All Entries Tagged With: "Nanowrimo"

ISBW #137 – Stop Thinking/Gail Carriger Interview

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00:00:07 J.C. Hutchins, author of 7th Son: Descent, presents ISBW
00:00:21 ISBW #137
00:00:50 GoTo Meeting Message
00:01:39 Congrats to all listeners who finished NaNoWriMo!!! State of the Mur: one project completed and sent to agent, working on short stories, blogging for Storytellers Unplugged (go read the December 6th post on FEAR), had book signing earlier in December.
00:04:19 Promo: Erin O’Briant’s podcast novel Glitter Girl
00:05:12 Today’s topic: Stop Thinking (confidence and self-motivation: see also Carrie Kei Heim Binas’ blog post, What would you do if you knew you could not fail?)
00:13:15 Promo: Friday Fables
00:14:16 Interview: Gail Carriger

pseudonyms

recommended reading: A Thousand Miles Up The Nile

00:38:43 Promo: J.C. Hutchins & the print debut of 7th Son: Descent – serialized novel at BoingBoing, audiobook, and other content also available online.
00:40:22 Feedback: developing characters based on real life; starting one’s first foray into fiction writing with a novel; Mur’s recording software; translating RPG concepts into fiction; looking for opinions on Dramatica Pro; NaNoWriMo experiences & keeping one’s writing a secret; listener Paul blogs about NaNoWriMo; advances (don’t quit your day job); iPhones and podcasting; feeling like a writer/like a success; feedback to WorldCon; planning characters for a novel; future answers for copyright questions!; Name That Color (risk of thesaurus-style word overload); “technical” writing in fiction and finding the right balance for level of detail; are writers’ groups worth joining?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

December 17, 2009 | Mur | Comments 2

ISBW Video #10 – Vanity Presses and NaNoWriMo

November 15- 0 hour for Nate Lowell

I was going to post something about the awesomeness that is Nathan Lowell, but then I figured I’d let him speak for himself. Congrats, Nate, you’re a true inspiration.

After the Challenge
by Nathan Lowell

Today’s Sunday, the 15th of November. People of NaNoWriMo are frantically hammering out words to beat the deadline of 50k by the end of the month. I got my 50k last night, and I owe it to the MightyMur challenge. Thank you, Mur.

When she asked me to write this guest post, my reaction was a certain level of “who? me?!”

In reality, I don’t really think of myself as having a lot to contribute to the art of writing. I’m just a guy who tells stories. I like to tell stories and I seem to have found some people who like my stories, so it works out. She suggested her readers might like to know how I beat her challenge, how I feel right now, and what’s next. So, here’s a little story with less fiction than normal.

How did I do it?

I wrote. For me, it wasn’t even a lot in terms of raw word count. Getting a new book going takes time and working in a new universe takes even more. In preparation for what I knew would be a slow start, I did some prep work in October to get ready for the writing when I could start.

First, I drew maps. I drew a lot of maps and threw most of them out. I didn’t draw them by hand, but used the GIMP and plasma clouds to form land masses and water, rivers, lakes and mountains. They were random but they suggested things to me. What would it look like to walk in that valley? How long would it take to sail up that river or across that ocean?

Second, I built a globe of the world and worked out the annual calendar. I wanted a world that was different from ours but not so different that I needed to make up a bunch of stuff. In my new world, the orbit is more elongated and the period between equinoxes is asymmetric. It’s just the world. It’s background and maybe it won’t be significant in the long run. The axial tilt is also bigger so there’s a midnight sun effect in a larger area of the world. That gives me background into the world and how it works, even before I think about people.

Third, since this was going to be a Fantasy novel, I spent some time thinking about the tropes of fantasy. What makes a classic fantasy novel? What’s the ‘elevator pitch?’ It goes something like “young person, disillusioned with life on the farm, runs away to seek a better life and stumbles on adventure that nearly kills him/her but in the end they save the world from evil and discover they can’t go home again.” Oh, and there’s magic. Nothing says fantasy like a magic. The magic is instantiated in various ways, but there has to be magic. Swords are good.

