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Today is the last day of November, and it’s time to wrap up your novel. So today’s tip is: Cross the finish line.
If you don’t feel quite done yet, don’t give up, you still have today. Now is the time to pour yourself some coffee and finish your book. You may have hesitations or feel like sections need to be reworked, but leave those thoughts for the editing process. You’ll have plenty of time in 2016 to refine and rework your novel. The point of this month’s exercise is to get the first draft written, so go ahead and get it done.
This is our 19th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we have been offering advice throughout the entire month.
November is coming to a close and hopefully so too is your NaNoWriMo novel. Today’s tip is: Be Thankful That You Are Almost Done.
With the Thanksgiving weekend upon us, hopefully you will have plenty of free time from your day job to put the finishing touches on your novel. Even if you are traveling to visit family and friends, be sure to set aside an hour or two a day to work on your novel (ideally before you’ve eaten too much turkey!).
This is our 18th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
As you continue on with your NaNoWriMo novel today’s tip is: Silence Your Inner Critic.
You will have plenty of time to edit your novel in December and January. Right now you have a novel to finish and overly analyzing every word won’t help you accomplish this goal. For the time being don’t let yourself get caught up with a critical eye. Instead finish the story. If you have critical ideas, create a document to jot them down onto. You can reopen it when you go back over your novel with a fine tooth comb next year.
This is our 17th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
There is one week left in the NaNoWriMo novel writing challenge. You’ve come this far and you only have a little ways to go to cross the finish line. To help inspire you to keep up the hard work, we’ve collected three tips from marathon runners that can help inspire you with the last mile.
1. Women’s Running advices: “Remind yourself that this painful moment will soon be a distant memory. Try taking yourself to another place during the hard final miles of a marathon. You may be in a painful tough moment. But this moment will pass and it will just be a memory.”
2. Runner’s World suggests: “Talk to yourself. At around mile 23, says Arthur, “my head grasps the fact that I am actually going to finish. Yes, I’m really tired, but I tell myself, ‘I will finish somehow, some way.'”
3. MarathonTraining.com says: “Stay Positive! No matter what happens, always stay positive. For every runner, there are points in the marathon where your body is saying no and the self-doubt starts creeping in. This is when you need to think positive thoughts and keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
This is our 16th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
While writing a novel might feel lonely, but you are not alone. In fact, thousands of people have been where you are right now.
So if you are having trouble getting motivated, check out NaNoWriMo’s author pep talks. Gene Luen Yang, Diana Gabaldon, Stephanie Perkins, Charlaine Harris, Sandy Hall and N. K. Jemisin have shared their insights win the series. Here is an excerpt from Yang’s piece:
Your brain doesn’t generate ideas out of thin air. It generates ideas by taking what it’s already experienced and reshaping it in new and interesting ways. If you’re not getting good output, maybe it’s because you haven’t taken in enough input.
When writer’s block hits, do research. Flip through old photographs. Watch a documentary. Read a nonfiction book, preferably one that’s been out of print for years. Visit a place you’ve never been and talk to people you don’t know. Gather input.
This is our 14th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
A good book keeps readers engaged and turning pages, so try to keep it interesting. As you are writing you may be feeling like your novel is becoming predictable, so our tip today is: Surprise Your Readers.
“If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it,” H.G. Wells once said.
This is our 13th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
You are halfway through the month and may feel your stamina beginning to lull. But keep going. Our tip today is: Keep Writing.
“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I am writing, I write,” renowned author Maya Angelou once said. “And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come now.'”
This is our 12th NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
Today’s NaNoWriMo Tip comes from Margaret Atwood: Don’t get lost in the woods.
“Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods,” Atwood once said. “If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.”
This is our tenth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
As you work on your NaNoWriMo novel, you need to stay focused and avoid procrastination so except for those brief little research assignments you might need to do, you should avoid the Internet while writing.
