My latest post over at the Saturday Writers blog tells the sad story of my experience with NaNoWriMo this year. Yes, I failed to reach 50,000 words this year.

But I learned some things about myself in the process:

Listen to your inner voice

It’s silly to take on a new project when you KNOW you don’t have the time to give it the attention it needs. I need to pay attention to that inner voice that says, “You don’t have the time and you aren’t going to make the time to get this done.”

Say no to peer pressure

It’s silly to let peer pressure guide your commitments. Peer pressure can be a great motivator to help you reach your goals. But making a commitment that you know you can’t keep just because of peer pressure is the dark path to guilt that you really don’t need. Do what’s best for you and your novel.

Writing in a group is fabulous

It’s incredibly fun to join in on virtual write-ins. The NaNoWriMo team held them on Twitter, as did my local NaNo Group, the Central Iowa NaNo’ers (#cianano). If you can’t make it physically to a local write-in, join a virtual one.

Did you finish NaNoWriMo this year? What did you learn in the process?

It’s nearly November and time for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is the month where thousands of people tackle the challenge of writing 50,000 words in just 30 days.

To get you started, check out these posts on getting prepared for NaNo from last year:

Creating your characters

Laying out your initial plot

Getting into the proper mindset for NaNo

Writing tips to help you reach 50,000 words

Training yourself to write FAST

How to have fun while doing NaNo

Some tools to use for NaNo

Download a free copy of the NaNoWriMo Survival Guide from Lazette Gifford

Read a review of No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty (founder of NaNo)

To track your progress for NaNo, here’s an updated copy of the tracking spreadsheet originally created by Eric Benson. This is in Open Office format, but you should be able to open it in other spreadsheet programs, as well.

You can sign up to participate in NaNo at their website, www.nanowrimo.org. It’s totally free.

I’ll be participating as well. Got a science fiction novel that I want to get through the first draft. You can follow my progress by adding me as a Writing Buddy. Or follow me on Twitter as I’ll be reporting my progress there, as well.

Here is the fourth set of links to Louise Doughty’s columns on A Novel in a Year. The columns are available on The Daily Telegraph website, though they are deep in the archives, and have also been gathered together and published in a book, A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks, available through Amazon.

Week 37 – Metaphors can be dangerous: use sparingly, or they blow up in your face

Week 38 – Be careful not to slow your story down with too much clumsy exposition

Week 39 – Dialogue can be tricky but it is a powerful tool for characterisation

Week 40 – For a novel, you need a plot – and that means events, change and conflict

Week 41 – Dialogue may be easy to write reams of, but make sure it adds to the plot

Week 42 – Guard against climaxitis with careful positioning of drama and consequence

Week 43 – Step back, then zoom in again with greater understanding

Week 44 – Choose your novel’s narrator with care: that is the voice the reader hears

Week 45 – You know that favourite bit of writing? Time to leave it out for the wolves

Week 46 – Ask a fellow writer for advice, not your nearest and dearest

Week 47 – Develop your own inner critic, and be grateful for advice

Week 48 – If you are stuck in the middle, be bold, leap forward and write the ending

Week 49 – An ending will come, and when it does it will be obvious

Week 50 – There comes a time when the donkey work must be done

Week 51 – Take a clear-eyed look at your year ahead as a writer

Week 52 – This was the year that we wrote

Pick up your copy of A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks and visit Louise’s website to learn more about her novels.

Here is the third set of links to Louise Doughty’s columns on A Novel in a Year. The columns are available on The Daily Telegraph website, though they are deep in the archives, and have also been gathered together and published in a book, A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks, available through Amazon.

Week 25 – Think about what your character wants from life, and what stands in his way

Week 26 – This is the time to write recklessly, before we pull it all together

Week 27 – Give your characters good obstacles to help them move forward

Week 28 – If your novel is going nowhere, make a real journey towards your character

Week 29 – Do you know what your character looks like? Visualise telling details

Week 30 – Assemble all the bits and pieces of your work and stand back for a moment

Week 31 – Good character description always tells us something important

Week 32 – Writer’s block can strike at any time – get through it by reading

Week 33 – Learn the trick of trimming as you go, and cut out the adverbs and adjectives

Week 34 – Write without inhibition but edit with precision

Week 35 – Keep prose tight at the start of your novel, so as to draw the reader in

Week 36 – Mind your language: sex, swearing and violence can be a turn-off to readers

Next up, the last set of twelve weeks of Novel in a Year columns.

Pick up your copy of A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks and visit Louise’s website to learn more about her novels.

Here is the second set of links to Louise Doughty’s columns on A Novel in a Year. The columns are available on The Daily Telegraph website, though they are deep in the archives, and have also been gathered together and published in a book, A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks, available through Amazon.

