Right Now I'm Loving...

Right now I'm loving... National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is occurring all over the world, where normal, everyday people are taking the time to write a 50,000 word (200 page) novel in one month. That's 1667 words (almost seven double-spaced pages) a day for 30 days.

I've talked about NaNoWriMo before, because 1) I think it's awesome and 2) it's where I got my writing start.  Before NaNoWriMo I wrote the same three chapters of a book over and over for THREE YEARS, and never made any progress beyond that. The chapters were never perfect enough for me to feel like I could continue to go forward. So I would get frustrated and quit. 

Well, NaNoWriMo allows for none of that "get it perfect" crap. With NaNo, you write without going back and correcting or reading anything. It's difficult to silence that internal editor, but doing so allows you to get an entire first draft completed.

Was the first draft I completed in NaNoWriMo a bunch of junk? Oh, definitely yes. It required a couple of months of solid editing afterwards before I would even let one person read it. (Then more editing after that).

But getting that first draft finished was crucial. And NaNoWriMo was key for me.  I'm proud to say that PRIMAL INSTINCT was a NaNoWriMo novel (technically, a CampNaNoWriMo which is in July), and will be available in April 2014 (You can pre-order on Amazon here, supporting NaNo authors everywhere! Or, um, at least one in Virginia Beach...).

I'm not officially participating in National Novel Writing Month this year because I was already in the  middle of a book, (because, ahem, did I mention my FOUR-BOOK DEAL WITH HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE? -- oh, I did? Multiple times? My bad...) but I have lots of friends who are participating. I am going to some of the local "write-ins" where we write in groups for hours at a time -- and sometimes all night -- at local Starbucks or church halls or comic book stores or wherever will let us hang out there and be anti-social.

I found The Stages of National Novel Writing Month on Buzz Feed and loved it so much I couldn't resist sharing it because it's So. True. Stop by Buzz Feed for more of their hilarity. Without further ado:

From BuzzFeed.com

National Novel Writing Month is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. NaNoWriMo began in 1999 and the program includes real life and virtual gatherings of participants

You might be thinking

But 300,000 writers will attempt it this year

 

Maybe one of your friends

Someone you follow on Tumblr

Or the guy sitting next to you at Starbucks

 

But basically 300,000 people have the world’s biggest term paper due in 30 days, and it’s going to lead to some stress.

 

At the beginning they’ll be hopeful, calm, full of inspiration

They’ll quote authors about the power of the written word

Jot down ideas in one of their moleskine notebooks

 

But about halfway through the month, things will start to go downhill 

It might start as a confession on Facebook

 

Or the decision to skip a few days and relax

 

You don’t have to worry until they break out the exhaustion GIFs

 

Or start taking out their frustration on their desks

 

Sometimes all they’ll need is a little encouragement

Or a lot of encouragement 

 

You can distract them with something shiny

Or offer food

 

Around Thanksgiving exhaustion will become hopelessness

 

And frustration will morph into rage

 

Dole out head pats accordingly

Use your judgment about distance

 

There will be moments of calm leading up to the end

But November 30th will be a night of blind panic. Do not attempt to approach the writers

 

Don’t worry: On December 1st, NaNoWriMo writers will be back to normal, if just a little tired

And they’ll have 11 months to recover before next year's NaNoWriMo

 

 

  Hang in there my NaNoWriMo friends! You can do it!

NaNoWriMo Bits O' Wisdom

NaNoWriMo has begun!

NaNo what? Does this have something to do with that old Mork & Mindy show? Nope. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.   It’s a “seat-of-your-pants literary adventure”! It’s “half literary marathon, half block party!”

Uh, what?

Basically if you’re participating in NaNoWriMo you’re writing a 175-page (50,000 word) book in 30 days.  1667 words (so roughly 7-8 double spaced pages) a day for the month of November. Over 250,000 people participated world-wide last year. If you want to know more about NaNoWriMo, check it out here .

