If you looked at the title to this piece and expected a metaphor about the publishing industry, think again. Last night’s monsoons uprooted a tree in my backyard. Luckily, it didn’t fall on the house or otherwise do any real damage, but it was awfully strange to look out my window at a full-grown tree lying on its side in the middle of the yard. To be honest, I’d never really paid attention to the tree until it fell on its side. I probably couldn’t have even told you for sure it was in my yard. Now that has to be a metaphor for something, though I’m not sure what.

Without further ado, here’s today’s reading list.

• Social Media Strategy in One Slide from Awaken Your Superhero by Christopher S Penn
• Your Writing Spaces: A Booth Called Home from Fuel Your Writing by Jennifer Roark McCants
• Creating a Character – Character Profiles from Writing Fiction by Sarah-Jane Simpson
• Survey: Customer Service Is Getting Worse from Everything PR by Delia Gavrilescu
• 7 Popular Social Media Myths Freelancers Can Ignore from FreelanceFolder by Laura Spencer
• 7 Other Types of Pronouns from Fiction Writing | Daily Writing Tips by Mark Nichol
• Conor Kostick on teaching writing and finishing your novel from Write for Your Life by Donna Sørensen
• Google+ and Freelance Writing from WritingThoughts by Laura Spencer
• Got Goals? 4 Tips from Real People That Achieved Real Goals from Stepcase Lifehack by Joseph Satto
• How to Write a Great To-Do List (And Why You Need To) from Dumb Little Man – Tips for Life by Ali
• How to Blog With Google Plus from chrisbrogan.com by ceb

There is nothing more inspiring than the plush artificial grass of a model home.

I recently began work on a novel. It has been a while since I have written fiction, so I am happy to be flexing those muscles again. I thought it would be a good idea to share my process as I work on the novel, so that people can get an idea of what goes into it. For today, I thought I would start with my idea for the novel.

What’s the Big Idea?

The Big Idea is the initial spark for the novel. For me the spark was based on a situation and a character. I live in a relatively new subdivision almost twenty miles outside of Tucson, Arizona. When my wife and I bought our house, we initially toured the model homes. There were thirteen model homes in all, occupying a gently curved street. As we visited the homes I was struck by the thought of a single small neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. With the collapsing real estate market, it seemed plausible that a company could spend the money to build a neighborhood of model homes, but then go bankrupt before it could begin building the rest of the community. Eventually the bank would have to sell off the houses in order to recoup some of the investment.
I also began thinking about the sort of people who would end up in such a neighborhood. While the prices would be rock bottom, the location would have some appeal but a lot of downside. People in the neighborhood would be isolated to a certain extent. One of the characters I found interesting would be a man in his late thirties or early forties who wanted to abandon most of his old life and make a change. He would be moving forward after a divorce, a job loss, and the death of someone close to him. He would essentially have become a bit of a hermit, but life in this neighborhood helps to open things up for him.
From there I began to fill out the neighborhood. Thoughts included a large family, a group home for the seriously mentally ill, a hospice, a police officer, a professional couple and someone who would essentially be a love interest for the main character. I considered the man’s family and decided to include several older sisters with whom he has a strained relationship. This somewhat reflects my own family situation, although I also have a brother. Finally, I thought about his ex-wife and his friends. I decided that the house would help bring some of these people back into his life.

Developing Your Own Ideas

You can approach a new story idea from many directions. Mine was based on situation and character. This is a good place to start, but it leaves me somewhat short on plot. My idea has characters and a situation, but no clear destination. It isn’t my goal to write a thriller or a mystery that is plot centered, but there needs to be conflict and action for the novel to have any point. I also need to flesh out the main characters. I’ll discuss this in my future posts. Meanwhile, here are some things that have generated ideas for me in the past.