It was important to me to identify the tropes of fantasy so that I could be very deliberate in bending them. In my science fiction work, I’ve taken the tropes of space ship, hero, and universe and bent them so that the interstellar conquest is not about an air force but an airline. Kind of a “what if FedEx got the first jump drive?” idea. So, my goal was to do the same kind of thing with Fantasy. I spent days just thinking about what things I could turn upside down and still have a fantasy novel and still tell a compelling story.

So. The heroine isn’t young. Her normal life is traveling and her adventure starts when she settles down. She doesn’t save the world from evil, but she does help one little part. Along the way she learns something about herself, and I’d like to think that she teaches something about what it means to get old. At least, that’s what I think. I’m only about halfway through this tale at 50,000 words. It needs at least another 30 to be what I’d consider a novel and if it goes to 100k by the end of the month, I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed.

The writing was far from flawless. At 44,500 words I realized that the previous two days worth of work had put me in a place where I didn’t want to be. It was a ripsnorting adventure yarn smack in the middle of my story. The problem was that in NaNoWriMo – even more than usual – you don’t edit until you’re done. But unless I edited, I couldn’t finish. So I pulled 13,000 words out, managed to reuse and repurpose about 5,000 of them, but had to replace 8,000 words in the final days of the challenge. Luckily for me, it worked out or I’d be writing a very different guest post. The first readers are much happier with the revised story and so am I.

How do I feel?

Anxious. There’s a certain sense of relief – of being freed from the NaNo 50k so now I can focus on the story. Even more is the anxiety that comes with the production of any of my stories. Will it pass the so-what test?

Where do I go from here?

Back to the keyboard. I’ve got a story to finish, and then edit, and then podcast. December’s just around the corner and I’ve got a lot of non-writing things that are going to get in the way. Every word I manage to get down gets me that much closer to finding out how the story ends and I’m really looking forward to finding that out.

Why did I do it?

This wasn’t one of the questions that Mur asked, but it’s the one I’ve been asking myself for the last few weeks.

This challenge has been a real struggle for me. Kinda like calling your shot on the pool table. “This is what I’m gonna try to do and I’m telling everybody about it.” In the secret and solitary world of writing few people actually say “Ok, my next book is gonna do this, that, and another thing and I’m gonna finish it by Auguary.” I wasn’t worried about the word counts because I’ve written more in less time before. What I was worried about is writing a story that’s worthy of being podcast in December and being added to my list of titles.

That last part is yet to be realized. I’m very happy with the way the story is unfolding, and even as I’m writing this, I’m getting anxious to get back to the world and find out what happens next. I’ve got 15 days to find the end of this tale and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can. I’ve done it before, and I think I can do it again (and I hope I haven’t just jinxed myself by saying that).

So given all that, why?

Because NaNoWriMo is a good cause and the challenge gave me an excuse to promote NaNoWriMo just a little bit more.

It’s something bigger than just writing the next book. It’s taking part in a global event of absolutely epic proportions. It’s the chance for somebody who never thought they could write a whole novel to actually have the excuse to sit down and do it. It’s something that anybody can do, regardless of age, or skill, or background and in doing it, join a community of writers, of creators, and thinkers. If you make your 50k, and nobody ever knows but you? So what? You climbed the mountain. You looked down from the summit. You stood in the foot prints of your betters but the next one who stands there will stand in your footprints, too.

And maybe you’ll learn something about yourself, about the craft, about the world, and maybe we’ll all be better people because of it. Maybe you’ll learn the most important thing of all — that you should be writing.

November 15, 2009 | Mur | Comments 3

Update on me, NaNoWriMo, and the Podcast

I will offer no excuses or give personal boring information. But as I said at the beginning, my priority this month has been the editing of one novel, and NaNoWriMo has been the second priority. So while the edits are going along quite well, and I definitely have been writing, the NaNoWriMo project has stalled at 8100.

I could whine and quit. I considered it. Nate Lowell is at 41440, and David Niall Wilson is at 28124. It’s great for them and discouraging to me. But then this morning I did the math: I’m over eight thousand words behind and forty two thousand words to go. That sounds horrible. On the other hand, if I spread it out for the remaining 20 days this month (including today), That’s only around 2100 words a day to go. that’s not *much* more than 1700. And if I have some really good days, I can combat that.

So I’m not giving up.

In other news, I am recording a new ISBW today, and will have it for you soon.