This is easier said that done, as it might be in your nature to leave your document to check email, browse Facebook or go on Twitter. We challenge you to avoid the Internet during your allotted writing time, and to do it cold turkey. If you are too addicted and can’t be on a computer without going online, then get a pen and paper, or try out Cold Turkey, software that helps you boost productivity by locking yourself out of certain websites that can lead you astray.
This is our ninth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
Allen Toussaint, one of the great American songwriters, died this week.
In his honor, today’s NaNoWriMo tip comes from Toussaint. Today’s tip: Collect Scraps. In a recent interview with the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), Toussaint said that he used to collect scraps wherever he went and would write down what he saw and what he felt about what he saw in detail so that he could draw on those experiences in his writing. When he got home, Toussaint would revisit these “feathers and wishbones and try to make a chicken out of it.”
This is our eighth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
As you work on your NaNoWriMo novel, it helps to get into character. Our tip for today is to try method acting to really get inside the heads of your characters.
It worked for Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Robert Dinero, and it could work for you. Method acting encourages actors to tap into their own personal experiences and emotions to connect deeply with their characters. Actors succeed in this approach by recalling their own emotions to live through the experiences of their characters.
This is our seventh NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
Some people find background music helpful while they write, while others find it distracting and only listen to music on writing breaks. However music works its way into your process, it can help you tap into your characters.
So our tip for today is to listen to music. Ask yourself these questions: What kind of music do your characters listen to? How does this music make them feel? What is the soundtrack of your book as a whole? This exercise can help open you up to your characters in new ways.
This is our sixth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
As you sit down to work on your NaNoWriMo, it’s important to consider different points of view. Without leaving your desk, Facebook gives you the opportunity to hear lots of voices and get outside of your own head and inside other people’s minds.
So our tip for today is to check Facebook. Obviously Facebook can be a huge distraction, so don’t start scrolling through your feed and liking pictures of your nephew. Instead, think about the characters in your novel and set aside 15 minutes to try to find people in your network that might be like this character. Then go through their recent status updates and listen to their voice. Maybe it’s an old friend from high school, or a colleague from an old job or someone you met once while traveling in Peru. Use your network to expose yourself to new voices, then take these voices back to your novel.
This is our third NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
For those of you who have spent years toiling over a novel without any end in sight, NaNoWriMo should be a sigh of relief. The exercise requires you to silence your inner critic and just write. Our tip for you today is to embrace the discipline of this structured activity. You have one month to write a novel, now get to work.
According to a survey of previous NaNoWriMo writers from Stop Procrastinating respondents were attracted to the challenge for its “discipline, focus and the lure of a deadline.” The majority (76 percent) of those surveyed advised writers not to edit as they go along and instead to write creatively.
This is our second NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.
In honor of National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to be offering free content each weekday in November to help all NaNoWriMo participants (and, really, anyone who is working on a novel).
Here is today’s giveaway:
Day 30: Your book is finished—congratulations! You’ve achieved something extraordinary. And if you’ve still got a bit more to do, keep at it! But what do you do once your novel is complete? Well, first, you’ll want to start revising. But you’ll also want to start thinking about getting an agent. To that end, here’s a link to a special 90-minute webinar that Chuck Sambuchino, editor of our annual Guide to Literary Agents, recorded in front of a live online audience earlier this year. It details all of the tips and insights you need to know to get the attention of an agent and provide them with the information they need about your book. Good luck! To get this freebie, just enter your e-mail address below.
Looking for more NaNoWriMo resources?