Week 13 – Go back in time to discover an unfamiliar character to make your own

Week 14 – The ideas stage is crucial, but soon you must start on the novel proper

Week 15 – You need not know everything about the past to conjure up another era

Week 16 – Writing gets easier once you know your allies and banish your enemies

Week 17 – Define exactly what your novel’s about, and you might surprise yourself

Week 18 – Don’t mistake your central idea for the novel itself

Week 19 – Write a CV for your characters, then your plot will follow

Week 20 – Clear your diary for the next 10 weeks and take a scattergun approach to writing

Week 21 – Imagine what your character likes to eat, and how he might break a thumb

Week 22 – Don’t listen to the critics in your head, rather concentrate on getting the words on the page

Week 23 – Use your characters’ reactions to incidents to reveal what makes them tick

Week 24 – Even deleted scenes or characters play a part

Next up, the third set of twelve weeks of Novel in a Year columns.

Pick up your copy of A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks and visit Louise’s website to learn more about her novels.

Louise Doughty, a novelist and columnist for the Daily Telegraph, wrote a series of columns in 2006 about how to write a novel over the course of a year. She offered advice from her own writing life as well as exercises to help a new writer develop the techniques and craft necessary for writing a novel. The response to the columns was overwhelming and Louise included many responses to the exercises from her readers in her columns.

The columns are available on The Daily Telegraph website, though they are deep in the archives, and have also been gathered together and published in a book, A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks, available through Amazon.

Week 1 – Take up a notebook and pen, and write one sentence

Week 2 – Some simple advice: read

Week 3 – Keep your first line simple, serious and avoid the jokey one-liners

Week 4 – Your greatest asset at this stage is passion, so enjoy it and exploit it

Week 5 – Having an endless fascination with other people is essential for writing

Week 6 – Start by excavating your own secrets, and then you can try turning them into fiction

Week 7 – Even a small accident can be turned into something consequential

Week 8 – It is vital to set aside a time and place where you can write undisturbed

Week 9 – Feeling trapped, either physically or emotionally, can provide fertile ground for dramatic writing

Week 10 – Don’t be afraid of dramatic subjects — be bold

Week 11 – Invent a character whose voice is not at all like your own

Week 12 – An arbitrary change to your original idea can have unexpected benefits

Next up, the next twelve weeks of Novel in a Year columns.

Pick up your copy of A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks and visit Louise’s website to learn more about her novels.

I’m excited to bring you a new feature here on Learn to Write Fiction–the Write a Novel With Me Series from Virginia Gruver. Virginia’s one of my fellow writers in the Saturday Writers group and she’ll be sharing her journey through the novel process with us each month. Check back often or sign up for the RSS feed, so you don’t miss a post!

Let me take a moment to introduce myself and thank Cheryl for allowing me to guest post on this great site. My name is Virginia Gruver and I have not published in novel length, yet. I have had a short story published several years ago in a local literary magazine and I have had a slice of life column in a local newspaper, owned by Gannett. I live in the Midwest and Cheryl and I became acquainted as members of a local writer’s organization that dissolved. Because we felt the group filled something for us and a handful of other writers, we decided to continue meeting on the first Saturday of each month, thus The Saturday Writers.

I came up with the Write a Novel with Me Series of blogs because, let’s face it writing can be lonely. My day job as a REALTOR® can be just as lonely, especially in a down market. Yes, I do spend time each week with buyers and sellers but I don’t know how else to explain it, it is only a few hours each week. The rest of the time, I am looking for more buyers and sellers, doing administrative stuff, writing ads, and touring houses. Except for the time, I am face to face with clients, I am working alone.

I also tend to be a perfectionist. If I can’t do something right the first time, I start over. I have half a dozen projects half-done. But I haven’t completed a first draft, yet.

By starting this project, I may still be working alone but it doesn’t feel like it. The traffic on my blog has been phenomenal so I think I may have hit a chord with other writers like myself.

Each post covers a step of the process.

• The idea – suggestions for how to come up with an idea.
• The premise – I used a suggestion from a how-to book on how to write a premise. It is the Suppose, What if, method. My premise for the story I am working on is – Suppose a failing romance author finds that her fiancé died in the arms of another woman. What if because of pride, she lets everyone think he was with her, until the police discover he was poisoned.
• I developed my protagonist – describing her physically and what her motivation and goals are in the beginning of the story.
• I developed victims – two, so far with their secrets.
• I developed the antagonist (my villain, since I am writing a mystery) description, goals and motivation.

And I am now working on innocent suspects. I am making some changes as I go. So far, I have had to change some names that just didn’t work for me. I also plan to change who the villain is. While working on the innocent suspects, I decided maybe someone else would work better. So for the past few days, I’ve been developing those characters and to be honest, I don’t know for sure who the villain is yet myself. I may keep it that way for a while. I need some method to keep the readers of my blog interested and I feel that might be one way. I feel like I am someone who is between a plotter and a pantzer. I like the surprise of not knowing what will happen but I need enough structure to keep me going. My plans are to develop enough characters, setting, and plot points to start writing the novel.

As I complete each step, I will post a blog describing what I’ve done and what the next step is. You are welcome to follow each step while you develop your story. I hope to continue through the writing, revision and marketing of this story. I am open to comments or questions. If someone else wants to discuss what is or isn’t working for them and share some information about their story, that’s fine too. I look forward to traveling the path to publication with you.

