NaNoWriMo is over for another year but there is still plenty of writing still to do. To that end, here’s a list of resources that might serve you in the off-season. Of course, what you need from a post NaNoWriMo year round alternative will depend on what you liked about the event…

If you liked the goal setting element of NaNoWriMo…

NaNoWriMo Goal Trackers

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that lots of people don’t realize that the main NaNoWriMo site allows for year-round goal setting. No matter what month it is, you can always create a project or word count goal and still have the advantage of all the fancy badges, graphs and word tracking tools you get during the main events so that’s always an option. (You can also set multiple goals for the same project which is great for tracking your progress through multiple drafts… or in my case the same draft. Again.)

Get Your Words Out 

GYWO is a writing challenge (with optional community) centered around setting a writing goal for the year (either by word count or number of hours). With monthly check-ins, tons of resources and articles, and a lively community, their goals span a variety of levels to make your year as chill or challenging as fits your needs. 

If you liked the timed write-ins…  

Keep It Going!

If your favorite part of NaNoWriMo are the meet-ups and write-ins, one of the best places to start is your local NaNoWriMo region. Put out some feelers and see if there’s anyone else in your area who’d be willing to set up a standing write-in time so you can keep the momentum going throughout the year. If online is more your thing (sometimes I enjoy being social but I’m also a huge fan of not leaving my house), you might have more takers with a regular Zoom call or Discord sprints. 

Shut Up and Write!

If your local region isn’t active or you don’t get any takers when you ask around, there’s an organization called Shut Up and Write that serves as a hub to find local and online NaNo-style write-ins year round. While there are a variety of online events open to everyone on the schedule, anyone can also sign up to host in-person writing sprints that they’ll list in their international database.

If you liked the forums…

Forums are kind of a dying breed these days so it’s challenging to find a good one that’s still active. While GYWO has thriving Dreamhost and Discord communities and Shut Up and Write does face to face meet-ups, if it’s specifically forums you’re looking for, I’d point you towards SavvyAuthors or Absolute Write. While not as active as non-forum communities, both are friendly communities centered around writing of all kinds that anyone can join and SavvyAuthors also has a host of other features like pitch events, online classes and a yearly exclusive conference and, best of all, a robust beta readers program. 

If you’re coming around to Discord, in addition to anything your regional group might offer, the NaNo Coffeehouse is a year round group that also has a forum element integrated into their discord server. They run events and sprints year round and you can find them here.

Post-NaNoWriMo Resources 

Beta readers

Now that you’ve finished your novel, you’re probably thinking about the next steps. When you’re finished editing, you’ll need beta readers and while the best sources usually come from your personal circle of writing peers, another option is SavvyAuthors’ crit match program. Unlike a lot of the big sites like Critique Circle or Scribophile where the system is point based to favor quantity over quality, the SavvyAuthors program resets every few months to pair you directly with a writing buddy that fits your needs. 

Classes and Workshops

Sometimes the process of editing makes you realize just how much you don’t know so you realize you need to learn a little more about craft before you continue. Fortunately, there are tons of small writing workshops and classes that are super inexpensive (like under $35 in most cases) where you can get the one-on-one attention of your instructor and feedback from your fellow students. The list of what classes are currently available changes all the time and they can often be hard to find, but I compiled a list of places to check here. 

Get Stuff Done: Productivity and Goal Tracking for Writers

Presented by Hillary DePiano

4 Week Class
February 5-March 1, 2024

Register here

Speaking of classes, I am teaching a 4 week workshop in February called Get Stuff Done: Productivity and Goal Tracking for Writers. For a mere $30, we’ll be taking a hands on look at your goals for the next year and finding ways to tweak your methods to get more done with less time! (Note that the class is offered through Romance Writers Online but the content is for writers of any genre or type, not limited to romance writers.)

Hit the Books

Whether you want to learn more about writing craft, editing and revision, or just storytelling in general, I compiled a list of my favorite writing books here. 