November 11, 2009 | Mur | Comments 2

Small NaNo break, Podcasts you need

I am taking a small break from NaNoWriMo this weekend. Working on two novels is taking too much out of me, and I need to finish one before I really dive into the other one. Come Monday I’ll be approx. 5k words behind. I gotta be ready to take up that slack. I’d feel bad because I’m not writing, but I am writing, just not on my NaNo novel. We’ll see if I can catch up. Wish me luck.

In other news, if you’re looking for short daily podcasts to keep you going for NaNoWriMo, then please check out the rerun of the NaNoMonkeys podcast over at The Secret Lair (we did this daily for 2006 and 2007), and also the Geek Survival Guide is doing an extremely fun daily NaNoWriMo podcast.

November 07, 2009 | Mur | Comments 0

NaNoWriMo Reality Check

I follow a lot of agents on twitter, and apparently many of them look forward to December with trepidation. That’s when “novels” that are 50K or so, rough, unedited, and sloppy, hit their desks.

I find this unbelievable. Not that the agents dread it, and not that it happens, but that so little common sense takes hold in our frantic writing minds. So I want to go over some basic rules of publishing that may clash with the awesome positive-feeling-fest that is NaNoWriMo. Not trying to rain on parades, but consider this your umbrella for the deluge to follow.

50K words is not a novel. OK, it may be a middle grade novel, or YA, and it technically is a novel by definition, but in most cases a publisher won’t look at your work if it’s not at least 80K words. So if you write 50K, you may not be done with it.
Write. Let it sit a week or two. Read. Rewrite. Send to First Readers. Rewrite again. Then-and only then-submit. This process will take you past December and into January or February, depending mostly on your readers. If you’re proud of this book, your baby, then make sure to wash its face and brush its hair and make sure breakfast isn’t smeared all over its shirt before you send it to school for picture day.
Learn how to write a good cover letter. This bit of advice was going to be, “don’t say you did NaNoWriMo in your cover letter” but I decided just to remind you about good cover letters overall. Remember- take out all pointless details regarding you, your writing process, and your book. This includes how much your mom liked it, how you are a school teacher/librarian/doctor/real estate agent, the number of children you have, how long you’ve wanted to be a writer, and any details about the actual writing of the book. It’s not necessary information, and there still is a decidedly amateur stigma around NaNoWriMo. It’s a program designed to get people writing, not to get people published. If you get published, great, but think about trying out for the Yankees because you signed up for a community baseball team last summer. Telling an agent/editor that you wrote the book really fast implies that you didn’t research, edit, or even care. And it’s true, to win at NaNoWriMo, you shouldn’t be researching, editing, or caring about the polished product — in November. That’s what editing is for. See #2.
Don’t let their grumbling stop you. Lastly, no one can stop you from submitting. They may grumble, but its their job to find the diamond in the rough. So you write that book, then flesh it out, then edit it, then next spring you submit it with a pro cover letter, and they may never know it was a NaNoWriMo novel unless you tell them — AFTER you’ve signed.

Keep writing. That is your focus, nothing more.

Oh, and: Playing For Keeps 2 wordcount

November 05, 2009 | Mur | Comments 3

ISBW #135 – NaNoWriMo Extravaganzaaaaa – Baty, Lowell, Wilson interviews

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00:00:07 ISBW #135
00:00:39 GoTo Meeting Message
00:01:27 Happy NaNoWriMo! Special episode: three interviews, no feedback. Mur is still editing as well as NaNo-ing, and trying to pace herself to avoid early November burnout. You are invited to be Mur’s NaNoWriMo buddy, but it make take her some time to return the favor. [You are also invited to be my writing buddy! I’m not as popular as Mur, so I’ll probably be able to “friend” you back a little faster. –Carrie.]
00:03:58 Promo: P.G. Holyfield and Tabitha Grace Smith of Angel Between the Lines write short stories for each other’s podcasts. On Nov. 16, 2009, download P.G.’s Exit Strategy at Stories from Wolfram & Hart, and on Nov. 18, 2009, at 9:30 EST, visit Stickam.com to view the live video recording of Tabz’s story for Tales of Children, Love’s Sacrificial Song.
00:06:06 Interview with author Nathan Lowell of the Solar Clipper series – 6 books written in 2 ½ years.
00:24:01 Promo: J.C. Hutchins & the print debut of 7th Son Descent – serialized novel, audiobook, and other content also available online.
00:25:40 Interview: David Niall Wilson author of Vintage Soul – novel originated as a 2005 NaNoWriMo project. Register to read this year’s NaNoWriMo read-along book, The Heart of a Dragon , and be David’s NaNoWriMo buddy
00:38:38 Promo: Jon Armstrong and Underland Press present Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch listen to an interview with the author at If You’re Just Joining Us
00:39:48 Interview: Chris Baty, creator of NaNoWriMo (don’t forget to check out the NaNo Video podcasts).

