- Chris Brogan had a wonderful post today about marketing your book online. The best thing about the post are the comments, though, so take the time to look through those.
- Nathan Bransford talks about the leap from small press to big publisher, something I’m quite interested in.
- And NaNo is coming up, and I’m still… conflicted. Ready for someone to convince me one way or another.
Entry Information
Filed Under: Uncategorized
About the Author: I am a writer and podcast producer, writing for magazines and RPGs. I am a wanna-be fiction writer with several short fiction, comic scripts, and one novel sale. Playing For Keeps will be out August, '08.
Jean | Oct 21, 2008 | Reply
I’m unofficially participating with my WIP. I know that’s not really kosher, but I already proved to myself last year that I can hammer out a rough draft in 30 days, and I’ve been drafting this WIP forever, and I’m hoping all of the NaNo vibes will give me the burst of motivation and focus I need to finish it. And if I don’t finish this one before I start something else, I’ll never finish it. I’m sure it has at least 50,000 words to go, and I’ll only count the words I write in November, and I’m not going for a certificate/badge anyway. Just a finished draft.
So, you know, you could do it that way.
John | Oct 21, 2008 | Reply
The way I see it, NaNoWriMo should be the writer’s new year celebration. A time for all of us to refocus and start fresh projects, unhindered by the stalls and troubles with our current ones.
There’s always that sticky point about starting a new project on November 1st rather than continuing to beat an old one to death, but to me it’s like getting a clean slate. Doing all the prep work, even holding off on a story you think would make a good shortish nano subject until then somehow makes it even better, especially for writers looking for that large support group of others jumping in the pool together. We can laugh and cry and encourage each other through the month. We can use sites like twitter to keep track of each other and nudge one another as we go through the process of getting our stories down.
Another useful tool in NaNoWriMo is that as we get into the swing of getting our 50k down, especially when it comes to balancing it with home and work life that month, is that we have the nano website and a community there cheering us on. For those of us trying to bang out our first or second novel for the pure intellectual thrill of proving to ourselves that we can do it, we have something to show the significant other in our life, who is already hooked on his or her own series of online community sites, see here, look at all these other people in the pool! It’s also useful to use that community of folks as encouragement just on your own, to hold a mirror up to them and see we all have the same hopes and desires, and the interest in getting ther together.
Corny as it sounds, the strict deadline, and the nearly arbitrary starting time of November 1 also serves us. It gives us all a neutral starting line to cross together that isn’t January 1st, where so many hopes for new year’s resolutions get torn to shreds on the rocks, and it gives everyone who fell off the writing wagon during the year an easy place and time to come back and know that they are right with everyone else again, and not years behind to the point where it doesn’t matter anymore.
I know that no matter how I did with my writer’s hat on in the previous year, how good or how terrible, I can return to NaNoWriMo in November and know that we’re all there, ready to start again. Besides, think about all the fiction that people are developing and sharing out there that just wouldn’t have been written were it not for the support of the nano community.
I foresee a future where writers line up, and organize their tasks during the year with the intent of being ready for the starting gun on the first of November, no matter what their full projected length on that project really is.
The next trick is for Chris Baty to get his web servers for nanowrimo.org really checked over and ready. There’s always a couple of spectacular crashes there each year. This movement is pretty big, and I don’t think he’s ever quite ready for the server load of everyone coming in in early October to register, and then later to verify their word lengths for the “win” each year. The fact that the whole process is designed to bring everyone using it to the site on several specific days is the only problem that I really see technically.
Writer’s have no real holidays or celebrations (Unless you count being a voice among many at Dragon*Con), and though this does come up in November, when we have Thanksgiving in the US, what better way to celebrate writing right before the holidays get started than to get together to write our first projects of the writing year alongside our piers and idols?
Thank you, I will now step from the soapbox for a moment
Mark | Oct 21, 2008 | Reply
I’m conflicted about NaNo, too. I’m hip deep in a new novel idea, and I know myself well enough to know that if I stop in the wrong place, it’ll screw everything up and break my stride. Last time I let that happen, I didn’t finish the book until two years later, and I still haven’t edited it.
On the other hand, this is the first year I really could do NaNo, and I’m not sure about the future. I’m pretty torn.