As part of my NaNoWriMo Halo Giveaway, I offered all of the folks who signed up a chance to write a guest post for How Not To Write. I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the variety of people who have submitted posts. I know I am. I’m also proud to share their words here and I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. — Jamie

Today’s post comes from Scott Roche.

Scott Roche is a computer technician, a husband, a father of three, and one day hopes to be a published novelist. He has a blog or three floating around the internet, but the one he devotes the most time to can be found at http://www.spiritualtramp.com/. He is also podcasting his 2006 NaNoWriMo novel at http://www.archangelnovel.com/blog/. He is always looking for new things to write about and as a result has would up writing for sites like http://mine.myxer.com/ and http://www.hollywoodjesus.com, reviewing movies, music, and looking at pop culture through a Christian lens.

Fear is the Mind Killer

My very first attempt at doing NaNo was in 2005. Prior to that auspicious month I had written a fair number of short stories of varying lengths, but most of my writing efforts were non-fiction. I wanted to challenge myself to write something really big both in scope and in size and it seemed like this project was just the ticket. Ordinarily I’m what you might call an organic writer. That is if organic is French for “someone who fears planning”. Writing a novel seemed like eating the proverbial elephant, but I put the fear away. I went at it like any inexperienced author and tried to get it all in one bite. Naturally, I failed utterly, but the attempt had been made.

The next year rolled around and I went in to it with my eyes wide open. I planned to a degree unheard of before, for me at least. I prepared a chapter outline and some character sketches. I considered what sort of tone I wanted and really gave the whole thing some serious thought. For all of that pre-work though I was still afraid. When you write a lot of short stories, or perhaps more to the point when I write a lot of short stories I get used to that small space. I developed a sort of agoraphobia, only this was more a fear of big open pages. If I couldn’t resolve a story in less than five thousand words, would it ever draw to a close? The challenge was to continually remind myself that I had as much room as I needed. You know all those long nights and playing catch on weekends that you hear about? I had them. For all my planning characters did things I didn’t expect and new ones popped up unbidden. Still, I was glad for the planning. I crossed the finish line on the last day and then about mid-December I actually finished the novella. I knew then that I could write long form fiction.

I skipped 2007 thanks to some personal issues, but was determined to really give 2008 a solid try. I was podcasting my 2006 novella and working on its sequel and we’re scheduled to move in December, but I didn’t want any of that to stand in my way. I planned a little less, but progress is seemingly smoother. My fear of the white space is gradually diminishing. I let myself have chapters that savor the setting and characters, without rushing through them to serve the plot. I decided to do a number of things this year that I don’t ordinarily try. I’m limiting my point of view. The tone is overall much lighter than most stories I’ve written. In years past the challenge was just to cross the finish line, but now that I know I am capable of that I want to push myself in new directions, confront new fears, and take everything to the next level. That’s what this month is about for me, taking those writing fears and flipping them over, making them work for me.

People may tell you that anything you accomplish during this month is going to be really crappy. I mean you’re writing at a pace that most people can’t even comprehend. What if what you’re writing is horrible? This is perhaps the biggest fear I still face. A lot of the writers I meet have all the self esteem of Penfold the Hamster. I’m no different. Instead of letting this stop you, give yourself permission to be bad so long as the writing gets done. After all, a bad novel might be able to be edited into a good one. The one that stays stuck in your head will never do anyone any good. Don’t let fear, whatever it may be, kill your mind or stunt your story. Let it push you to the places that people tell you that you can’t go or that you tell yourself you shouldn’t. You’ll be glad you did.

Interested in sharing your story? I’ve opened up the writer profiles section to submissions from any/all writers. Read on for “guidelines”.

As part of my NaNoWriMo Halo Giveaway, I offered all of the folks who signed up a chance to write a guest post for How Not To Write. I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the variety of people who have submitted posts. I know I am. I’m also proud to share their words here and I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. — Jamie

Today’s post comes from Dan Barrett.

