Did you miss the 15 Day Countdown to NaNoWriMo? No problem.

Even though the Countdown was designed to be taken in small doses, once a day, there’s no reason why you can’t do the whole thing in a single day’s writing session.

Why would you want to?

Because you’ve decided to jump into NaNoWriMo, but it’s Day 3 already: YOU’RE LATE.

You wrestled with your soul, won, and came out ready to write that sucker (I mean…your novel) and now you don’t know where to start.

Relax. Start right here. You can access all Countdown items either from dropdown menus in the navigation panel above. But find that tedious, here’s another way: bookmark this post and use the links I’ve laid out below.

Day 15 – Schedule a Party

Day 14 – A Place for Your Writing

Day 13 – Focus on a Character

Day 12 – In Praise of the Regular

Day 11 – Interview a Character

Day 10 – The NaNoWriMo Website

Day 09 – Make a List

Day 08 – Pick a Setting, Describe it Twice

Day 07 – Write a Thumbnail

Day 06 – Show, Show, Show

Day 05 – Make a Mindmap, Start Anywhere

Day 04 – Meet the Half-Scene

Day 03 – Quote / Unquote

Day 02 – Write or Die

Day 01 – My Secret NaNoWriMo Plan

Trust me–finish these, and you’ll be ready to write. One Day. GO.

Fellow NaNoWriMo voyagers, do I sense among a few of us – perhaps not even an insignificant few – a certain balkiness, even light dread, at the approaching onset of November 1?

Oh, I know, we’re all excited, thrilled, can’t wait. But then there’s…the keyboard. Like, actually getting started at the keyboard. Staying put at the keyboard. Try as we might to be brave, in the darkest of our Jack-o-Lantern hours, the fears return.

Writer’s block. Just shoot me.

We’ve stood tall for NaNoWriMo five times and never won. We’ve tried everything to make that word count. The most solemn promises, the holiest of sacred vows – they have no effect, none. Even rewards, like chocolate eclairs or triple fudge ice cream sundaes, don’t work.

Time to get serious: how about some mildly sadistic self-punishment? If you’re nodding yes, Dr. Wicked’s “Write or Die,” might be for you.

Mind you, I’m not affiliated with Dr. Wicked, but I am a longstanding fan of the original web-based Write or Die, which is still available online free, in a new version just in time for Halloween, mwa-ha-ha-haa…but more important, perfectly timed to help you battle the your own NaNoWriMo demons.

Write or Die, for you lucky innocents who’ve never heard of it, is THE word-processor for the output-challenged, because it comes with a negative reinforcement system for those bad habits that have held us back for so long.

At last, a program that enforces good writing habits with a stick, not a carrot!

After declaring a word-length and a time, users of “Write or Die,” must stay on pace to achieve them, or else suffer punishment. In Dr. Wicked’s words, Write or Die “encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences.”

How dire the “circumstances” depends on the level of punishment you’ve chosen (I particularly like this feature–you chose your own punishment.)

Your choices:

* Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.

* Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.

* Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself.

Yes, literally. The last word you wrote will disappear, and the rest will follow it, your work cannibalizing itself, word by word. Unless you start writing again, you’ll lose whatever you’ve written.

And oh, there is a fourth level: Electric shock mode (not operable). Dr. Wicked claims he’s just kidding about this one. But he also says he’s open to ideas on how to get it working.

In her late years, the one-named French novelist, Colette not only forgave her evil husband Willi for locking her in a room until she’d made the day’s word count–she even lauded him: “He made a writer of me.”

After Write or Die, will we someday be saying: “Thank you, Dr. Wicked. Ouch! You made writers of us.”? What do you think?

There’s a book I can’t wait to read. I guess it will have to wait until after NaNoWriMo – it’s Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife which, among other things, reveals the full extent of serious revision Anne Frank undertook to make her diary read like a good novel.

That’s right, up in that infamous attic, Anne did what any pro writer knows must be done. She revised. She wanted to make a fascinating story even more fascinating. She wanted to be a real writer.

