Hunter S. Thompson on the set of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

NaNoWriMo: Word Count Wisdom

Word Count Wisdom
By Ami Spencer

The first time I participated in NaNoWriMo, I knew it would be a challenge. I was working full time, freelancing part time, and had plans to travel for a long weekend as well as Thanksgiving. November wasn’t exactly the best time to be committing to such a lofty goal. And yet I couldn’t resist the challenge.

I didn’t want NaNo to be another task I felt I had to slog through, though. I wanted it to be fun, so I gave myself a bit of leeway. While I was working toward 50,000 words with gusto, I would be happy to write at least 90 pages. I ended up with almost 130 pages and a little more than 38,000 words. I couldn’t have been more proud of the results. I had written more words in 30 days than I had probably written in the entire previous year.

I had also learned some valuable lessons about my writing style and how to make the most of my writing time:

1. Having a specific word-count goal and a deadline is a must. Before I started NaNo, I had been thinking and talking about this story for at least a year. I needed the impetus to put it down on paper, and something as simple as a word count goal and deadline for reaching it worked wonders. When NaNo is over, even a more realistic goal of 5 to 10 pages a week, helps me get my ideas down on paper and start shaping them. Setting goals for myself and working toward them is the only way I will get these stories in my head written.

2. Finding a group of others with a common goal helps, too. Knowing that there were thousands of people out there writing away toward similar objectives did two things for me: (1) It made me feel supported despite the fact that I didn’t even know them; and (2) It stirred up my competitive spirit and pushed me to work as hard as I could to reach my goal. Participating in write-ins and working beside other writers, hearing about their stories and soaking up their excitement, energized me, too. There’s something about being in a room with other creative souls that can’t help but inspire you.

3. The pressure of deadlines overpowers the fear that keeps me from writing in the first place. We all have a nasty inner editor that keeps us from writing or holds us back from writing what we’d like. But when a deadline looms and I lock my inner editor in the bathroom or closet, amazing things start to happen. I stop worrying about perfection and literary panache and simply write. What comes out may not be perfect, but it will be something I can work with.

4. Pushing past the tough parts is imperative. During the first few days of NaNo, the words flowed like champagne at a wedding. Then the newness and excitement started to wear off, the story headed in directions I wasn’t expecting and suddenly my typing slowed to a crawl. I wanted to stop, to give up, but I kept going.

Sometimes it took every bit of energy I had to keep clicking those keys. I had to argue with my inner editor over and over. I had to figuratively tie myself to the chair some days. But when I got past that wall, when I came out on the other side still typing, it felt so good.

I may not have come away from NaNoWriMo with a finished draft of my first novel, but I did come away with the start of a great story and much more confidence in my writing ability. With NaNo winding down this year, I haven’t written nearly as much as I did during my previous experience. I have, however, continued to write—no matter what.

Ami Spencer is a technical and freelance writer living in Baltimore, MD. She has published articles in several local, regional and online publications. She is also a contributing blogger for several websites, including Feed the Soul and Blissfully Domestic, where she writes on health and wellness topics. You can read her writing blog for tips to help you Write Out Loud Click here or check out her personal blog Click here to learn more about the flotsam and jetsam of her life.

"Twilight" Author Stephenie Meyer's Advice to Writers

Poetry Quotes of the Day

“Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.”—Robert Frost

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”—Emily Dickinson

“Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.”—Sigmund Freud

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.”—Thomas Hardy

“Don't ask a poet to explain himself. He cannot.”—Plato
“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.”—Robert Graves

“Poetry should be like fireworks, packed carefully and artfully, ready to explode with unpredictable effects."—Lilian Moore

“Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you've got to burn away all the peripherals.”—Sylvia Plath
“A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.”—Kahlil Gibran

Plot Your Marketing Efforts

Plot Your Marketing Efforts
By Angela Wilson

Marketing is a lot like writing a novel.

With a novel, you start with an idea, then flesh it out, write several drafts, revise them, critique them and revise some more until the final, finished product is ready to send to an agent or publisher.

Marketing takes just as much forethought and planning. Here are some tips to get you started:

Research your audience. Who reads your books? What other authors do they like? What social networks are they on? How old are they? Would they like your book as a gift?

Devise a plan. Sketch out ideas for reaching your readers. Don't hold back; just write down everything you can think of, from book signings to virtual book tours to appearances at virtual writing or reading conferences.

Revise the plan. Once the initial creative marketing spark dwindles, look over your list and pick out the marketing points that are doable based on your time and budget. Don't try to do everything - you will only get overwhelmed and spread yourself so thin none of your efforts will make a ripple. Do focus efforts on marketing tactics that you would enjoy. For example, if you don't like public speaking, but love Facebook, consider hosting a Facebook party instead of booking live engagements.

Execute marketing efforts. Authors spend anywhere from one to three months promoting a new release. It is up to you to decide what type of schedule works for you. Plan out each day with some type of marketing task - and DO it! Writing will take a backseat during the marketing phase, but once marketing is complete, writing can once again be your No. 1 priority.