Dan is a young British writer, humourist, and critic, with a sweet collection of plaid shirts and a moustache tattooed on his finger. This will be his (fingers crossed!) third year of Nano success, and first year acting as a Municipal Liaison, for the Milton Keynes region. As well as writing, he enjoys reading, listening to music, telling people he doesn’t own a television, drinking heavily, and shouting. You can find him on the Nano site, or read his website, where he writes mostly about his life, and things he doesn’t like very much. Some people even find it relatively amusing!

The Hardest 10,000 Words

If you’re pretty much on target in your Nano-ing, you will have just passed, or will be about to pass, the 30,000 word mark. At which point, you enter into a horrible limbo of self-doubt, loathing for your work in progress, and you generally have the toughest-to-write 10,000 words of the novel just ahead of you, a seemingly insurmountable task compared with the thought of writing five times as much back on November 1st. Here are some strategies and thoughts which I hope will help get you past this bump in the road, onto the home stretch, and through to the 50k finish line!

First of all, realise that this is a perfectly normal thing to be going through, be you a virgin or veteran of Nano. Everyone else experiences this to a degree, and it’s totally fine. This section of the novel is always the hardest: you’re past the initial excitement of going on a new writing adventure, have cleared the ‘halfway high’, and at the same time, you’re not quite close enough to the end to have the goal in sight, and be able to push through to that.

So, you end up procrastinating even more than usual, your writing pace slows to almost a standstill, and the whole thing seems just too hard to manage. Why did you ever think it was a good idea to do this (again)?! You could always just stop, it’s not like you have to complete it, right?

But don’t give up just yet! It really isn’t as impossible as it seems, and once you’ve gotten through this painful phase, it’s really easy, as you ride out the home stretch from forty to fifty thousand words. I promise!

It is not a waste of time, it’s a brilliant endeavour – I know at least one point in my first year, about 35k in, I felt like my novel was a crime against the English language and the concept of a ‘story’, and that I was wasting my time. Then I was reminded that this is a challenge – it isn’t supposed to be easy, nothing worth doing is. This particular challenge is one to be particularly proud of when you have succeeded at it, so keep going and finish it!

Accept that sometimes your writing will feel laboured, ‘clunky’, awkward, or just plain BAD. Perhaps you’ve said the exact same thing three times in a row in different words, or maybe your padding in a particular scene is blatant and shameless. But there will also be times when you write a sentence or two, or even a paragraph, which you are genuinely pleased with. Remember these moments, rather than the hiccups you may have also had. And I assure you, your writing is never as bad as you think it is.

Don’t re-read until you have written ‘The End’ – at least not any more than the last paragraph, just enough to carry on after a break from writing. You will only nitpick and find faults, or be overcome with the urge to edit it ‘just a little bit’ – DON’T! On a similar note, don’t be too bothered about consistency throughout –you can always fix this later. Who cares if it was uncle Albert in chapter six and uncle Alfred in chapter seventeen?!

If you’re not enjoying writing it, move on quickly – Some sections will be a little boring to write, but are necessary to move the plot forward (assuming you have a ‘plot’, of course…) If you find yourself flagging a bit during one of these, end the scene as quickly as you reasonably can. Get it over with and move on to the next bit which will hopefully be more fun to write. Do the same if a particular section feels like it is getting a bit too long for its own good. You can always flesh it out or prune it back later!

Plan ahead, but not too far – and don’t be afraid to go wildly off course either. I recommend having a vague idea of where your novel will end up, and making little notes as you go along about upcoming chapters and what will happen in them to get to this end point. But at the same don’t be afraid to completely ignore these when you have a much better idea en route. As some Scottish bloke once said: ‘The best laid plans of mice and men, quickly go down the toilet as far as Nanowrimo is concerned’.

Print it out, even if no one ever reads it – when you reach 50k words (and then the end of your story about a hundred and seven words later!) the first thing you should do, after punching the air and shouting ‘I did it!’ ecstatically, is to print out a copy of your (not-so) masterpiece. That sure is a lot of paper, isn’t it? Now, flick through all the pages of your novel and say, ‘I wrote all of this’. And be damn proud of yourself.