Bonus: 4TheWords

Lastly, while it’s not free*, I highly recommend the writing game 4TheWords for keeping the writing motivation going year round. It’s a fantasy, RPG style game where you battle monsters with your writing and features plenty of stats and even goal trackers to help you keep an eye on your writing progress. I’ve been playing for over 5 years and it’s become an essential part of my writing routine. If you want to try it out, my referral code (AOZSY71632) gives you a 30 day free trial and 22 extra crystals. DM me once you’ve got the hang of the site and I’ll send you some extra items too to welcome you to the site (I can only do this if you use my referral code, though. The gift system only works for people you referred, sadly.). You can also extend your time on the site even more using the code wrimo23 (expires January 1st, 2024).

*Well, there’s a community pool where you can join and have your subscription sponsored by other users effectively making it free for you, but they only distribute that a few times a year and it literally just happened this week so it probably won’t happen again for a while. Though at least it IS an option to use it free!

Hmm, that’s all I can think of at the moment. Need something specific that isn’t addressed here? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see if I can think of something. 

The post NaNoWriMo alternatives to keep you writing in the off-season  appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

What is the NaNoWriMo Global Write-In Crawl (GWIC)?

TL; DR: The Global Write-In Crawl (GWIC) is an international, volunteer-run event held over the chat app Discord where writers from all over the world are invited to socialize and participate in “stops” aka writing sprints hosted by different regions. It’s a fun way to meet other writers and push yourself to get ahead on your NaNoWriMo effort.

The 2022 Event runs from November 3rd until the wee hours of November 7th so there’s plenty of time to hop in and participate in a sprint or two!

For more info on how to join the Discord server and the full schedule of stops adjusted by time zone, visit this page on the NaNoWriMo forums: Global Write-In Crawl 2022 Invitation

Or follow the event’s Twitter at @TeamGWIC

Need more info? Here’s the longer version…

November is National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, a fun an exciting challenge where users all over the world try to write the first draft of a novel– or at least 50,000 words of one– in 30 days. Because life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of one’s creative pursuits, one of the most common bits of advice NaNoWriMo veterans recommend is getting ahead early to build yourself a cushion of words in case something comes up later in the month. The tradition has become to designate the first weekend of NaNoWriMo as Double Up Weekend where everyone tries to write double their usual amount and the non-profit behind NaNoWriMo offers double the prizes to anyone who donates to their creative mission.

But this year, Double Up Weekend combines with another fun NaNoWriMo tradition: the Global Write-In Crawl!

What is it?

Begun in 2020, the Global Write-In Crawl (or GWIC as it’s more commonly known) is a virtual train ride with stops every couple of hours at regions all over the globe. At each “stop” the host region runs writing sprints (which are short timed writing bursts) with breaks to socialize in between. While there are 30 stops with writing sprints running near continuously over the course of several days, anyone can jump in or out at any time, participating as much or as little as desired!

Can short writing bursts like that really make a difference in your total word count?

• Well, in 2020, 308 people across 26 regions participated in the GWIC writing a total of 753,911 words written.
• 2021 saw 274 GWIC participants, 84 regions and 1,595,497 words.
• With how the event keeps growing, imagine how much we’ll all write this year!

How does does it work?

(aka new things are scary and after all this writing I don’t have enough brain left to figure this out HALP!)

• Join the GWIC Discord. For privacy, I can’t link you directly to the invite but you can find the link to join here. (The GWIC Discord is the blue one. The TMNT themed one is the NaNoWriMo region I run, the Northeast New Jersey Nenja Dojo.)
• Sign up. Once in the Discord server, navigate to the #word-count-tracking channel. In there you’ll find a Google Form where you can submit your NaNoWriMo username and officially sign up the fun!
• Visit the current stop. While there are lots of channels for chatting, the real magic happens in the Station Writing Stops section. Your regional hosts (often with the help of a bot like Sprinto to keep time) will lead everyone in sprints in the #station-bot-sprinting channel while you can chat between sprints in #station-chatter (text) or #station-voice-chat (audio).
• How does a sprint work? When the station host (or bot) tells you it’s time to start writing, you write as much as you possibly can until it’s time to stop! Then you report what you wrote to see how it stacks up to others (or keep it private if competition doesn’t motivate you).
• Participate in as many or few sprints as you wish!
• Report your count. Once a stop is over (or you decide you’re done for now), return to the #word-count-tracking channel and visit the other Google Forms linked there to report your total word count for that stop.

