You Can't Tell I Have Writer's Block Today Can You?

I LOVE Inkygirl's comics. She's drawing a new comic for every day of NaNoWriMo - in addition to writing a novel of her own, of course.

Click here to see an archive of all the comics she's done so far.

Here's another one I love:





Now, stop reading my blog and get back to writing, guys! :-P

More NaNo Stuff

Contests and Offers and Widgets, oh my!

So, here are a few random things that may be of interest to those who might be doing - or even considering doing - NaNo. (sorry for anyone who visits my blog for any reason other than finding information about NaNoWriMo. ;o) It's just all I'm thinking about lately.)

There is an awesome special offer from a company called "CreateSpace" for everyone who wins NaNo and uploads more than 50K words by Nov 30. We'll all get a special, secret code to get a free proof copy of our book! You don't have to get it right away, either. You have time to clean it up over the course of a few months or something. And people who did it last year said shipping was free, too, even internationally.

Go to this website and click on CreateSpace for all the details.

There's also a contest for those who are writing YA novels. It's a competition for the best YA book pitch. The winners get their submissions read by editors at a bunch of awesome publishing houses, and a one-on-one pitch with a literary agent. You submit a title and 250-word beginning of the novel. You have to submit by Nov 30, so you'll have to think about getting this entry ready in the midst of the NaNo craziness.

Here's the web page that has all the info. on the contest.

And last of all, you can get a cool widget for the sidebar of your blog, or other webpages or whatever, that automatically updates your wordcount as soon as you update it on the NaNo site. You can see mine over on the right there, under the "War of the Words" heading. It says jennylou at the top, because that's my screen name on the NaNo site, for anyone who wants to add me as a buddy. :o)

Click here to see all the different widgets they have available and to get the code to embed them on your website. If you're logged into your NaNo account when you view this page, it'll show your personal info in the widget automatically. I thought that was pretty special. And where it says "Participant" - that changes to say "Winner" automatically when you hit 50K! How nifty is that?

So, now that I've thoroughly distracted you from your writing, I'll bid you all adieu. Have a great day and Happy NaNoing!

NaNo Pep Talk by Jasper Fforde

I really loved the Pep Talk that came into my inbox today by Jasper Fforde. I wanted to link to it, but it isn't on NaNo's website yet, so I thought I'd just post it here. It was very inspiring to me, and I hope it helps all of you out as well.

Dear Writer,

I once wrote a novel in 22 days. 31 chapters, 62,000 words. I didn’t do much else—bit of sleeping, eating, bath or two—I just had three weeks to myself and a lot of ideas, an urge to write, a 486 DOS laptop and a quiet room. The book was terrible. 62,000 words and only twenty-seven in the right order. It was ultimately junked but here’s the important thing: It was one of the best 22 days I ever spent. A colossal waste of ink it was, a waste of time it was not.

Because here’s the thing: Writing is not something you can do or you can’t. It’s not something that ‘other people do’ or ‘for smart people only’ or even ‘for people who finished school and went to University’. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training—get your hands dirty—and make some mistakes. Those 22 days of mine were the start, and only the start, of my training. The next four weeks and 50,000 words will be the start of your training, too.

There’s a lot to learn, and you won’t have figured it all in 50,000 words, but it’ll be enough for you to know that you don’t know it all, and that it will come, given time. You’ll have written enough to see an improvement, and to start to have an idea over what works and what doesn’t. Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation. A manual on knitting can tell you what to do, but you won’t be able to make anything until you get your hands on some wool and some needles and put in some finger time. Writing needs to be practiced; there is a limit to how much can be gleaned from a teacher or a manual. The true essence of writing is out there, in the world, and inside, within yourself. To write, you have to give.

What do you give? Everything. Your reader is human, like you, and human experience in all its richness is something that we all share. Readers are interested in the way a writer sees things; the unique world-view that makes you the person you are, and makes your novel interesting. Ever met an odd person? Sure. Ever had a weird job? Of course. Ever been to a strange place? Definitely. Ever been frightened, sad, happy, or frustrated? You betcha. These are your nuts and bolts, the constructor set of your novel. All you need to learn is how to put it all together. How to wield the spanners.

And this is why 30 days and 50,000 words is so important. Don’t look at this early stage for every sentence to be perfect—that will come. Don’t expect every description to be spot-on. That will come too. This is an opportunity to experiment. It’s your giant blotter. An empty slate, ready to be filled. It’s an opportunity to try out dialogue, to create situations, to describe a summer’s evening. You’ll read it back to yourself and you’ll see what works, you’ll see what doesn’t. But this is a building site, and it’s not meant to be pretty, tidy, or even safe. Building sites rarely are. But every great building began as one.