• Newspaper Articles. I especially enjoy tabloid articles and you can’t beat the Weekly World News for that. You have to love any newspaper web site with a mutants section.
• People. Some people are just more interesting than others. I like to combine the traits of two or more different people so that my inspiration doesn’t become imitation.
• Places. I have often had ideas based on specific locations and travel in general.
• Activities. It can be good to build a plot along a specific activity such as a tournament, a trial or a project. The nice thing about this is that the beats of your plot become clear when you have events that must happen in order to move forward.
• Events. Much like activities, events some with their own ways to move a plot forward. That’s one reason why you see so many movies that revolve around holidays. They always come with places to go to and things to do.

I know quite a few people who can write well, but aren’t writers. They have the skill to write, but they lack the persistence to make it a career. Writing is a skill that most people have to some extent or another. There are plenty of people who don’t care about writing at all that can still do it well. They had good teachers in school and the learned what they were taught. That doesn’t mean they want to do anything with writing specifically.

It takes more than desire

The more problematic set of people are the ones who want to be writers, but don’t write. They like to read books and think about writing one. They like to watch movies and think about being a screenwriter. They have the desire, but they do nothing with it. Even if they do write that novel or screenplay, they don’t really see it through to completion. They don’t edit it until it is perfect. They don’t write a second one to build up their skill. They have enough willpower in them for one work, but not enough to make writing a career.

Easy isn’t always good

Willpower and persistence matter more than talent in most fields, and especially in writing. In fact, having a natural skill can sometimes be a hindrance. When a skill comes to a person naturally, that person often has less desire to improve. When I was in elementary school I was a math wiz. I could add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head easily and always got the best grades. When it came time to take algebra though, math suddenly became hard for me. At that point, I needed to try much harder, but I was used to not having to make an effort. I got average grades and moved on to other things. I wasn’t looking for a challenge. I just wanted to be good at it.

Sooner or later it gets tough for everyone

The same is true of people who are great at the basics of writing. A person with perfect grammar and an excellent vocabulary can write well, at first. It gets hard for them though, when they actually have to put 70,000 words together into a novel that makes sense and engages the reader. It gets hard when they have to write a heartfelt poem. It gets hard when they have to write a direct-mail advertisement that brings in customers. It gets hard when they have to write a one-hundred page guide to using a piece of software. People who have had to work at their writing though, and know they need to improve, are more likely to be up to one of those challenges. They know going in that it is going to be hard.

Writing is only the first hard step

To embrace writing as a career you need to be persistent. The pay isn’t always great and the work isn’t always interesting. Writing 70,000 words is hard. Editing 70,000 words is excruciating. Having somebody tear apart those 70,000 words and tell you it is not good enough is devastating. The career in writing belongs to the person who gets up the next day and gets back to work, either improving what they have or creating something new.

Building a writing career

If you want a career as a writer, you need to push yourself. You need to write when there are a dozen distractions, both pleasant and unpleasant. You need to see projects through to completion. You need to bounce back from criticism and even learn from it. You need to care about writing enough to stick with it through a hundred bad times, or you need to let it go. There is no shame in writing strictly as a hobby. There is no reason you can’t write for fun. There are easier and even more rewarding careers out there. If you want writing to be your career though, be prepared to push through the difficult parts and see where your path takes you.

Can anyone write novels?

There are no educational or social requirements to becoming a novelist. Education helps you develop writing skills and get involved in the community of writing, but it is not a requirement for success. The main requirement is that you write a novel. The better written and more marketable your novel is, the better your chances. In the end, the elements that lead to the successful marketing of a novel have little to do with educational or social background.

What types of novels sell well?

Genre novels tend to be the easiest to market. There is a built-in audience for genres such as romance, horror, children, mystery, science fiction, fantasy and thriller. A new genre, chick-lit, in which the protagonist is a modern single woman experiencing relationship and career issues, is currently popular. Novels that fall outside of these genres aren’t necessarily doomed, but they are harder to market, and most major publishing houses are looking to publish novels that they are confident they can sell in great numbers.

How do I find a publisher?

There are many small and mid-sized publishers who are open to new writers. The problem with smaller publishers is that they don’t have the money and clout of a major publisher. Typically they will publish a print run of about 5000 books and try to sell those before they print more copies. Your chances of getting published with a smaller publisher is better (though you are still competing against many other novelists) but few of them can bring you the royalties required to make a living. Major publishers are the ones that can bring you big sales. It is harder to get a major publisher to notice you, but it isn’t impossible.