Show notes provided by Carrie Kei Heim Binas.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

November 03, 2009 | Mur | Comments 2

ISBW #133 – You’re allowed to suck / Anders and Defendini Interview – LIVE

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00:00:07 ISBW #133
00:00:38 GoTo Meeting Message http://www.gotomeeting.com/podcast
00:01:12 State of the Mur update: final season of Heaven (War) is finished! Upcoming projects:
- “Project Underground”
- NaNoWriMo – other WriMos are welcome to visit the MightyMur profile page (Mur is happy and flattered that so many people want to be her NaNo “writing buddies”… but it may take time for her to “friend” you back. Please be patient!)
- List of helpful iPhone/iTouch writing-themed apps for future blog post
- Mailing books to winners of the writing prompt contest
00:04:38 Promo: Jennifer Hudock’s Goblin Market
00:05:43 Main topic: Cautionary tales for novice writers, including advice re: NaNoWriMo & podcasting novels. Balancing “you’re allowed to suck” with “is it ready to put out there?”
00:13:45 Promo: The Scotchcast
00:15:03 Interview: Lou Anders of Pyr Books and Pablo Defendini of Tor.com at DragonCon
- Short fiction website mentioned during interview: SF Signal
- How to submit to Tor.com?
- Email short fiction to Patrick Nielsen Hayden at pnh at panix.com
- Email comics to tordotcomics at gmail.com or pablo.defendini at tor.com
00:50:52 Promo: Well Told Tales
00:51:48 Feedback & Announcements: Event! December 10, 2009 (Thursday) from 7pm-8:30pm reading/singing/performances with Jeff VanderMeer and Natania Barron at Chapel Hill Comics. Mur will also be at BlogWorld in two weeks to talk about podiobooks. Feedback: Who is the antagonist in the typical romance novel? Update from listener Tom, re: balancing multiple projects. Writers’ conferences. Writing contests. Who does the podcast intro music? Beatnik Turtle! More thoughts on use of language originating with the specifics of the real universe in the context of a fictional and other-worldly novel.

Show notes provided by Carrie Kei Heim Binas.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

October 07, 2009 | Mur | Comments 6

NaNoWriMo for iPhone/iPod Touch users

As I’m a properly programmed lover of my iPod Touch (we’re not sposed to say iTouch, that makes the giggles come), I of course have been going through looking for good apps on writing. I thought, with NaNoWriMo coming up, I’d give you guys what I found.

WriteRoom: I haven’t played with this a lot because simply I don’t like to write on the tiny screen. Short txts and emails are all I can manage. But supposedly this lets you write and then connect with your computer, either via sync or wifi, so you can always keep up with your WIP. Great if you are the kind of person who wants to get another couple of words squeezed into your work over lunch break or in a long line.
Write Chain: This is the one I really like. From How Not To Write, it’s a simple little app that lets you log your daily wordcount goal, how many days you’re allowed to “slide,” and then lets you know how many links are in your chain- how many consecutive days you’ve written, and total wordcount. It’s simple, but so is the paper clip.
NaNoMoJo (NOTE- links directly it iTunes App Store): I wanted to like this one. I really did. It claims to interface with the NaNoWriMo site once you input your user number, listing your friends, their wordcounts, and the NaNoWriMo blog, as well as linking to Dictionary.com. But I can’t get it to work after I input my number. I’ve tried contacting support and I have heard nothing. I may try to contact the developer via Twitter. As this is not a free app, I do not recommend it until it manages to iron out the issues.