For those of you already in the midst of NaNoWriMo frenzy, why are you here instead of writing??? But since you’re here, I present to you (from the NaNo poster) the most important bits of wisdom about NaNoWriMo :

1. Plot your novel, clean your house, spend time with your family, get caught up at work before November 1.  Ummm…. Okay, never mind. (Note to self, get blog post up earlier…)

2. Your curiosity is a dependable guide; follow it.

3. SILENCE THE INNER EDITOR!

4. The first step in writing a good book: Giving yourself permission to write a bad book.

5. We can do amazing, impossible things when given a deadline, a supportive community, and unlimited access to chocolate & caffeine.

6. Make no mistake, you will be writing a lot of crap.

7. Whatever you think you are, you are more than that.

8. Write first! Ask questions later!

9. They are called rough drafts for a reason. No one gets a novel totally right on the first pass. This is true whether you give yourself a month or a lifetime to write the first draft.

10. 30 days. 50,000 words. GO.

It’s not too late for anybody to do NaNoWriMo, even if you’re hearing about it for the very first time today.  For anybody having doubts, remember this: Novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels.

Now go write yours. See ya in a month.

The Road to Publication: Jumping Head-First Through the Open Window

"When God closes a door, He always opens a window, because you can't throw yourself out of a door."

That pretty much summarizes my life. This week particularly in my writing.  One door very definitely closed. I was not a finalist in the “So You Think You Can Write” Contest. I blogged about the insanity that completely overtook me my experience during this contest a few days ago.  I was shocked by the number of people who contacted me via comments, Twitter, or Facebook about how crazy they also had become during the contest also.

We unpublished authors? Evidently we’re a fanatical lot. I blame it on listening to all the voices in our heads.

But even as I posted about my utter idiocy SYTYCW experience, I was STILL secretly hoping that I might be one of the Top25, since the official list had not been released yet. So for four more days I still spent more time on Twitter than I did anything else. A taste:

 

(That's right, you saw the important one: can we please get a shirtless shooting match between Aarow & Hawkeye?? Pretty please?) Anyway, finally on Friday, the official list did come out. And guess what? I wasn’t on it.   My very adult response:

AND THEN, not two hours later, I kid you not, my husband walks in with the mail. In his hand is a letter from Harlequin.  I knew it had nothing to do with the SYTYCW contest, but I had three other partial manuscripts in with them, and I knew this was news about one of them.

I was sure it was a rejection, since it was in an actual envelope and very official looking. I didn’t even want to open it since I was still reeling from not making it into the Top25. But I did open it.

Lo and behold, it was a request from an editor for me to send in the FULL MANUSCRIPT for a book I’ve been working on (not the same one as for SYTYCW) called See No Evil.  They had read the first three chapters and synopsis, and thought highly enough of it to want to see the entire thing.

Now this doesn’t mean they’re going to offer me a contract or publish my book (want more details about rejections in publishing: see here), but it is definitely a big step towards my publishing goal.  I was excited! I was thrilled! I was like, What SYTYCW contest??!!

And that was about when Karma bit me in the… ahem, Karma bit me. I realized I need to finish the book the editor requested. It isn’t long enough or polished enough or… finished.  Definitely not in any shape to send to an editor any time soon.  So I’ve been writing like a fiend and will continue writing/editing like a fiend for the next few weeks.

And I will offer my sincere apologies to the lady who I derided in my last post because she didn’t have her manuscript finished.  Because… Pot, meet Kettle and call her black. That’s what I get for being mean.  (And btw, the lady who hadn’t finished her manuscript is a lovely and gracious person and quite talented. Well deserving of being in the Top25).

For me it’s time to refocus. Get serious and get writing.  Get that manuscript into the editor.

And try something new like lowering myself carefully out of the window that has been opened rather than flinging myself out headfirst. 

But not too carefully. Because where's the calamity in that? :)

The Fight of the Century: My Left-Brain vs. My Right-Brain

My brain has been utterly resisting the creative writing process for the last couple of days.  And not even because I’m lazy. 

Usually if I’m not writing (while in the middle ofsomething like NaNo or a Boot Camp) it’s because I’m just too plain lazy to put in the work. 