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I knew I wanted to try to make this my fastest year yet, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to beat my time of 14 - 17 days from past years. It looks like I'll be finished with my new middle-grade novel, My Sister is NOT Human, by the end of this week. Squee! One thing I've done differently this year is participate in multiple word wars. It's amazing to see how much I can get accomplished when I set aside one hour to write, and ignore e-mails, the phone...pretty much everything except my novel. I've hit over 2000 words in many of them (I think my top scoring war was 2400--wow)! Some people ask if all I do is sit and write all day. Well, I think about my novel all day, but some of my most productive days have been full of planning ahead and only around three hours of writing. For example, on November 7th, I participated in three hour long word wars and hit 7,061 words for the day. The planning sessions in between have helped a lot! I have the basic ideas for my plot and characters before NaNo starts, but writing out the highlights of what I think will come next has been a huge help (even though not all of my intended highlights happen, because my characters often surprise me).
How are you doing with your NaNo novels so far? I'll post some tips below, to help you make it to the 50,000 word goal. If you'd like to see even more tips, click on the tag at the bottom of this post.
*As you can see, word wars have been a huge help to me this year! See if you can challenge friends (I've started a few word wars on the Blueboards and love participating in the ones on the Facebook group NaNoWriMo Warriors...and the NaNoWriMo boards have them, too). If you don't have time for a full hour, or haven't been able to connect with other writers at a time that's good for you...then challenge yourself! You can chart your progress in a notebook and time yourself for a half hour, fifteen minutes...whatever works for you. See if you can beat (or match) your word count in your next challenge. If some counts are much higher than others, can you see why? Maybe you planned those chapters a bit better. Or maybe you started off mid scene and it was easier for you to get into the action. It's great to see what makes the words flow for you the most.
* It can be easier to make smaller goals for yourself. Believe it or not, I love watching my word count. No, not every second, or I'd never get any writing done...but if I feel my pace slowing, I'll peek to see how far I have to go until I reach the next hundred. Then see how close I am to the next thousand. Those baby steps add up fast!
*Like I mentioned above, taking a small break and jotting down the highlights of what I think should happen in the next few scenes is a huge help to me. Of course, my characters sometimes have other plans, and I'm happy to sit back and see what they have in mind. Most of the time, I like it even better than my original plans. But I've also decided not to use a few of their ideas. In the past, I've deleted entire paragraphs. Now, if I feel like I'm wandering down the wrong path, I'll highlight that section in yellow so I'll know it should be deleted later, and try another path.
*If you get stuck, try thinking about the worst thing you can possibly do to your character, and see where that leads. It will definitely add more conflict! (The amazing Bruce Coville mentioned this years ago at a conference, and it has always stuck with me.)
*Don't forget to celebrate the milestones! I think it's so important to find ways to celebrate while writing your novel. I still do a happy dance every time I add 10,000 words. And I love all the cheers and support from my writ
I'm happy dancing...because since November 1st, I've written 11,231 words of my new middle-grade novel, My Sister is NOT Human. It feels amazing to see all the pieces coming together. I love the voice of my main character, and can't wait to find out what she does next.
I absolutely love NaNoWriMo. It's wonderful to have an excuse to spend even more time working on a new novel. It can be scary to start a brand new file, with characters and a story you don't know very well--especially after digging so deep into a revision for an older novel. I love how well I'm getting to know the characters and story now. It hasn't all been smooth sailing. There was a name that just wasn't clicking for me, and about thirty pages into my novel, I ended up changing it to an alternate I had jotted down on a list, and it feels like a better fit now. I also had to stop my internal editor from butting in when a bunch of back story ended up in the wrong place. Yes, I know it will have to be streamlined and moved (possibly sprinkled throughout a few chapters), but the info is so helpful to me, that I let it gush out.
During last year's NaNo, I couldn't decide if the main character's dad should be divorced and out of the picture, or if he died, and every once in a while I'd change my mind. By the time I hit the last quarter of my novel, I knew what the answer had to be. And yes, I had a nice amount of clean up work to do in the earlier chapter--between that and other things I decided to change as I went along. I just kept a list and made that part of my first of many rounds of revisions. But writing at this fast pace has helped me in so many ways. It gags my internal editor, and allows some really funny and unusual gems to flow into my manuscript. It stops me from getting stuck...because there's no time for that. I have to find a way to plow through. Sometimes, I'll jump to the next logical scene, but jot the page number and where I got stuck in my notebook. Within twenty-four hours (usually while trying to fall asleep, take a shower, or driving) the answer comes to me and I'll go back to that spot and work it in. And it gives me such motivation and support from all my NaNoWriMo, LJ, Facebook, and Blueboard friends. It's so much fun to share this writing month with all of you, and I can't wait to hear how you're all doing.