Typically a writer is represented by a literary agent. An agent is someone who has read your book and believes that the book is marketable enough for them to sell it to a publisher. They take advantage of whatever connections they have in the publishing industry to get your book read by acquiring editors, who decide what books their publishing company should publish. The acquiring editor then makes a proposal to their board of editors (or whoever else has final authority) and if all goes well you get your book published.

How many novels do I have to sell to make money?

Here is where you run into trouble. While there are many, many variables involved in how much a writer makes when his or her novel is published, a good rule of thumb for estimating your profits is a dollar a book. That means that you would have to sell 50,000 books a year in order to earn a solid living. While there are some people who publish multiple books a year, the typical novelist manages to produce a single book a year, so you would have to sell 50,000 copies of each book you publish, assuming that you find a publisher for your books.

While the Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings of this world have no trouble selling millions of books, the typical novel sells about 5000 to 10,000 copies. Less than ten percent of published novelists manage to sell 50,000 copies or more of their book, and selling 50,000 copies of a book in no way guarantees that you will find a publisher for your next book. Major publishers are looking for big wins. They want to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and they are going to stick with the writers they think will deliver them those numbers. Keep in mind as well, that the delay between having a book accepted for publication and getting that book published is generally about two years and often longer. That is a long time to wait to see profits from a book.

Are there other ways for novelists to make money?

Many novelists hold full-time jobs in publishing or education. These jobs provide their main income. Novelists can make some money by giving readings or getting paid to attend writer’s conferences. A novel can also get sold to a movie studio. Whether the novel gets made into a movie or not, the novelist gets paid a certain amount. If the novel becomes a successful movie, the novelist is usually in a much better position to get their next novel published.

Can I self publish?

Self-publishing is an option for people who want to get their novel read, but the option seldom leads to substantial profits. The upside of self-publishing is that you can make much more per book than if someone else publishes your work. The downside is that all of the risks and all of the expenses are on your shoulders. That means that you have to find a way to sell enough copies of your book to make back your initial investment and then to make a profit. This is possible, but it is a lot of hard work. Keep in mind that the time you spend trying to publish and sell your novel must be subtracted from the amount of time you have available to write your next novel.

I’m sad now, can you cheer me up?

While the prospects of making a living as a novelist aren’t good, there are some people out there who manage to do it. A few people even manage to get quite wealthy. I recommend that you write novels if it is something you enjoy doing and if you want to produce something you can be proud of. Those are excellent reasons to write novels. By all means, once you produce a novel you are proud of, send it out into the world and try to find a publisher. Maybe you’ll strike it rich and maybe you won’t. At minimum you’ll have written a novel, and that is something to feel good about.

Written By Bob Sassone

So, here it is, another new year. And this year, you promise yourself that THIS YEAR it’s going to be DIFFERENT. You’re actually going to make some money from your writing!

Now, there are many among us that will be the next Stephen King or Dave Barry or John Grisham or Sue Grafton. But until that day arrives, wouldn’t it be good to get a little realistic about what you can make as a writer of only columns, reviews, and essays?

Business Writing

Generally speaking, the more “business” oriented the writing (corporate newsletters, brochures, proofreading, etc), the more money you can make.

Newsletters

Small companies, large companies, fan clubs, and community organizations often have internal or subscriber-based newsletters. Do you have the software or writing chops to actually put one together for them? Software programs and paper is cheap now, so you can produce a professional product right in your home. Or perhaps you could create and market a newsletter of your own, get some subscribers, and make some money that way. This is what I did in the early 90s. I created a music newsletter and a television newsletter in my home (with help from friends, of course), wrote up press releases, called record companies and production companies to get the word out, contacted the media, called a local printer, handled the mailing and distribution. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. Running your own publication is a lot of work, but it’s also very satisfying. Pick a topic you know well. And it’s not really a matter of creating a glossy, slick, perfect-bound publication. Mine were just stapled together pages. It’s the useful and informative content that counts (but that’s not to say you can’t make a first-class product – do what you think will sell).