And that’s all there is to it! Share things that inspire you, make some writer friends from around the word and get a TON of writing done over the course of this limited time event.

Other fun things:

• Collectible tickets. Each stop has a special customized ticket that you can claim so long as you participate in even a single sprint during that stop. Collect them all! (Pictured above are two of the tickets I earned for writing at stops in Western Massachusetts and Philadelphia earlier in the event.)
• Regional Brochures. There are information channels for each participating region that acts as a brochure where you can learn a bit about the history and culture of the region you’re writing with.
• Writers, Socializing. Lastly, there are plenty of channels set up for chatting, sharing pictures of pets and other fun ways to get to know your fellow writers no matter how far away you live from each other!

And that’s it! A fun and friendly way to not only get a lot of extra writing done and get ahead on your NaNoWriMo novel but also get to know more about the world around you and the other writers joining you on this challenge!

I’ll be popping in and out of the crawl all weekend so I hope to see you there!

The post Global Write-In Crawl: Double Up your NaNoWriMo word count and meet other writers from around the world! appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

The post NaNoWriMo Advanced Word Count Calculator (charts, percentages, stats and more!) appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

You’re reading an adapted excerpt from…

Building a Writing Life

start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams

---

Available now in paperback and eBook

Amazon * B&N * Google * More

Write for the job you want, not the one you have

There’s an expression that says, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” and it applies well to your writing life. Even though you’re just starting out, you likely know where you ultimately want to be. You know the writing life you want to have, even though you’re not there yet. The key to getting there is to write for that life now.

What is the writing life you want? Let’s say you want to be a bestselling author. You want to have dozens of books out, readers clamoring for more. While that may be the farthest thing from your current writing reality, you can write for the job you want by replicating elements of it right now.

What does the writing life of a bestselling author look like? For starters, they are regularly writing and completing books. They have strict deadlines to meet for each stage of the project (pitch, first draft, final draft, etc.) and as soon as they finish one project, they are looking ahead to the next. They are professional, friendly, and supportive of their industry connections, fans, and peers, and they work steadily to grow their careers book by book.

There’s no reason you can’t do these things right now even though you don’t have the big book deals yet. You can be friendly and professional to everyone you meet so that those connections are already there by the time you have reached that point. You can set yourself deadlines and take them seriously, making sure you finish what you start on time as if it really was under contract. And you can always look ahead, finishing one project and then moving right on to the next one while you send the first out into the world.

• Even if you haven’t snagged that first freelance gig, you can still practice reporting and delivering a piece on a deadline by starting a blog. Providing steady, quality content that way will not only help you build your audience but also a portfolio of work that can land you your dream job later.
• While you may not be a famous poet, you can still produce poems, submit to anthologies and contests and go to open mic nights to put yourself out there as you build up notoriety.
• Theatres may not be begging for your latest play yet, but you can still live the life of a playwright. Start by setting up your own readings and performances of your work with friends, all of which will help fine-tune your writing and get you to where you want to be.
• Even if you haven’t achieved enlightenment from your meditative writing, you can still share your favorite lines from your morning pages. You never know what might inspire or strike a chord with someone else, making you a new fan or friend.

Give yourself goals. Pretend there are readers desperate for this next book that you will disappoint if it isn’t out in time. Play the role of writing professional even though you’re still the newest beginner. Focus on building a writing career of multiple works instead of obsessing over just this one.

It’s not just a mental trick. It’s a useful way to get yourself into the mindset you need to succeed in the writing life you want. At the same time, you’re building up the habits, connections, and portfolio that will help get you there. And all that practice ensures you’ll be better prepared to crush it when you do achieve that dream job.

