sat down to write. And... I couldn't.
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