So where do you start? Again, it doesn’t matter. You might like to sketch a few ideas down on the back of an envelope, spend a week organizing a master-plan or even dive in head first and see where it takes you. All can work, and none is better than any other. The trick about writing is that you do it the way that’s best for you. And during the next 50,000 words, you may start to discover that, too.

But the overriding importance is that the 50,000 words don’t have to be good. They don’t even have to be spelled properly, punctuated or even tabulated neatly on the page. It’s not important. Practice is what’s important here, because, like your granny once told you, practice does indeed make perfect. Concert violinists aren’t born that way, and the Beatles didn’t get to be good by a quirk of fate. They all put in their time. And so will you. And a concerted effort to get words on paper is one of the best ways to do it. The lessons learned over the next thirty days will be lessons that you can’t get from a teacher, or a manual, or attending lectures. The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they’ve written, they write some more. And the words get better, and sentences form easier, and dialogue starts to snap. It’s a great feeling when it happens. And it will. Go to it.

-Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde is the best-selling author of the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime books. He has been writing for twenty years, but only published for ten. His training took a while. His eighth book, Shades of Grey, will be published in January 2010. He lives and writes in Wales, has a large family and likes to fly aeroplanes.

Here's the archives of previous years' pep talks for your perusing pleasure as well.

And one last tidbit - a video with some tips for Wrimos. Happy writing everyone!

Happy Halloween from my family!

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NaNo November

So, I've decided I need a break from Stolen Dreams.

I know it probably sounds crazy since I've done pretty much nothing /but/ take breaks from Stolen Dreams. ;o) But the project is stressing me out so much, and I've been having a LOT of fun lately writing YA in first person present tense.

With NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for those who don't know) coming up in a few days, I've decided to throw caution, stress, and even plotting to the wind and just have fun writing. 30 days and nights of literary abandon, baby! LOL.

This goes along quite nicely with my desire to write with more of a practice makes perfect attitude. I need to practice writing with the internal editor turned OFF, and this will give me a great chance to do that, too.

I've never written a story before where I didn't have a good idea of where it was going. Some of my stories, the end has even been the /point/ of the thing. But this time, all I have are some interesting characters in an interesting situation. An idea is not a plot. An issue is not a story. But that's discovery writing for you, and it's what NaNo is all about. Chris Baty's book, after all, is called No Plot? No Problem!

So, I'm gearing up to do it. It works out to be exactly 2,000 words a day that I need to write if I don't write anything on Sundays. It's only 1,667 a day if I did write on Sundays. That makes it sound pretty tempting, doesn't it? LOL. But I've never written on Sunday before, so why start now, right? :o)

I "won" NaNo the first time I attempted it in 2007 (meaning I made it to 50,000 words) but ever since then, every time I've tried to do NaNo or any other BIAM challenge, I've flopped flat on my face. I really think this time is going to be different, but I'm feeling a bit nervous, I do have to say. Wish me luck!

Practice Makes Perfect

I heard Anita Stansfield speak again at a church fireside last week, and I went up and talked to her afterward about the things I learned from her class at UVU.

We talked briefly about the concept of practicing 10,000 hours to become a grandmaster author, and she said something else that helped me out. She said that if I were practicing the piano, I would just practice over and over until I perfected a song. But when we're writing, we expect to be able to write something great the first time. I'm trying to look at my writing that way now. I need to just practice writing without feeling so serious about writing the Great American Novel every time I sit down at the computer.

So at the top of a blank page this morning, just to remind myself of what I was supposed to be doing, I wrote: "This is called PRACTICE. Imagine you are practicing the piano. Not every run through a song has to be recorded and sold. Practice writing with the same idea. It doesn’t have to fit with the rest of the storyline. You don’t have to go back and figure out exactly who said what before what you’re writing now. You do not have to use these exact words or even these very scenes in the final draft. Really. This is p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e!!"

Yes, I do think it's helping. And, yes, I did count those 79 words toward my daily wordcount. ;o) (But I'm not going to count this blog post, so I better get back to writing.)

Contest Winner

Hi everyone! I ran a contest last week and promised the winner would receive a copy of Achieving Your Life Mission by Randal A. Wright.


Well, the results are in. :o)
I put all the entrants' names in a bowl . . .

Pulled one out . . .

And . . .

Congratulations Stephanie! I hope you enjoy your prize.

And for everyone, just another gentle reminder to figure out what your life mission is, and then go to work putting in the hours it takes to be able to fulfill that mission to the fullest.