[Guest Post] Romancing the Tome – or “You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance”

This is my fifth NaNoWriMo. Twice, I finished over 50K.  Both times it was with mystery novels. Once, I changed ideas around mid-November. I advise against this. Okay, sure, I could have kept everything I wrote the first half of the month and uploaded some kind of Frankenstein manuscript for the final count, but IContinue reading “[Guest Post] Romancing the Tome – or “You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance””

[Guest Post] Keeping Writing Interesting

One of the major reasons I have done NaNoWriMo for the past three years is that it keeps my life interesting. NaNoWriMo is a time to focus on writing, push through those slogging difficult days, and keep searching for those magical days. Which is why, when I say ‘keeping writing interesting’, I am not talkingContinue reading “[Guest Post] Keeping Writing Interesting”

[Guest Post] Writing Utter Crap

We writers tend to tie ourselves up in knots. We know that the first draft doesn’t need to be perfect, but we still manage to act like it does. We have a hard time giving ourselves permission to write utter crap. We forget how freeing it is to not be perfect. An icon I foundContinue reading “[Guest Post] Writing Utter Crap”

[Guest Post] Writing as an Endurance Sport

“You’re doing WHAT?” That’s the typical response when you tell someone you’re participating in an event to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The second response is “What do you get if you win?” For most people the idea of writing a novel in a month is, at best, a foolish waste of time. AfterContinue reading “[Guest Post] Writing as an Endurance Sport”

[Guest Post] Micro-Goals; or How Word Sprints Save Your Sanity

NaNoWriMo is a beast: a 50,000-word minimum juggernaut that’s defeated far more seasoned writers than myself… and if, like me,  you’re  trying to tackle the dragon for the first time, it might be beginning to seem rather like an epic quest in nature. The daily climb to 1,667 begins to look like a repetitive trekContinue reading “[Guest Post] Micro-Goals; or How Word Sprints Save Your Sanity”