If you want to see how I am handling each step of the process in more detail, please check out my blog and follow along.

With this series of blog posts, I have author interviews that shed a little light into how published authors write, book reviews, and conference and workshop information and updates on my author’s new releases.

I will have a more detailed post next month, on this site, about the steps I’ve taken along the way from today on. May our journey be enjoyable and may we find success at the end.

Until next month,

Virginia
Virginia’s View on Novel Writing

A good way to pick up tips or suggestions for your own writing is by reading interviews with other writers.

One of the writers in my Saturday Writers group, Virginia Gruver, has done a series of interviews with authors and posted them on the Saturday Writers blog.

• Saturday Writers Welcome Lois Greiman
• Getting to Know: Carla Cassidy
• Do You Like Your Romance Novels to Sizzle? Francesca Hawley
• If You Love a Story that Touches Your Heart – Cheryl St. John
• Interview with a Poet – Dennis Maulsby

Virginia has just started up a new blog, Virginia’s View on Novel Writing, where she’ll be continuing her author interview series. She’s also started a new series, Write a Book With Me, where she invites you to watch over her shoulder as she goes through the process of writing a book and posting about her progress.

• Want to Write a Book With Me?
• Write a Book With Me-The Premise
• Writing the Novel-Developing the Protagonist

Join Virginia as she writes a novel. As she says in her blog, “Writing can be lonely, let’s do it together.”

Sometimes you’ll find it necessary to take a break from writing your novel. Most people don’t realize that writing a novel is essentially another job. If you already have a job outside the home, are going to school, or are a full-time homemaker, writing a novel is like having a second job. And that job can be physically, mentally and emotionally draining.

Physical Exhaustion

Who would have thought that sitting at a desk, typing for a couple hours could be so tiring? We writers know this kind of tired first hand. Your hands cramp up, your back aches, your eyes feel dry and scratchy for staring at that darn screen for too long.

To keep yourself fit and ready to write your next ten novels try these steps to take care of your body:

• Take a stretch break every 30 minutes or so. This means getting up from your chair, so don’t just sit there.
• Focus your eyes on something in the distance periodically.
• Remember to breathe deeply. Oxygen does your brain good.
• Get some kind of physical exercise each day. Even taking a short walk around the block is good for you.

Mental Exhaustion

Trying to wring the perfect words out of your brain can also be exhausting. Pulling from your creative well day after day can run that well dry after a while. Restock it with these activities:

• Take a walk and try NOT to think about your novel. Immerse yourself in the sensory experience of your environment. Any physical activity will work for this, even cleaning the house or washing your car.
• Go to a play, visit a museum, or listen to a concert. Activities that stimulate your creativeness with things other than words are helpful.
• Be creative with something other than words, like coloring a picture, painting, scrapbooking (those this uses some words), woodworking, or knitting.
• Goof off. One of my favorite break activities is playing online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Interacting in a different world gives a much needed break from my story world.

Emotional Exhaustion

The third kind of exhuastion that can strike a writer is emotional. You live your characters’ lives with each word you type. That includes their emotional ups and downs. Riding that rollercoaster with them can drain you of energy.

Try these activities to get yourself back on an even footing:

• Meditate. You can use a specific meditation practice or just sit quietly by yourself and endeavor not to think. I like to do this outside in the sunshine.
• Get into your car, shut the doors and scream. Or cry. Or yell. Express the emotions that may be surging inside you.
• Take a nap. They aren’t just for small children anymore. A power nap or a long afternoon snooze can help restore your equilibrium.

Writing can be a lot more tiring than most people imagine, but using some of these suggestions you can help get yourself back into writing shape quickly.

What do you use to recharge physically, mentally or emotionally?

Continuing the series on Where, When and What Tools, here’s the third entry–What tools do you use to write?

While it might seem like a simple question… you’re either writing by hand or writing with equipment (like a computer), there are many more choices available to you than just those two.

The Instrument

• a pen–roller ball, gel, thin-line marker
• a pencil–standard #2 or mechanical
• fountain pen complete with ink well
• calligraphy pen–to give your writing some flair
• colored pencils–useful for marking different kinds of text in different colors, like blue for vision sentences, green for taste, etc.

The Paper

• loose-leaf paper, lined or unlined
• notebook–the Mead notebooks you used in school, $1 specials from the bargain bin (I can’t resist these)
• journal–I love the fancy leather-bound journals with the gilded edges
• the backside of previously used paper–nice for drafts of your novel and for being eco-friendly
• oversized newsprint
• napkins–usually handy in a pinch
• sketch pads
• graph paper

Technology Alternatives

• a computer–desktop, laptop, or palmtop
• PDA (personal digital assistant)
• cell phone or smartphone
• Alphasmart
• dictation machine–if you have an actual person to type for you
• voice recognition software–if you don’t have an actual person to type for you
• typewriter–if you can still find one, maybe in a thrift shop or antique store

What tools do you use to write?

Part of a series…
Where Do You Write?
When Do You Write?
What Tools Do You Use to Write?