What apps are you using to keep up with your writing?

(and yes, every time I mention a Mac-only piece of software, people complain. If you want an Windows option to Scrivener, search the blog, I’ve listed them several times, but people still ask me every time I mention Scrivener. If you want to know what apps are available for other phones/handhelds, send me one of those devices so I can test them out. I review what I can, guys. Write your own blog for your own phone/platform.)

October 05, 2009 | Mur | Comments 7

ISBW #132 – Feedback Special

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00:00:07 ISBW #132
00:00:38 GoTo Meeting Message
00:01:12 Mur tackles ISBW administrative activities
00:02:49 Mur names her new assistant, Carrie Kei Heim Binas — check out Carrie’s writing blog at Heim Binas Fiction
00:03:37 State of the Mur update: finishing recording War, edits from agent on Heaven, more work on “Project Underground”, and then NaNoWriMo in November (if all goes according to plan) to write Playing for Keeps 2: No Takebacks
00:04:44 Upcoming NaNoWriMo focused interviews! Possibly Chris Baty [update since recording- INTERVIEW CONFIRMED!], definitely David Niall Wilson, and Nathan Lowell
00:06:05 Promo: The Kingdom Crisis Anthology
00:07:05 FEEDBACK: July emails: Is printing a single copy of a book “publishing”? What is a good synopsis? (Suggested reading: Mastering the Dreaded Synopsis, Writing the Novel Synopsis, Writing a Synopsis (with lots of links from a romance writer.) How do I protect my short stories? Is it legal to mention famous people in books? How do I best present my children’s picture book for publication? (Suggested reading: Editorial Anonymous, the blog of a children’s book editor.) Line-by-line editing vs. “big picture” editing. Polite ways to withdraw a short story from consideration. New beta software for managing timelines: Aeon Timeline. How do you manage your various writing obligations (freelance vs. fiction)? Is it proper to use italics and exclamation marks in manuscript submissions?
00:19:24 FEEDBACK, continued: August emails: How does an author refer to objects or situations with culture-specific names if writing a fantasy or SciFi story based in a world that has no knowledge of these cultures? Using children and plants to show the passage of time. What is a story bible? Letting authors know the value of their blurbs for other books. How should I handle my disobedient characters? How can I balance my screenplay writing with my novel writing? ISBW’s News from Poughkeepsie inspires listener Jason Ramboz to create the Fifty First Lines project – free ideas to take and use (under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license). Recommended podcast: Writing Challenges. How do I tell a story without explaining everything? How do you outline short stories? When should you apply for a copyright? Applying for contests instead of submitting to a magazine. How do I get a job writing for RPGs/writing for money?
00:35:03 FEEDBACK, continued: September emails: How do I get access to the ISBW archive episodes that aren’t currently on iTunes (Download them HERE.) How do I handle too many ideas for too many different kinds of writing? Concerns about needing to write more on a daily basis/how can I look at my output and be proud of it? Advice on alternate media/releasing books in podcast form, etc. Cory Doctorow calls for YA writers to donate digital books to a class for blind students. Should I rearrange and edit the first parts of my draft novel now, or finish writing first? Writing franchise fiction (or not). Starship Sofa is launching its first anthology complete with free ebook.
00:47:28 Promo: Into the Blender
00:48:44 Contest winners announced (thank you to the 19 people who submitted writing prompts!)

Show notes provided by Carrie Kei Heim Binas.

Additionally, Carrie weighs in with some good synopsis advice:

My personal listener feedback on how to write a good synopsis — I’ve read that a synopsis is the place where you can “tell, don’t show.” After all, there’s not enough space to show, but if (for example) a major plot point happens because a character gets really angry at another character, you can just say “this makes the hero very angry, and an epic battle ensues” without going into much detail. However, I think that the best synopses are ones where the tone of the synopsis matches the tone of the manuscript. An epic tale should have some hints of grandeur in the synopsis, but a lighthearted tale can have a hint of humor in it, etc. My own main character is a bit irreverent, and the story is told with a rather “confidential” tone, so in my 6-page synopsis, I found room to drop 2 or 3 quotes of the MC’s language straight from the text of my novel, so that the reader could “hear” her voice more effectively.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

September 25, 2009 | Mur | Comments 2