Web sites

Of course, many have gone from dead-tree newsletters to web sites. Web sites are easier to put together than you think. Web-site creating software is plentiful (some of the better ones are Adobe PageMill and Microsoft FrontPage). Knowing a little HTML helps too (tons of books available at Barnes and Noble or Borders – including the “Dummies” and “Idiots” series and a great book by Elizabeth Castro titled “HTML 4 For The World Wide Web”).

Brochures and Manuals

All companies, even small ones, have brochures, flyers, and other marketing materials that have to be created and edited. When I did sales for a major media company a few years ago, I also volunteered to put some marketing materials together because they didn’t have anyone in-house who did it. This is often the case. You might not be able to do it for Microsoft or Hewlett-Packard, but you can find local companies (ah, there’s that word again, “local” – don’t overlook all the opportunities in your area for extra income) who need help. I was once offered $1000 do rewrite the employee manual for a restaurant that once employed me. Who do you know that might need help? Maybe a friend knows a friend who owns a business?

Greeting Cards

Yes, SOMEBODY has to write those poems and funny remarks you see when you open up those cards. And the companies are more open to freelancers than you might think.

Resumes

This can be a great way to make extra money on the side. With resume and desktop publishing software so plentiful, making great resumes and cover letters for others is actually pretty easy. If you’re not sure of how chronological and functional resumes are put together, there are literally hundreds of books on resumes and dozens of web sites that will show you the way. Job-seekers don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars (like my roommate just did) for some big-time company to do their resume. You can do it too.

Editing, Copyediting, and Proofreading

Not everyone can write and edit. Since writing is all around us, text, text everywhere, we take it for granted. We think everyone knows how to write, knows how to edit, is sure that the stuff they’ve written is grammatically correct and makes sense and the words are spelled correctly. That’s not always the case. Small businesses often need help with editing and proofreading (including ads, if you think you can think of some great ad ideas for them). Also don’t overlook magazines and newsletters. Many editors look for freelance or temporary help when it comes to editing or proofreading. Sites to check out: Mediabistro (http://www.mediabistro.com), Guru (http://www.guru.com) and Newsjobs.net (http://www.newsjobs.net/usa/). And let’s not forget The Writers Resource Center (http://www.poewar.com/jobs, and http://www.poewar.com/freelance)! These are all great sites, not just for editing and proofreading, but for staff and freelance positions as well. Also, it doesn’t hurt to pick up the phone and call a newspaper in your area to see if they need help.

How about a non-writing job in publishing? I know, I know. You dread working on the “business” end of publishing. But let’s face it, that’s really where the steady money is. If you want to work in publishing, perhaps you could do what I did to get my foot in the door: I did sales and promotion full time for a music magazine. Sure, it was a lot of phone work and office-type paperwork, but it was a pretty good salary (plus commissions). Besides, you’ll make contacts you wouldn’t have made if you were waiting tables or babysitting. The publishing world runs on more than just words. Get a job in sales, marketing, circulation, distribution. It’s your foot in the door. And when another position opens up…

Magazines, Newspapers and Web Sites

Op-Ed Pieces

Newspapers are always looking for people to write op-ed (opinion-editorial) pieces on various topics. Start with your local paper. Back in the 80s, that’s how I got my first clips. Many don’t pay (though some do), but I’m a firm believer in writing for free, especially when you are first starting out, or even later when you want to get something published. It’s a great way to get clips, get your name out there, and put some impressive credits in your portfolio. Who cares if you didn’t get paid for that op-ed you did for The New York Times? I mean, it’s The New York Times! And that could lead to something else. Check the editorial pages or the masthead of the newspaper for a contact name. Many want to see the whole piece, though a few might want you to query first.