The post Write for the job you want appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

NaNoWriMo is nearly over. Only 8 days until this whole wild challenge is behind us and we’re swept up in the holiday chaos that accelerates us all into the end of the year.

I know some of you have already reached or even surpassed 50,000 words and I want you to know that you are awesome and have accomplished something amazing here this month. I am so darn proud of you!

For those of you still furiously racing to the finish line, I highly recommend getting yourself a word buffer as we head into Thanksgiving Week because the holiday can definitely throw off your writing groove. But if you do have some time off, it might be just the thing you need to catch up and reach your goals. 

Remember the busy writer’s best friend, the word sprint: set a timer for 15 minutes, write like the wind, take a break, repeat. You’ll be amazed at how much you can write in fits and spurts like that. 

And if you’ve stopped writing, well, there are a lot of perfectly legitimate reasons why that might be so. 

• Maybe your hand was chopped off by a black knight on a white horse and you need to saddle up your dragon to seek vengeance. 
• Maybe your best friend has been turned into a dog and you need to go seduce that evil sorcerer for the magic amulet to turn him back. 
• Maybe you are being swallowed by a boa constrictor and you don’t like it very much. 

These are all very valid reasons for giving up on NaNoWriMo and I accept all of them.

But you know what one I won’t accept? If you quit because you don’t think you can reach 50,000 words. “Oh, I don’t think I can write exactly 50,000 words this month so I might as well quit and write NOTHING!” 

I mean, what? 

If you can’t run the whole marathon, you don’t throw up your hands and cut straight through the crowd to your car. You walk the rest of the way. But you still finish. 

Thing is, there’s no such thing as too far behind. There are people every year who manage to sign up at the last minute and write 50,000 words in a week or less. Go check out the OA section of the forums sometime and you’ll see there are people who can do the whole 50k in a day or two. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this and point out that it is NOT too late for you to win, if that’s what’s really important to you. 

But NaNoWriMo is a case where winning is absolutely not everything. 

Listen, I love NaNoWriMo as much as… ok, probably more than the next gal but can we all get real for a minute here? 50,000 words is a target a random guy in a coffee shop picked 20 years ago when NaNoWriMo was born. It’s a nice thing to shoot for and a heck of an accomplishment to write that much in a month but it’s also just a completely arbitrary number. 

Most novels are longer than 50,000 words. Most people ending this month, even if they wrote 50,000 words or more, are walking away without having reached the end of their stories. If you don’t finish your book this month, you’re in very good company. Whether you end up with 50,000 words or 5,000 words or 500 words, there will still be plenty of writing to do once the calendar flips to December. 

Thing is, no one ever reached their writing dreams by not writing. You don’t finish your story by quitting. You finish it by adding words, steadily and continuously until the book is done. 

So let’s forget about the numbers, arbitrary benchmarks and everyone else’s word count. The real victory of this month is that you started, you saw it through and you walked away with something, even if it wasn’t exactly as much as you planned.

There are only a few days left. Just a few more days to leave it all on the page so you can walk away with the satisfaction of knowing you really did give it your all. No matter what number that ultimately looks like. 

You’ve come this far. 

Come on. 

Let’s see it through. 

The post NaNoWriMo Pep Talk: Winning Isn’t Everything appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

Consider yourself warned: There’s a point, usually around the halfway point of your story but not always, when you will hit a moment of crisis. This story is a mess, my writing is awful, the characters are flat and dull, and the whole thing is falling apart. Why am I even bothering to write this? This feeling will often coincide with the siren call of a shiny new idea that would be sooo much easier to write, and it’ll try to convince you that maybe you should just go write that and stop wasting your time with this disaster.

When you hit this point, it will feel very personal, rooted in all your fears and insecurities, but it’s a universal experience. From Stephen King to J. K. Rowling, all writers have talked about this dark moment when it feels like their story, their draft, nay, their entire writing career unravels. But what the experienced writer knows that the new one doesn’t is that this is not a sign to quit or chase your latest plot bunny to a new story, but a normal part of the process. The only way out is through. Keep writing past this pocket of doom, and you’ll find your footing again on the other side.

