Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

Happy Holidays: 2011 Year in Review

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By way of a holiday greeting, I thought I would share a bullet-point list of items that I call my 2011 Year in Review.

In 2011, I…

  • Bowled in the New Year with a new pair of bowling shoes;
  • Published Haiku for Haters as a mini-book in both print and digital formats;
  • Wrote and revised a bunch of online continuing education classes for a local real estate company;
  • Joined a writing group;
  • Pondered getting back into writing sex columns for a friend’s blog, but decided against it;
  • Paid someone to do my taxes early, for a change;
  • Considered starting an online writers’ salon for southern writers, but decided against it;
  • Worked a day job at a culinary school and wrote for their blog;
  • Bought a manual typewriter;
  • Successfully avoided the circle jerk that is SXSW for the second year running;
  • Participated in an awesome anti-SXSW reading event with my writing group (which was ironically covered by my nemesis);
  • Took the bus more than I ever wanted to, and rode the train to work on odd mornings;
  • Met a super-accomplished, awesome writer who has also been struggling to make ends meet, despite her obvious talent and skill, and enjoyed some conversation and iced coffee;
  • Took part in a day-long “Anticrastination Scribproductivathon” (aka a writing marathon) with my writing group;
  • Quit my writing group when they decided to start working on an anthology I wasn’t interested in, instead of just being the good, fun, supportive critique group I’d originally joined;
  • Joined the National Amateur Press Association, and later became their Director of Publicity;
  • Celebrated my cat’s 1st birthday on April Fool’s Day;
  • Kept plugging away at my novel;
  • Pondered going back to school (again) for my MFA, but decided not to;
  • Read and accepted and rejected hundreds (thousands?) of short fiction and poems for my literary magazine;
  • Continued blogging about Austin and the budget lifestyle for Shoestring Austin;
  • Celebrated my three-year wedding anniversary to the world’s greatest guy (who is still, incidentally, content to be known as “The UnGooglable Man”);
  • Joined WriteByNight as a writing coach and manuscript consultant;
  • Started using car2go to get around town when the bus just wouldn’t cut it;
  • Co-edited a kick-ass anthology of noir fiction with my pal Jimmy Callaway;
  • Joined a local food blogger’s group;
  • Participated in the 3-Day Novel Contest;
  • Read a TON of books;
  • Applied for a TON of jobs;
  • Completed a TON of transcripts;
  • Published several “quickies” on Amazon and Smashwords;
  • Turned another year older and celebrated by—how else?—bowling (and consuming delicious Thai food);
  • Volunteered at the Austin Chocolate Festival and got to sample lots of delicious free chocolate;
  • Joined the Professional Writers of Austin and started blogging for them on a monthly basis;
  • Attended the Texas Book Festival but missed the inaugural Lit Crawl thanks to Austin’s terrible bus system;
  • Attended my sister’s wedding and served as the Matron of Honor;
  • Thought I would work more on my novel during NaNoWriMo, but ended up too busy to do so;
  • Ate a lot of tasty breakfast tacos;
  • Started a weekend ritual of hitting the library every Saturday with my husband, checking out a ridiculous number of books and DVDs, and gorging ourself on media for the rest of the day;
  • Took a gig writing book reviews at the U.S. Review of Books;
  • Took a gig writing book reviews for Kirkus;
  • Took a gig writing news articles for a company that shall not be named;
  • Attended a few holiday parties;
  • Renewed a few domains;
  • Wrote this list and felt a little better about my accomplishments.

What did YOU do in 2011?

Let’s write novels together: NaNoWriMo 2011

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Happy National Novel Writing Month!

Every year I debate whether or not to join the fray on this 30-day writing marathon, which I have participated in—and won!—in the past. This year I’ve come up with a title for a potential novel, but I haven’t done any actual writing or brainstorming thus far.

It’s only day 4, which means I can still get up to speed if I apply myself on the 1,667 words a day program, but I think this year I will sit out the new novel-writing experience (having already written a novel in 3 days) in favor of continuing to work on my ever-in-progress novel, Naked Montréal, instead. If I write or edit 1,667 words each day, I’m sure to have it finished in a month, right? Consider it National Novel Editing Month, four months early (it’s “officially” in March).

Write your novel with me at WriteByNight

If you’re in Austin during the month of November, join me and the WriteByNight crew for official NaNoWriMo write-ins on Saturdays throughout the month. I’ll be heading up some of the Saturday sessions from 10 AM to 1 PM, so stop by if you have any questions about noveling in 30 days, want to check out my copy of No Plot? No Problem!, or just want to say hi.

You can also write your novel “unofficially” during regular WriteHere hours, which are Tuesdays from 11 AM to 3 PM, Wednesdays from 4 to 8 PM, and Saturdays from 10 AM to 4 PM. You can find WBN at 1305 E. 6th Street, Suite 4.

Looking forward to meeting some of you in the real world, and good luck to all the NaNoWriMo novelists out there!

How to write a novel

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There’s a great post over at Men With Pens today on the subject of writing a novel, entitled “How to Dig Up the Bones of Your Unwritten Novel.” It’s by Graham Strong, who blogs on a daily (!) basis at A Few Strong Words (get it?) about how his novel is progressing. He’s currently on his second draft, so I’m definitely going to have to tune in and see if he’s got helpful hints for me as I finish up my first draft, hopefully by the time Spring hits.

As far as my own novel goes, Naked Montréal has definitely become fun again, thanks to some suggestions from a new writing group I’ve joined (pending their two-meeting approval!), something that was lacking when I was trying to force myself to write too many words per day and really slog through it like some NaNoWriMo-esque word-count challenge.

As Graham mentions, while you should commit to writing every day, you shouldn’t force yourself to write too much every day. He says he wrote only an hour each day on his first draft, which kept him interested in what he was writing and prevented burn-out. You wouldn’t think a writer could burn out on something that’s supposed to be fun, but I think he’s right; if you view the process too much like work, you’ll lose your muse. So keep writing, but don’t overwrite and turn your wild and crazy first draft into something angina-inducing.

Oh, and speaking of inducing angina, my writer friend AV Flox has always used the phrase to describe things that drive her a bit crazy. I always assumed she’d write a book one day called “The Angina Monologues.” So imagine my surprise when I saw this:

Needless to say, she wasn’t pleased when I told her of my discovery. Damn you, South Africa, for stealing AV’s thunder!

Oh, and did you notice this author has another book called “The Karma Suture”? MEMO: The original is called the Kama Sutra and not the Karma Sutra. Playing on “sutra” vs. “suture” as an MD joke works, but mistaking “Kama” for “Karma” just makes you (and your editors, and publisher) look uneducated—and on a very easily Googled title.

So kids, if you want to write a novel, remember 3 things:

  1. Write every day.
  2. Don’t OVERWRITE your first draft.
  3. Clever titles can backfire, so pick one that makes you look subtly brilliant instead. Something like, say, Naked Montréal.

Follow these 3 simple steps and you’ll be on the road to success in no time!