Become an online community leader

There are many online communities, sites where people who share the same interests get together to share information, chat, exchange information and links, learn new things about a particular topic (health, computers, music, movies, sex, politics, the latest episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” etc). Many online communities don’t pay, but three of the top sites pay regularly and are worth checking out: About (http://www.about.com), recently bought my media giant Primedia, is one of the most visited sites on the web. Community leaders share a percentage of the ad revenue generated by the site, which right now is between $100-500 a month, sometimes more. But hurry! Topics that need to be covered are going VERY quickly. Suite101 (http://www.suite101.com) is a similar site, jam-packed with great info, though it doesn’t pay as well ($25 if you update weekly, less if you do it every other week or monthly). But being a less-visited site, they have more topics available right now. Terrashare (http://www.terrashare.com) takes a slightly different track, telling their community leaders they will give them there own web site for free, and the more visitors you get to visit your section/site, the more money you make.

Teach

Schools and local colleges are often looking for writers to teach classes. Even if you don’t see an opening listed, write up a proposal, along with your resume and clips, and send it along to a school. Many times you don’t even have to have a teaching certificate (check your state laws). But even if you do, that doesn’t mean you can’t teach privately in your home. Charge by the hour. Get 4 or 5 students and the money will add up every week.

To make more money from your writing, start to think a little differently. Sure, getting a regular syndicated column in 100 newspapers or writing a best-selling novel are great goals. In the meantime, make sure you can pay the rent. You might have to take other work at the same time to make ends meet, but with a little flexibility, you can still call yourself a writer, learn the ropes, and be a few steps closer to the writing career you want to have.

Bob Sassone is a contributor to TVSquad.com and has written for Salon, McSweeney’s, Tripod, iUniverse, Compuserve, North Shore Magazine, and other publications. A book of columns and essays will be released later this year, as will his first novel. Web site: http://www.bobsassone.com.

Hours, days, months or years

While it is possible to write one, I have never personally read a novel in which the events took place in a matter of minutes, but I have read novels in which the action took place over several hours or a couple of days. Franny and Zoey, the novella by J.D. Salinger, is comprised of two events that happen over the course of a few hours. Bright Lights, Big City takes place over the span of about three days. The World According To Garp is a novel that spans the entire life of the main character, T.S. Garp, moving from the events of his birth all the way through his life and his death, followed by a descriptions of the remaining lives of just about every character in the story.

Pick a Pace

The way you teat time in your story should have a fairly consistent approach. For example, if you write one scene in great detail, with each moment discussed at length, then you should consider that approach for most of your scenes. It would be odd to have a scene written to that level of detail followed by scenes that happen much faster and are far less descriptive. There might be reasons why you would make that choice, but for the most part you want the pace of your novel to say fairly steady unless there is a specific result that you want to achieve by changing the pace.

Jump With Care

Moving forward and backwards in time is also a tool that should be used with great care. A flashback can add value and perspective to a story, but it can also jar the person out of the narrative or leave them confused about the sequence of events. Sometimes, for the sake of continuity, it is better for a character to discuss the past events than for there to be an actual shift in time. It a choice that should be made carefully.

Watch Your Place

Be careful when it comes to the sequencing of events. If your story is supposed to take place over the course of a week, for example, be sure that the events could logically happen in that time frame. Also, especially if you write your novel out of sequence, make sure that when the finished product comes together, everything happens when it is supposed to.

Most good stories are very heavily influenced by their settings. Consider this simple story setup. A young couple has just gotten married. At the reception, the bridesmaid reveals that she and the best man had drunken fling the night before the wedding. As they head off on their honeymoon together, the bride and the groom must work through this crisis or their marriage will end before it has truly even begun.

This is a story that could happen virtually anywhere, and at almost any time in history. It could be a comedy, melodrama or tragedy. All of the elements are there for any sort of story you can imagine. The overt crisis (though not the underlying conflict) is clear and the stakes are equally clear. Consider though, the effect that setting would have on this story.

Setting #1: 2008. The wedding took place at a posh hotel in Chicago, The bride and groom now face a long plane rise to Hawaii, where they have secured a small villa right on the beach. While they are in Hawaii they are scheduled to attend a luau, an island tour and snorkeling in a private lagoon.