I'll leave you with a few tips:
If you need some extra motivation, check out this awesome Facebook group--
NaNoWriMo Warriors. You'll find a lot of support and invitations to word wars. What...you never heard of them? They're so much fun! A moderator will tell you when to start and you type like crazy for an hour, then share your total with everyone. Last night, a word war helped me add 1,268 words!
Here's a secret to raising your word count: Think about one of your weaknesses. What is usually missing in your early drafts? I usually don't dig very deep into setting and descriptions, so last year I decided that any time I slowed my writing pace or could go into more details about something, I would. Not only did it help my word count, but with a lot of streamlining, I had some amazing descriptions in my first draft. Yay! This can work with dialogue, internal thoughts...whatever you'd like to work on.
Realize that this does NOT have to be perfect. In fact, I think it's almost impossible for perfection to just flow out of your mind and fingers in a first draft. I usually start NaNo after revising and adding new layers to older manuscripts, and often find myself trying to write at that same level when I plunge into my new novel. You have to give yourself permissi
I'm slowly working my way through my huge October to-do list, so I'll be ready to attack my new novel on November 1st. I can't wait! The idea hit one night while I was out having dinner with my girls. I jotted down lots of ideas and can't wait to dig into some plotting and characterization exercises. I don't even know what the main character's name is yet! I'll visit the Social Security site soon to snoop around for names that will work well for my novel. If you still need some names for your manuscript, check out this awesome site!
Agent Jill Corcoran posted something on Facebook that really stuck with me. Here's what she said:
I keep reading queries with beautiful writing but NO STORY HOOK. Create your hook BEFORE you write the book. Then write your hooky book beautifully.
We have half a month to get those hooks ready! I know how important they are, especially in this market. It definitely makes sense to make sure the hook is as strong as possible before plunging into a new novel. That was an issue I had with my MG,
Ruby Bella Brown, Super Average Girl. It needed something stronger to hook the reader and move the action forward from chapter to chapter. I'm amazed at how much adding a hook or two can strengthen a novel...and it upped my word count from 30,000 to over 44,000 words.
If you're stuck on a title, Jill Corcoran gave some tips on her
blog. The cover info is wonderful too, but if you just want the title tips, scroll down a bit.
My
Mom Wars revision is coming along great. Yay! That's the one I wrote for NaNo 09. I have about 65 pages that I think are in fantastic shape and over 100 pages in various stages of revision. I'm hoping to finish doing at least one round of revisions on the entire novel before November 1st, but I had a slow revision week because I was stuck on a bee sting scene. I kept checking details (it wasn't easy to find experts, but luckily a few writing buddies helped me with that). But then I got bogged down in too many details and it really slowed the pace. I'm slashing away now, and think it's coming out well. I can't wait to hear what my crit buddies think of it!
The bee sting scene was inspired by last year's October attack. We had Lolly for less than a month when I saw her freaking out in the backyard, surrounded by bees. I'm so grateful my girls weren't home. I only got stung once while trying to rescue my pup. We're lucky she wasn't allergic--she had so many stings we couldn't count them all! Poor pup! Lolly didn't even learn a lesson from this--she still tries to eat every bug she sees.
2010 seems to be the year of the wasps. My girls wouldn't come in the garage because they saw one wasp, and I called in my pest control company again when I realized that it was way more than one wasp. I don't even want to think about what would've happened with all these wasp babies flying around my house!