But the last couple of days my right brain and left brain have been in the middle of Tarantino-worthy knock-down, drag-out.  And my analytical left-brain seems to have my creative right-brain spitting teeth at the moment. Not surprising really, I am heavily left-brained. 

In case you need a brainology lesson...

But why the big throw-down between my left and right brain? Because I’ve reached the most dreaded part of my new book:

The Middle.

I usually start off with a pretty firm idea of the beginning and the end of my stories. But the middle…  There’s so much stuff that can go in there that it becomes paralyzing. You have to decide what is important, interesting and keeps the story moving. 

Orson Welles said it best: “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Too many choices causes my heavily left-brained self to completely shut down the writing process. 

Plotting a story is like running through a giant maze. It’s fun, and it’s challenging. At first you run freely because Wheeeee! I’m in a maze!!  But after a while you slow down because Wait. I’m in a maze. Where am I going again?

My left-brain balks at the thought of going down a part of the maze that looks like a dead end. Even if my right-brain promises it is not really a dead end. There is a cut-through part way down that maze path that can’t be seen right now. 

Yesterday I wrote zero words because my right-brain couldn’t convince my left-brain the chapter we were about to write wasn’t really a dead end.

But today we will go down that dead end-looking path and trust that right-brain is correct about the cut-through.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical. But we're still going to write it.

(And yes, I have reached the point where I am referring to myself in plural tense. It's not even the worst of my... uh, our... problems)

My Letter from Boot Camp

Dear Mom,

I’m in Boot Camp.  I don’t like it here. They make us work very hard and yell at us all the time. I wish I had never signed up for this. Please send a care package, ASAP.

Your loving daughter,

Janie

No, I haven’t joined the army, but I have signed up for a “Writing Boot Camp” for the month of April. What is a writing boot camp? Well mine is one I found on the Savvy Author’s website. Basically, we group in teams of 4-5, commit to writing a certain number of words during the month, and WRITE. There’s about 100 people participating from all over the country. 

The kicker for me is that we each have report every day how many words we’ve written. 

Somehow, reporting the words is the magic wand for me. I had not written ONE SINGLE WORD on a new book since December 2011. But give me a hard deadline where I have accountability to a team (of complete strangers, mind you) and PRESTO: words start gushing on the paper. Plus there’s a Drill Sergeant who drops in to check your work when you least expect it. 

Pressure is evidently a key factor for successful writing in Janie’s world. 

Like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) I participated in last November, I have committed to writing 50,000 words this April. Basically, that’s the size of a Harlequin Romance Novel. (Yes, I’m writing another romance).   My WIP (work in-progress) is tentatively titled Love and Other Dangerous Stunts. My heroine in the book is a stunt woman. 

All this to tell you why I won’t be posting much original stuff on my blog this month, since a gal’s only got so much daily creativity and I’m going to apply mine to my WIP.   But I’ll have some “guest posts” from other blogs I like and I’ll still have the Sunday Showdown entries.

Meanwhile, if you want to check back to see how my writing is going (People might check?!?  = further motivation for me), I’ll have the obnoxious word counter widget going to the right.  It will tell how many words I’ve completed. And a cartoon like one of the following will let you know what my mood is. The pile of paper in the "novel" tray will grow as I write more words.

Ready to shoot myself or others

Don't bother me now, things are rolling!

So why Book #2? Well, I received enough positive feedback from the early readers of my first book (Unbreak My Heart) that I sent in a query letter about it to a publisher in March, while I continue to make edits.  Hopefully, they will request the manuscript in its entirety. But I found out it could take 4-6 months just to hear back from the query letter.

So I figure I better start something new while waiting to hear about that one. 

Most importantly I’m writing #2, because the same family member who said to me in a completely disparaging tone “So are you a writer now?” back in February read Unbreak My Heart a couple of weeks ago. Her response to the book: “You know what you're biggest problem is? You've only written one book. Go write some more.”  

I'll see you when I surface from Boot Camp at the beginning of May, with book #2.

(532 words, which can’t be applied towards my WIP counter)

So You're a Writer Now?