Setting #2: 1988. The couple were married at a Las Vegas chapel by an Elvis impersonator. The reception was held at the Circus Circus hotel buffet, which is the hotel they will be staying at, surrounded by their family and friends, for the next several days. They have tickets to see Rich Little and have booked a helicopter tour of the Las Vegas Strip.

Setting #3: 1954. Rural Virginia. The couple were married in a large church wedding with the reception at the Elk’s Lodge. For their honeymoon they are driving down to a small motel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Their car is a ten-year old Cadillac.

Obviously these are rudimentary setting details, but I think you can get an idea that the three different settings lend themselves to dramatically different effects. A posh villa in Hawaii will influence the characters much differently than a garish casino or a small-town motel. The morals and general atmosphere of the 1950s, the 1980s and the 2000s are very different. The economics of the three settings are also dramatically different. The feeling of being surrounded by family or being isolated during a crisis has influences the characters.

The setting can either have a weak or a strong influence on the plot and the themes of a story, depending on how the writer uses it. Here are a few ideas for choosing your settings:

• Choose settings that matter to the characters
• Choose settings that can influence the action
• Choose settings that you know enough about to describe comfortably
• Choose settings that will be of interest to the readers
• Take the time to describe the settings in enough detail for the readers to have a clear idea of where the characters are

Is this the End?

Every story has to end. The most important thing that has to happen before a story ends is that the central conflict of the story has to be settled. The protagonist wins. The protagonist loses. The protagonist realizes that she has both won and lost. Whatever the case, the crisis is settled. What then?

Say a Little or Say a Lot?

In movies, you frequently see them end the story at the moment, the very moment, when the central conflict has been settled. Sports movies are famous for this. The Karate Kid ends just after Daniel has defeated his nemesis Johnny to win the karate championship. He is literally still standing there with his arms in the air as his instructor Miyagi looks on with pride. There is no denouement whatsoever. It ends at the moment of triumph.

On the other end of the scale you have the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (both the books and the movies). It can be argued that half the final book (and movie) are denouement. We see how the conflict has changed each of the central characters and we follow them as they return to their former lives or find that they cannot return to their former lives. The World According to Garp (the book, I never saw the movie) actually takes the time to follow each of their characters all the way to their various eventual deaths. It tells you how their lives played out in the aftermath of the central crisis.

All of these choices are valid, but there are definitely consequences to each choice. A brief, or nonexistent, denouement runs the risk of the reader not really feeling that the central conflict had a significant effect on the characters. They may end up feeling as if their time has been wasted or feel that the characters haven’t really changed. An especially long denouement, by contrast, runs the risk of leaving the reader bored. Once the tension of the crisis has been released, the reader knows that the conclusion is coming. The longer you take with the denouement, the longer you will have to keep the reader’s attention without having the tension of the conflict to keep them invested.

Be Fair to your Readers

One of the most controversial denouements is the end of the Harry Potter series of books. Because the series lasted seven books, the readers were invested in many, many characters. People wanted to know how all of these characters turned out. What readers got was a twenty page denouement, set years later, that answered very few of the lingering questions. This upset most readers — quite understandably. When you spend several thousand pages discussing the lives of a set of characters, you should expect that the readers will be invested in the outcomes for each of these characters that they have grown to love over the years.

My simple advice is that a denouement should last long enough for the reader to feel satisfied, but no so long that the reader gets bored. Make sure that the central themes of your novel get at least a moment of reflection in the denouement and that your readers are clear about how the novel has changed your characters.

There are many ways to tell a story and you will need to choose which one will work best for your novel. Here is a quick rundown of the basic narrative points-of-view.

Third Person

A third person narrative tells the story from a perspective outside of any one particular character. It discusses the events from a slightly removed position. “Billy went to the store to get beer.” Some of the decisions involved with third person include whether or not the narrator has access to the character’s thoughts or merely their actions, and whether or not the narrator has a point of view about the actions happening in the story. Finally, there is the decision of whether or not to follow more than one character. A narrative can be in the third person, but still only focus on the actions of a single character.