And then plan to do it all again next year…

Interested in sharing your story? I’ve opened up the writer profiles section to submissions from any/all writers. Read on for “guidelines”.

As part of my NaNoWriMo Halo Giveaway, I offered all of the folks who signed up a chance to write a guest post for How Not To Write. I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the variety of people who have submitted posts. I know I am. I’m also proud to share their words here and I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. — Jamie

Today’s post comes from Katherine Skipper.

Katherine is a computer science major in her junior year at Keene State College. She divides her time between New Hampshire and western Massachusetts, where she lives with her amazing plot-helping boyfriend and three cats. This is her second year doing NaNoWriMo, and though it has been an unusually stressful time due to recent deaths in her family, her friend the Procrastinator has helped to keep her calm and on track with her word count. You can find her on the NaNo website or on her blog.

Long Live Procrastination

I was going to start writing this post yesterday, but just like my NaNo, I stared at the screen for a while before discovering that I was doing something else. Even though that something else was homework, it was still not what I had intended to do. You’ve probably guessed my topic: procrastination. That and writing without writing.

What’s writing without writing? Is that possible? To me, it’s the opposite of the advice that I hear from so many writers during NaNo, namely, “Just write! That’s the only trick, just sit down and force the words out, no matter what they say!”

That’s probably good advice for a lot of people, particularly those who fight fiercely to keep the inner Editor under control, like I do. I blame my OCD for my total inability to let a misspelled word sit and stare at me. They mock me. I fix them. I admit freely to that. Beyond that, however, although I have been guilty of erasing a sentence here and there, I stick to a rule for editing: if I absolutely must change something, the new version has to be longer than the old one. I read that rule somewhere in the NaNo forums and it has worked wonderfully for me.

The inner Editor, you have probably noticed, is good friends with the inner Procrastinator. They assist each other in their jobs, sort of a you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours thing. The Editor scares you into procrastinating by making you think too much, while the Procrastinator fools the Editor into thinking that by you doing nothing, when you do eventually do something, it will be better, more pleasing to the Editor’s excruciatingly high standards.

Recently I’ve discovered, to my delight, that I have a way of tricking the Procrastinator into helping me. It’s a tricky task, for if you do it wrong, it will work against you. But think of that absolutely mindless thing you do when you should be doing a thousand other, more useful things. Is it knitting? Playing solitaire? Reorganizing your desk in a myriad of different patterns, all of approximately similar usefulness? For me, it’s playing poker online. It requires no effort, no thought, just me sitting and staring and accomplishing nothing else. (Hey, I didn’t say I actually won anything.)

My discovery is that while I play poker, because it is so mindless, I can think about other things; and with just a little bit of focus, I can bend that thought around to my novel. In pleasing the Procrastinator (by playing poker), I also please the Editor (by doing a little planning), and yet I’m helping myself, too. The tricky part is not doing it too long. After all, if I’ve been playing poker for five hours, I’ve probably run out of time in which to physically write down the scenes I’ve thought up. But if after half an hour, I pull myself away from the virtual table and open up that nagging Word document titled NaNovel2008, the build-up of recent thoughts just pours out on the page.

I never thought I would have reason to thank my Procrastinator, but I have to say it: thank you, Sir P., for insisting that I play mindless internet games. You are more helpful than I’m sure you ever wanted to be.

Interested in sharing your story? I’ve opened up the writer profiles section to submissions from any/all writers. Read on for “guidelines”.

As part of my NaNoWriMo Halo Giveaway, I offered all of the folks who signed up a chance to write a guest post for How Not To Write. I’ve expanded the offer to any and all Wrimos who would like to participate. I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the variety of people who have submitted posts. I know I am. I’m also proud to share their words here and I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. — Jamie

Today’s post comes from Elise Koerner.