There was a point in every single thing I’ve ever written where I ended up sobbing to my husband that the story doesn’t work and I’m a complete failure and I have no idea how to write and all my successes so far have been a fluke and— Oh, wait, never mind, I’ve got it!

And then I’m right back to it.

You’re reading an adapted excerpt from…

Building a Writing Life

start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams

---

Available now in paperback and eBook

Amazon * B&N * Google * More

Finish what you start. If the story was worth starting, it’s worth finishing. Jot down ideas for that shiny new idea, so you don’t forget it but then get your butt back in the chair and get back to work.

Middles are hard. It’s when the novelty of the new project has worn off, and the narrative gets tricky. It’s also when you’ve been writing for long enough that it’s stopped being fun and you’re just looking for an out. But the good news is that, as hard as middles are, endings are easier. Push through the murky middle, and you’ll find yourself flying again, you and your story accelerating through the climax to the end.

There are some things you can only learn about a project (and about writing itself) from taking something all the way to its conclusion. It’s easy to chase the latest shiny new idea, but it’s by doing the hard work of finishing what you start that will level up your skills and give you a finished project you can do something with.

The post Writers: Finish what you start appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

I glanced down at the story my 6 year old is writing.

“Is that supposed to be kitchen? Because kitchen is K-I-T—”

“Mama!” she cuts me off. “I don’t care how it’s spelled! This is just my sloppy copy. I just want to get the story down now while it’s in my head and I will make it neat and spelled right later.”

My friends, THIS, is the exact energy you should be bringing to NaNoWriMo.

Let the story spill sloppily from your head.

Get it down now, get it right later.

Don’t sweat the spelling, the syntax, the story structure.

This is just your “sloppy copy.”

You can make it neat and spelled right later.

Who knew you really did learn everything you needed to know for NaNoWriMo success back in kindergarten?

The post NaNoWriMo Pep Talk: It’s just your sloppy copy appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

You’re reading an adapted excerpt from…

Building a Writing Life

start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams

---

Available now in paperback and eBook

Amazon * B&N * Google * More

It was summer. My daughter was five years old and just learning to go underwater. All-day long she’d done tentative little dips, dunking her face, sliding across the surface of the water.

Then she dropped her goggles. She lunged for them, but it was too late. Down down down, they sank to the very bottom of the deep end of the pool.

Over and over, she dipped under to get them, but she never even came close to where they were. With each dip, she got more frustrated. She was barely getting a foot under the water, how could she ever hope to get all the way down there to her goggles? She’d never even been down that deep before.

Finally, she snapped. She broke the surface after her latest attempt and screamed, “I quit!” With a roar of pure rage, she slapped at the water. “I QUIT!”

Before I could say anything comforting, she was back underwater, swimming, I assumed, for the ladder so she could get out and sulk. But, to my surprise, instead, she dove down, her legs kicking hard and fast. And before I could understand what I was seeing, she was all the way down there, down at the very bottom, grabbing her goggles and flying back up. She emerged from the water arm first, goggles held up triumphantly. I cheered.

“When I said I quit,” she said matter-of-factly, “What I quit was failing. I quit quitting.”

And then her goggles were back on her face, and she was diving under again, this time deeper and more confident than ever before.

Quit quitting.

If you want to do this writing thing, you need to quit quitting. Take failure entirely off the table. Commit to seeing this through. Because if you leave yourself that out, you can never kick as hard and fast towards your dreams as when you’ve promised yourself there is no other option.

The post Take failure off the table appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

You’re reading an adapted excerpt from…

Building a Writing Life

start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams

---

Available now in paperback and eBook

Amazon * B&N * Google * More

While people often use the terms interchangeably when talking about writing or anything creative, there’s a big difference between a dream and a goal. A dream is a fantasy, a mental picture of how we wish it could be. A goal is a tangible thing you can work toward in the real world.