Years ago, I hated revision. I made every conceivable excuse not to revise, including everything from “it betrays spontaneity” to “it gives me a nervous breakdown.”

Then I encountered a situation where I had no choice. An agent threw down the gauntlet: revise one more time…or else, forget it.

That lesson stayed with me: real writers know that the quality of revision they can muster will always make the difference between a forgettable story and a page turner.

Anne Frank knew this. That’s one reason why, even in death, she survived that attic room–and why we still read her today.

Vrooom vrooom! Here we go. NaNoWriMo gets the big green flag in just over 2 weeks.

Are you ready? If you’re not so sure, my 15 Day Countdown to NaNoWriMo might help.

What is it? 15 days of ideas, prompts, or mini-tasks delivered from me to your email every morning. Each one is designed to help you hit the NaNoWriMo track, on November 1, all cylinders humming.

[Note: The Countdown started last Saturday – but if you missed the start, no worries. I'm posting the "expired" mini-tasks as we go, right here.]

Want to join us in counting down to NaNoWriMo (I’m doing it, too). Just fill in the form below and you’re done.

How many words can you write in 5 minutes?

In a guest post at Editor Unleashed, Alegra Clarke writes: “Completing a NaNoWriMo taught me that there is more time to write in a day than we might think.” Putting that notion to the test, I’m right now setting a timer for what I’m calling a “microburst.” It’s a 5-minute sprint, no stopping, and it is about to begin… NOW.

This is a blog post, of course, and I draft nonfiction faster than most passages of fiction, but the key factor here, for me, is the challenge.

Okay. It’s 2:55 and going. I don’t seem to have pounded out much, do I? Yet my software gives me long horizontal lines, so that might distort my running sense of accomplishment. I’ll soon see—and I don’t have long to wait.

Writing fast, I think, is a technique that can be worked on, improved upon, brought to a point where it is a reliable skill. How’s that again? You can learn to write faster.

But why would you want to?

For starters, experience tells me that, where writing draft is concerned, faster might actually be better. Some of the best stuff I’ve ever written came so fast I could hardly get it down.

Then there’s Nanorwrimo. Who among us has not wished for the kind of fluency that produces 5,000 words in a sitting. I’ve hardly ever come close to that kind of speed. But then, I never systematically tried to develop it either.

What if I did?

With Nanowrimo looming, and a personal commitment to finish the perpetually unfinished Regenerating Jeff in that 30 day pressure cooker, I think a little speed gymming to bulk up my words-per-minute might just be a welcome boost for my confidence. What about you?

Okay, time’s up. My word count for this 5-minute drill was 235. Not very impressive at first glance. But wait. If a reasonable Nanowrimo goal is, say, 1700 per day (it takes 1667 to reach 50,000 in 30 days) then, theoretically—no, practically—I would need to program only seven 5-minute microbursts throughout the day. That’s doable. I might even be making my goals without even breaking a sweat.

Here’s an example of working this way: often, for fun, I dash off an initial draft of one of the 100 word stories I get assigned by Nick over at Name Your Tale. I try to take a first stab as soon it comes in, while it’s still fresh. I don’t set a timer, but after staring at the assigned title (that’s the way Name Your Tale works—the title is your prompt) I jump in and don’t let myself stop until I feel it’s over. I don’t pay much heed to word length—If I have 250 words when the microburst is over, that’s fine: when I reread, the expendable phrases and sentences almost shrink into oblivion voluntarily; similarly, useless words, thoughts, repetitions are yelling, “Cut me too, cut me too.” And I happily oblige. Cutting is fun when you know you’ve got something substantial enough to trim.

Or, to paraphrase the old joke about the dying actor’s last words, “Cutting is easy, creating is hard.”

Here’s a challenge. What are you working on now? Today? Set a timer for a 5-minute microburst and see what you get. Like it? Schedule another one. Rinse and repeat until it feels like a day’s work.