Some of you have heard I wrote (or, depending on your definition, am writing) a novel. I get asked questions about it all the time so just thought I would share some details. Don’t worry I won’t subject you to any excerpts. 

Here’s the list of FAQ (Mom, that means Frequently Asked Questions) I get asked about my novel:

1) What’s the title?

It’s tentatively titled Unbreak My Heart. I will keep that unless I get convinced it’s stupid and come up with something better. Yes, I am aware it is a Toni Braxton song title.

2) What’s it about?

NOT MY NOVEL

It’s a straight-up contemporary romance novel. There’s no heaving bosoms or Fabio. Nor any vampires or werewolves. It is not sexually graphic nor is it set in the Victorian Era (all questions I have been asked).  

Contemporary romance novels tend to be formulaic, mine is no different. The pattern:

Boy meets girl.

Boy does something stupid that hurts girl in some way.

Boy spends rest of book winning back girl’s trust and love and helping her combat adversaries (which can in the form of a person or other things: nature/a corporation/the past /fears).

Girl learns to believe in herself.

Boy and girl get together and live happily ever after.

In my book, boy’s “something stupid” was leaving her alone after their brief relationship together when they were younger (unaware he was leaving her in an abusive situation). The “adversaries” in my book are girl’s abusive step-father and her lack of education.

3) Is the book autobiographical?

Surprisingly, I get asked this all the time. No, the book is not autobiographical in any sense of the word. Except for my abusive stepfather and lack of education.*

4) What are the main characters names?

Again, a very popular question. My main characters are named Lakeesha and Tyrone. Got a problem with that?**

5) You say your book is 60,000 words. How long is that in real-people terms? 

What 60,000 words looks like

It’s an average sized paperback romance novel - about 250 pages, at an average of 250 words per page.  (If I print my book on regular paper one-sided, it is 215 double-spaced pages in Times New Roman 12-point font with 1-inch margins.)

6) When, why, how did you write it?

Towards the end of October 2011, a previous student posted on Facebook about something called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo, which occurs every November. Basically, it is a world-wide support group for getting a book FINISHED in one month (not perfect, just finished – with an entire story arc: beginning, middle, and end). I have to say I love NaNoWriMo and how it is organized – and I am sure I will blog more about that at a later date.

With my husband’s support (& his agreement to watch and feed our four kids for most of the month of November) I dove in, in my typical FULL-ON STUPID  fashion: writing an average of 1,667 words (about 7 pages) each day in November.

Because I hadn’t even heard of NaNoWriMo until just a couple days before November 1^st  when the writing starts, I did not have time to flesh out an entire new book, so I used an idea from a story I had started in 2008, but had never gotten through more than the first three chapters. I must admit, this is not the story I would’ve written if I had time to get something else ready, but I didn’t, so I wrote it.  And Unbreak My Heart was born.

7) Is it any good? What’s your plan for it?

Honestly, trying to figure that out is where I’m stuck right now. I’ve written it, then gone back and done a full editing to make sure everything makes sense and the story is complete. Now I have to decide how much more effort it is worth. Do I want to continue to work and polish it until it is possibly publishable? Or on the other end of the spectrum, do I want to just say, hey, I wrote a novel in a month, isn’t that cool? and just let it die unread?

I think my next step is to find some beta readers (besides my mother) who can give me basic, honest feedback about whether to continue revisions/edits it or just chalk it up to an experience and use what I’ve learned in my next NaNoWriMo adventure.

8) So are you a writer now? 

I wish I could put an audio file on here to give you the actual disparaging tone a distant family member used when asking me that question. I think what she meant was if I plan to make this my full-time profession and go on book tours and stuff. 

Am I quitting my day job to pursue writing full time? No. 

Am I published novelist? No. 

Do I plan to ever submit a novel to a publisher? Hopefully.

Is Unbreak My Heart a novel I will submit to a publisher? I truly do not know at this time. 

But am I a writer (said without disparaging tone)? Yes. Writers write. 

“Novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels” – Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo

*Yeah, I don’t have any stepfather, abusive or otherwise. And I arguably have too much education.

**Actually my main characters’ names are Amanda and David