By day Elise Koerner saves the world one IT system at a time, at night she tries to write. Her day job has taken her to some pretty unique places and in the last eight months she’s been lucky enough to visit Australia, Singapore, China, Brazil, Sweden, Denmark and throughout the US. Though the travel has given her great stories and ideas of future best sellers, she’s been using the travel as an excuse to not finish anything she’s started. Truthfully she’s really good at coming up with excuses but after Nano (not an excuse she swears) she plans to start (and finish) the first book in a travel-centric YA series she’s been developing for a long time.

How to Use Your Excuses to Fuel Your Writing

So I’m sitting in work training listening to our instructor go over this project management stuff (critical path and Gantt charts, actually, how thrilling does that sound?) that I’ve already been taught before. This training is at least the third time in the last sixteen months I’ve calculated PERT and I want to gouge my eyes out, it’s just so boring and redundant. I have no computer, no notepad, no pen, no cocktail napkins, nothing. I’d much rather be doing Nanowrimo writing then sitting in the conference room being bored to tears sticking post-it notes over every surface of the room as part of a learning activity.

That’s an example of something you can’t avoid. It’s an excuse, but it’s legitimate. I say, I would have been able to write my daily 1,667 words if only I didn’t have training. I can’t really go to my boss and say “Sorry, its November and I’d rather be writing right now so please tell them to make an exception. Training really isn’t important anyways…” I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to fly – after all, my company has made it painfully clear that if we whip out a laptop or look like we’re not engaged we’ll be penalized. As in no reward stickers. Seriously, this is Corporate America and some Human Resources study shows twenty-somethings learn better if training closely resembles kindergarten. Though I’m fairly convinced we’re being graded on our Pavlovian willingness to do shameless sucking up for these stickers and there might be a direct correlation to our annual raises… Anyways, that’s not the point.

The point is, we all have mandatory things that must come first in November, and all year round. My two weeks of training is a good example. Nanowrimo is important, but if I’m a homeless bum without a book deal then I’m really screwed. But lucky for us there are two main types of excuses – number one is mandatory life-or-death stuff. The other is called procrastination temptation and the best part is we can do something about it.

On Saturday I found a cute sweater on-line (when procrastinating Nano writing) and decided to avoid shipping and handling costs I’d convince a friend to go down the mall with me and see if I could find in it a department store sans shipping. So I picked up my friend, drove to the mall, went to the stores I wanted to go into for this sweater, then hit up a few others. Then Starbucks, then on my way home got gas and decided to pick up food for dinner and well, four hours later I didn’t have my sweater, and didn’t have 1,667 words written. I didn’t need the sweater, the world wasn’t going to end if I didn’t have it. I just started procrastinating and let myself be tempted by the fact I had been doing so well with Nano. I kind of forgot the most important thing – November is for writing (it’s NANOWRIMO for goodness sakes).

We all have our temptations, in November it’s sometimes hard to make the time just between the holidays and family stuff. I know some people say they locked themselves in their apartments and friends and family just had to understand. I don’t see that as being reasonable though. There are going to be things that come up – mandatory life-or-death stuff along with procrastination temptations and you’re going to want to write instead. You are going to say afterwards if I only had those four hours back or the only reason I’m behind is because my friend dragged me to the mall to look for a sweater that apparently doesn’t even exist or [insert weird set of circumstances here].

Basically there is absolutely, unequivocally always going to be some reason not to write. It’s like Murphy’s Law. Whether it’s a legitimate excuse or not is the question you need to ask yourself. Are you not hitting your personal writing goals because something more fun or interesting has come up, or because you had to study for a test, take the dog to a Vet, go grocery shopping, whatever? Only you know what’s imperative, but you need to evaluate how you spend your time and if the diversions from writing are really worth it. Prioritize the procrastination. Even if the end result is only adding 100 words to your story on the day they keep you in the conference room for training until 9pm, or on a good day 2,000 when you fight the urge to watch a marathon of America’s Next Top Model. Now if your one of those people who actually forgoes meals and skips work to write, sorry I can’t help you. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably not – you’re like me and have real life and sometimes it gets in the way of your writing.