Seriously, could this be the ultimate secret weapon for winning Nanowrimo every time?

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time convincing reluctant writers to jump into social media.

My success rate is pretty good, but I’ve come to realize that a wide demographic swathe of writers didn’t grow up with a computer in their room, thus have limited knowledge about (or sometimes sympathy for) blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. — not to mention how perfectly adapted these media are for writers. Last week I put together a page of links and quick-start advice for our Powerful Narrative Workshop. It worked for them so I offer it here.

First, to set the stage, a few pages of general observations on why writers should be flocking around these amazing FREE tools:

GENERAL
Writers Need Social Media…and Social Media Needs Writers from The Creative Penn.
5 Questions for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Market/Promote from Jane Friedman’s There Are No Rules.
12 Social Media Essentials for Writers from Donald Lafferty’s Practical Social Media
Twitter Isn’t Stupid from Publishing Trends

BLOGGING
The leading free “hosts,” where you could start a blog literally 5 minutes from now, are Blogger and Wordpress. Both Blogger and Wordpress are in wide general use. I recommend Wordpress.com, the “hosted” version of Wordpress.

Blog guru Darren Rouse’s resource page Blogging for Beginners will help you get started. Darren Rouse also has a blog devoted to Twitter. He’s widely trusted and a good teacher. Follow the links on his page and you’ll have what you need to get going.

TWITTER
You can get started on Twitter in 5 minutes. Here’s a post that will take you through the setup process in simple, clear steps.

Twitter is well worth some trouble if you want to attract attention to a site, a blog, an event. You can build Twitter contacts in your own subject area – microbiology, essay writing, autism, health policy – using Twitter Search. Type your subject into the search window, click, and you’ll see people with your interests represented in the tweets that come up. It takes some newbies a while to warm up to the concept of following and being followed but Twitter support has this page to help with that.

FACEBOOK
Should you have a Facebook account? Again, it’s how “social” and/or promotional you want to be online. Many people who ignored Facebook are joining up now because they realize:

(1) People they call friends are on Facebook, sharing pictures, thoughts, links, quotes, etc. and NOT doing this anymore by regular mail or email;

(2) People they’ve lost touch with and thought they’d never find again are now only a click away, on Facebook ready to be “found;”

(3) Many people in their field or area of interest are already on Facebook, and it’s a simple way to make a first contact or simply to see what they’re posting about and who they’re in touch with.

Here are a couple of “get started” resource pages for Facebook.

Facebook 101
Facebook 25 Tips and Tricks

Note: as with Twitter, if you do sign up, upload that profile pic right away. Some of you have said you already have a Facebook page, you just don’t ever go there. Still, if you haven’t uploaded a profile picture, I strongly advise doing it as soon as possible.

Carol and I left this spectacular mountain aerie yesterday after 4 intense and wonderful days with a Powerful Narrative workshop of 11 fine writers.

The iPhone photo above is just a taste of the Wildacres experience. There’s a view like this everywhere you look, unless the mountains are fogged in, producing a different, more brooding beauty.

(Cloudy weather also improves the internet reception which, for some reason, falls off drastically when the weather is clear.)

One of the ideas driving the Powerful Narrative is that strong narrative values are like jet fuel for both fiction and nonfiction.

Most fiction writers are intimately familiar with this notion, but it’s a subtler truth for nonfiction writers, many of whom have come out of writing backgrounds that emphasize informational summary.

For this reason our Powerful Narrative workshops are open to writers on either side of the fence. In fact, for 4 days anyway, we remove the fence.

At Wildacres we were a group of 11, all nonfiction writers, as it happened (except for me). It was geat fun to bang home some of the cardinal principles of fiction, such as character development, variations of story anatomy, motive-driven decision/action, conflict, pacing, crisis/climax, resolution, macro and micro narratives, and so on.

And especially satisfying to me – I managed to convert a few confirmed non-bloggers to a new appreciation for social media. By time we broke up, they were eager to start their first blogs.