First Person

First person is told from the perspective of a character within the story, usually the lead character but sometimes a peripheral character that happens to know most of the events either through observation, participation or through someone else telling them what happened. “I went to the store to get beer.” It is also possible to have multiple first-person narratives, with the perspective shifting by chapter or by scene from one storyteller to another.

Reliable or Unreliable Narrators

In first person narratives, the character sees everything from their own point of view. This means that they cannot know what happens unless they observe it or are told it, and the way they observe the story may be pretty close to the facts or skewed by their own perceptions. A story narrated by a pathological liar or a child, for example, may not accurately reflect the reality of what is going around them. Third person narrators are usually not unreliable, but it is possible to do this as well.

What Ar Your Needs?

Choosing which type of narrator to have can be difficult. You want the narrator that is going to best reflect the needs and goals of your story. A story with twenty different characters, for example, may need a third person narrator simply because a single character within the story may not be able to observe or even be told all of the things that occur. A first person narrator, however, generally adds a level of immediacy to the story, and the fact that they are seeing what happens from the character’s perspective may increase the reader’s feeling of connection to the story.

Once you choose a voice though, especially if you are trying to work quickly for a deadline like Nanowrimo, you need to stick with your first choice. Changing the narrative voice requires a great deal of editing and can take quite a lot of time.

Nanowrimo is a project that requires speed. There are certainly slow and deliberate ways to write a novel but they won’t help you if you need to produce one in a month. Writing 50,000 words in a thirty-day month is no easy task, and it is made even harder by the difficulties of a novel, which has pitfalls such as writing yourself into a corner or deciding along the way that a plot point or character trait was a mistake. Here are some tips for speeding up the process and getting through the month.

Explore Your Idea

Explore your story idea before the start of the month. If you have a general idea of what you want to write, take the time to examine it. Write out the plot points, create some background for the characters, think about the settings, and decide on what point-of-view you want the narrative to use. The more of this you have settled before the first day, the easier it will be to start producing from day one.

Set a Daily Goal

Set a 2000 word a day goal. In order to finish the project on time, you technically have to average 1667 words a day. Setting a 2000 word a day goal allows you to build up some cushion in case you have days in which you aren’t able to write or aren’t able to produce as many words.

Stick to a Schedule

Schedule time every day to write. You need to look at your own writing speed to make determination of how many hours you are going to need. If you are comfortable that you can write 1000 words an hour, then two hours a day will be sufficient. If you feel as if 500 words an hour is the most you can handle, then you need to schedule four hours a day. If you expect your speed to be lower than that, you need to adjust accordingly.
Remember that you are writing a first draft. A first draft does not have to be perfect.

Don’t Expect Perfection

Accept that what you write on the first try only needs to be good enough for a first draft. Try to avoid going backwards and rewriting what you have already created. Instead, if you know something needs to be changed, go back to that point and make a note in the text, then move on.

Stay in Motion

If you get stuck, find a way to get unstuck quickly. If you know that a scene needs to happen, but you aren’t ready to write it yet, make a note in the story describing the basic events, then jump to the part that you are ready to write and get going. If you need to choose between two different directions for the plot, choose one of them and don’t look back. Your focus should always be on forward momentum.

Write What You Know

Pick characters, locations and themes that you are comfortable writing about. It can be difficult to write quickly about places you don’t know or characters that are radically different from your experience. Look for a story that can leverage the things you know about and are comfortable writing about quickly. If you do think you will need additional information, try to assemble as much of that information as possible before you start the project.

Swim With a Buddy

Find a way to hold yourself accountable. Nanowrimo has groups in most major cities that you can hook up with to compare notes and keep the pressure on you. You can also find a partner who is working on it so that you can regularly keep each other focused and enthusiastic. A little friendly competition doesn’t hurt. I intend to track my progress on my blog, so that people can see where I am at.

Have Fun

Enjoy yourself. Nanowrimo should be a fun challenge. It is a way to make you better as a writer, but it shouldn’t be something to make yourself miserable over. Just relax and no matter what obstacles get in your way, keep writing, even if you don’t think you are going to make it. The only way to have a chance is to keep at it.