But there is a way to turn it around and make it help you – call the time you’re not writing “research”. When you’re sitting in training watching your peers argue about the difference between a Technical Writer and a Developer you can think of how ridiculous the argument is and mentally map put a scene like that between your characters. Or when your running around the mall searching for a very specific BCBG sweater that no salesperson believes exists, you might just think up a plot twist involving an item only your main character can see. At the Doctor’s office you pick up a magazine you never heard of before and read an article that helps shape your sub plot. You stay up late and watch an old episode of the Twilight Zone and decide to name a character after Rod Serling (using an acronym of course). Whatever it is, sometimes those distractions help us with our writing. And if not – maybe the next distraction will. 🙂

As part of my NaNoWriMo Halo Giveaway, I offered all of the folks who signed up a chance to write a guest post for How Not To Write. I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the variety of people who have submitted posts. I know I am. I’m also proud to share their words here and I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment. — Jamie

Today’s post comes from Kim Keeline from Kim the Blogging Bard & Nancy_Drew at NaNoWriMo.

The Best Laid Plans

You know what it is like. You plan and dream and outline. You think about your plot for days on end. Finally, you sit down to write, and . . . nothing happens.

Yes, we all face that moment when the planning finally ends and the execution of the plan begins, and that is exactly what it feels like–an execution.

Here I was, on the first day of NaNoWriMo, finally starting the novel I had been planning, and the new file I had open in front of me seemed to mock me with its emptiness. Most writers face this at one point or another, whether when starting a new project or in the middle of the writing. Words elude us. Sentences fail to form. Anything that is written seems insipid, boring, or stupid. The hardest part of writing is often . . . the writing.

It all seems so easy when planning. I have pages of notes written about the characters and the plot. I have an outline which seems very reasonable and generally answers the necessary questions. I am writing a murder mystery so I know what clues must be given, what red herrings I have invented, and who the murderer, victim, and detective are. All these things are ready, yet writing can seem so hard sometimes.

Part of this is probably nerves. After all, writing a novel in a month is a big undertaking. 50,000 words is no laughing matter. Of course, I did just finish a 340 page dissertation, but I also had longer than a month to work on it (WAY too long, in fact, if you were to ask anyone who knew me well).

Fear can be a huge motivating factor, as it was when I needed to finish my dissertation by a deadline, but it can also be a stumbling block. Fear of a large task or even a fear of success can make the task difficult to start and once started, make it difficult to complete.

Several things can help. I try to brainstorm. The “Editor” in my brain has to be told to shut up. I tie that “Editor” in the corner and stick a sock in his mouth, because the start of a draft isn’t a good time to be stopping ideas from coming with a negative voice in my head judging me. I remind myself that drafts can be revised. I set timers for short sessions and force myself to write until the timer goes off. Then I take a break and try it again. If it works, I soon won’t want to stop when the timer goes ding.

I know what I must do. I must face my fears and start writing. I revised my dissertation multiple times during the process and I am sure it will be the same for my novel. It’s okay if it isn’t perfect on the first writing. What matters is that I get it written and finish the first draft of my novel for NaNoWriMo.

After all, I am a writer and writers write. No more blank pages or empty files for me–I’m going to write my novel and finish NaNoWriMo and I hope you will too, regardless of how many words you have counted so far! There is still time for all of us to break through those barriers and fulfill our plans!

Kim the Blogging Bard earned a Ph.D. in English Lit with a specialty in Shakespeare and the writers of his day. Her dissertation was on the fictional representation of working women in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. She is currently looking for writing or teaching work. Her new blog is a place for her to share her thoughts on . . . well, anything which comes to her mind. Recent posts have included a story about a barnacle from her childhood (which she thought had a tiny dinosaur skeleton on it) and her love of collecting books.

A few of Kim’s Great Posts:

“Collecting: A Hobby or a Problem?”

“The Barnacle of My Imagination”

“Writer’s Brain: A Rewired Way of Thinking”