We’re home today, and as wonderful as it’s been on the road, I’m happy to be hanging out with our cats again, working on a big computer screen with a nice, fat, dependable broadband connection, and contemplating yet again, for the umpteenth time, my (perhaps mythical) Great Home Office Cleanup.

I was on the NaNoWriMo Blog the other day and noticed a couple of interesting trends in overall stats for the 30-day novel writing marathon:

To anyone who has attempted the long slog toward completion of a novel, the latter stat should not surprising. It’s hard for most of us to keep producing draft at a consistent pace for 30 straight days.

The NaNoWriMo model is designed to lighten the load somewhat, most notably by keeping things starkly simple: there is only one requirement – produce that 50,000 word total, period.

But most of us go in with more ambitious goals, and if we don’t seem to be meeting them, it’s all too easy to skip a few days, fall hopelessly behind, then quit.

I came across a post on Fiction Matters the other day that suggests a modest, but effective antidote. It may sound contradictory, but what the author, P. Bradley Robb, proposes is limitation, a limitation that liberates.

The real challenge, Robb notes, is consistency – steady daily effort.

Setting some reasonable limits on what you will produce, then sticking to those limits, leads to consistency. Consistency leads to habit. And once habit has taken hold, it’s progressively easier and easier to pile up those pages.

Sustaining momentum actually takes less out of you than a pattern of starting and stopping will. Thus the prolific Cory Doctorow’s paradoxical remark: “It’s easier to write a novel every year than to write one every ten years.”

In these pre-pre-NaNoWriMo days, this post is well worth checking out.

The Write a Better Novel Blogroll is a long delayed project I’ve been promising myself and others for way too long. I’m glad it’s finally up.

There are more than 70 links on it, actually. It’s a work in progress, so the list hasn’t stopped growing and won’t anytime soon. There are just too many fine resources for writers and readers on the Web. I was amazed and delighted to discover them.

The blogs and sites I’ve included cover fiction writing craft, books, agents, forums, publishing resources, zines, online communities, and a lot more. Trust me – that’s a world of resources, more than enough to keep you busy for weeks, if not months, if not years.

Check out the navigational tabs up at the top of the screen, click on “Favorite Links,” and you’re there.

Carol and I are headed to the Blue Ridge Mountains today to present our 3-days-plus workshop, The Powerful Narrative.

Our theme is simple: whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, your goal should be a story that works. What does this look like? A reader so engaged that they keep turning those pages.

Carol and I have worked together and separately long enough to understand that books succeed almost in direct proportion to the strength of their narrative elements. Likewise, when they fail, it’s nearly always because they don’t tell stories that work.

“Books” is a broad term, but I used it intentionally, becuse the guiding principles of powerful narrative are the same for non-fiction and fictiion. In all cases, the way to capture and maintain reader interest is to invoke the strongest possible story values in three key areas:

• character/characterization
• plot and/or story structure
• torward drive or thrust.

Meet these three challenges successfully, and you’ve got yourself a page turner.

Up here in the mountains, Internet service is spotty, but I hope to be blogging about all this in greater detail–from the workshop, as we go. Whether or not that happens, you’ll be hearing more about Powerful Narrative in the future.

Looking ahead...
In the next day or so, I’ll be posting my LONG overdue links page, and it’s going to be one of the best collections of fiction writing links on the Web. It’ll get better, too, as I add more. Collecting them has been great fun, as well as a potent reminder that this is a great time for writers–at least on the Web.

Print publication may be going through a painful transition period, but I’d say, having begun my career in the typewriter era, there’s a greater variety of concentrated thought, knowledge, and support for the novelist now than ever before existed before in any form. And much of it is only a click or two away.

And speaking of…

NaNoWriMo is almost upon us once again. Look for my 15-day NaNoWriMo Countdown to Day 1, with preparation strategies and daily tasks designed to help you hit the ground running come November 1.

More on that very soon…