Take inventory. Keep a record of what marketing efforts worked and which did not.
Don't expect to do everything right the first time. Every marketing strategy has ups and downs. The trick is to keep notes about what works and what doesn't, so the plan can be adjusted for the next book tour.

You may not want to market, but it is a requirement for most authors today who want to continue to sell books - and net contracts. The key to successful marketing is to work smart. Create a plan - just like you create a novel outline - so you have vision and direction. Don't overbook events and don't try to be a super-human marketer. Schedule marketing events around family and work life - the same as you do writing.

Angela Wilson is an author, social media consultant, and online marketing strategist. Visit her blog, http://www.MarketMyNovel.com Click here, to learn more about cost-effective marketing strategies for fiction and nonfiction authors.

Capicu Poetry Open Mic with Bonafide Rojas & Chango Bi - Nov. 20th!

Back at home base in Williamsburg Brooklyn with the November installment of the Capicu Poetry Open Mic, featuring some of NYC's most dynamic urban talent and music by DJ Sambarella.

Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 11:00pm
Location: Notice Lounge
Street: 198 Union Avenue
City/Town: Brooklyn, NY

Featured Poet: Bonafide Rojas
Poet, musician and author of "Pelo Bueno: A Day In The Life Of A Nuyorican Poet" (dark souls press, 2006). Also featured in HBO Def Poetry Jam (2004).
Bandleader/vocalist/guitarist for the band The Mona Passage, a collective experiment of puerto rican & dominican musicians who challenge the status quo on what music is Puerto Rican & Dominican.

Featured Artist: Chango Bi
A multi-media visual artist and co-founder of the Collective Soul artist collaborative based in New York City

The Capicu Poetry Open Mic
Doors Open @ 7 PM
Notice Lounge & Cafe
198 Union Avenue (between B'way and Montrose)
Williamsburg Brooklyn NY 11211
Right across from the 90th Precinct

$5 Cover
18 & Over
Casual But Neat

G Train to Broadway
J train to Lorimer
This Show Is Sponsored by Futuvision and Platinum Mic Studios

Jim Lehrer on the Media Today

Gore Vidal: Profile of a Writer

Junot Díaz and Jamaica Kincaid Read at the 92nd Street Y

All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in NaNoWriMo

All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in NaNoWriMo
By Jason Black

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't write my first novel until I was 35 years old.

I tried to write when I was in high school. Stories would come to me, and in my head they seemed so grand and epic, yet they inevitably fell flat on the page.

I'd begin with all the enthusiasm and zeal in the world, but three pages later I'd be at the end.

Poof.

Done.

I'd shake my head and wonder where the heck my story went, because there was nothing grand or epic left in those three pages. I had no idea how those "real" writers sustained a story not for three pages, but for 300.

I decided it must be a gift you have to be born with, so I gave up.

That's what I'm really ashamed of.

But I was wrong.

It's not something you're born with, any more than you're born knowing how to walk or speak or use a spoon. My problem wasn't some lack of genetic ability. It was that I didn't know the fundamental law of fiction.

Twenty years later, a friend convinced me to try NaNoWriMo.

I decided to write a fantasy novel based on a role playing game I had run for some friends several years back.

I told those friends, and one of them gave me the best pieces of advice ever. "Remember to show, don't tell."

Maybe it was luck.

Maybe the stars were aligned.

Maybe I was just--finally--ready.

But whatever the reason, that simple edict guided me on a 30 day, 300 page romp of a fantasy novel that in the end bore almost no resemblance to the story I thought it would.

The bliss of redemption has never tasted so sweet.

Showing, as it turns out, is the secret to sustaining a story for as long as you want. When I was younger I had been telling, not showing. Showing is also the secret to making the story interesting and compelling for the reader. "Show, don't tell" is the fundamental law of fiction.

This year is my fifth NaNoWriMo.

Over the past four years, I've learned an awful lot about the practicalities of writing a novel: The subtleties of different point-of-view choices. What it means to have an inner character arc to go with your outer story arc, and how to tie the two together. How to write so as to create mysteries for your reader, rather than to destroy them. The value of conflict in every scene and across the entire plot. The "Hero's Journey" structure. How to balance protagonists and antagonists. How to create compelling stakes.

And on and on and on.

But what I've learned most of all comes back to that advice from my friends. Show, don't tell. At the end of the day, writing is always about "show, don't tell." Every piece of writing advice out there is, at heart, just another manifestation of that one fundamental law.

Or as master short story writer Anton Chekov put it, "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

Guest blogger Jason Black is a freelance book doctor working with aspiring novelists to help their work escape the slushpile. He writes about effective techniques for creating great characters at http://www.plottopunctuation.com/blog Click here and may be found on twitter as http://www.twitter.com/p2p_editor.Click here