Goals vs Dreams

Even the word goal itself changes how you think about it. A dream feels like an ethereal picture in the distance, but a goal is a finish line you can walk toward right now. What would it take to turn your writing dream into a writing goal? Can you turn that daydream of where you want your writing life to go into a list of precisely what you’d need to do to make it a reality?

Goals > Dreams

Dreams are often vague and undefined, but the best goals are as specific as possible. For example, think about having the dream of writing a novel vs. setting a goal to write at least 300 words a day until you have a draft of at least 100,000 words (the typical length for a traditionally published adult novel). By setting a goal, you’d have a specific plan you could act on daily and a simple way of measuring your progress. And, if you stick with it, you’d have a finished first draft of your novel in a year or less. That’s the power of getting specific and turning your dreams into goals.

The post Turn your writing dreams into a writing goal appeared first on Hillary DePiano.

Ask any writer why they write, and you’ll get dozens of different answers. Some use it for therapy or meditation. For others, it’s a job or side hustle to earn some extra income. Many writers write to share their story or to make sure the world has the stories they needed when they were young. Some writers can’t explain why they write, they only know that they must, or life feels wrong and hollow.

You’re reading an adapted excerpt from…

Building a Writing Life

start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams

---

Available now in paperback and eBook

Amazon * B&N * Google * More

I write because…

Understanding why you write is essential to understand how you write. It defines your writing purpose and guides the steps you take to achieve it. It’s the core of your creative impulse and clarifying it now gives you something to refer to whenever you doubt the process or feel you’re being led astray.

Certainty in your own motivations can itself be a source of inspiration. When that inevitable moment comes when you are under attack by the doubts and fears every creative person must battle, you will ask yourself why you even bother. And what happens next depends on how certain you are of the answer. Because if you cannot even tell yourself why you write, you’ll have quit before you’ve begun.

Why do you want to write? An answer may spring to mind, but even that is worth examining. Why are you trying to do this?

Try to nail it down enough so answer the question in a single sentence. In the world of theatre, you’d call this your Artistic Statement. It’s a guiding principle for your creative life that you can ground yourself with whenever you lose touch with your purpose.

What do you really want out of your writing life?

When I was in college, I wrote and directed a play, The Love of Three Oranges, as part of my honors thesis. After I graduated, I started getting production requests for that play from all over the world. There were dozens of productions over the years, all across the US and across the globe, and every time I talked with the directors or cast of those productions, they always said the same thing. “We love this play! When are you writing another?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” I would say, laughing, “I’m not a playwright!” I had convinced myself that writing novels was the only TRUE writing and, besides, I didn’t know how to write a play. And you can see the flaw in this logic right away… that clearly I knew how to write a play if my first effort was this popular, but I couldn’t see it. All I knew is that I had dreamed since I was a little kid of telling stories and had always pictured that as writing novels. Writing for the stage had never figured into that plan.

It was decades later when I realized how silly I was being. What I had wanted as a kid, what my dream had always been, was to tell stories. What did it matter if I told those stories through plays instead of novels if that’s how people wanted to hear them?

I had gotten so bogged down with one interpretation of my dream I lost sight of the core. And once I realized this, I stopped trying to force my ideas into novel-length works and started letting them become plays to great success. While I may go back to novels again someday, for now, I am perfectly happy because I am doing what I wanted to do. I am getting to tell stories every day for people who want to hear them, even if it’s happening on a stage instead of a page.

Sometimes we get very attached to an idea or one way to achieve our goals or dreams, and we lose sight of what it is we actually want. There are a lot of external pressures and biases coming at you about writing and creative work in general. It’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself you want one thing because it’s what you think you should want when, deep down, it’s not what you want at all. Understanding what you want is the key to figuring out how to get it.

What do you really want from your writing? What is your ideal endgame? What is the core of that goal? Once you know that, you’ll have it to focus your efforts and give you a road map on the steps it’ll take to get there.

The post Why do you write? appeared first on Hillary DePiano.