NaNoWriMo Writer Cards `08

[Ginny Moon]

Writer Pep Talks emailed out during NaNoWriMo '08.

[Ginny Moon]

Johnathon Stroud (November 4)

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

You could write a novel about the act of writing a novel. It's a heroic act. (Or so I tell myself as I sit here in my garret study, chewing my nails, scratching my nose and staring blankly at my screen. That's what this is, I say grimly: a heroic act.) Why is it so heroic? Because it fits the mythic pattern of all great legendary heroes' lives. It's the story of a mighty quest accepted, of a long journey undertaken, of insuperable obstacles overcome and finally—in your case after 30 painful days—of lasting triumph won. It would make a fine movie, apart from the scratching the nose bi t—probably starring Charlton Heston. Full of dramatic highs, dreadful lows and endless tedious bits when the audience goes out to make a cup of tea. It's an epic, all right, and we're all in it together.

Here's how it works for me. At the beginning there's a kind of honeymoon period, where I'm pretty excited by the idea in my head, and the possibilities it evokes. Sure there are a zillion details to be worked out later, and plenty of things that don't yet mesh, but that's ok—we've lots of time. I write the odd fragment and chuckle over the occasional piquant joke. I do a bit of research, visit museums wearing black roll-neck sweaters, scribble ideas down on napkins in coffee houses. It's a pleasant calm before the storm.

Then things darken a little. Time is pressing. I want to get to grips with the novel, but I haven't a clue how. This is the 'phony war' period. I now apply myself seriously to work, but the trouble is that it doesn’t hold together. Scenes start promisingly but peter into nothing. Main characters turn out to have all the zest of a cardboard box abandoned in the rain. Dialogue is lousy. Description descends into wall-to-wall cliché. No fragment lasts more than two or three pages before being printed off and tossed aside. And still the real writing hasn't begun.

In fact, without a few imperatives to nail things down, it's quite possible for these first two periods to last forever. Honeymoon and phony war: one of them's breezy, the other's frustrating, but both are equally deadly to the hopes of any novel. The author might easily stay scribbling, doodling, crossing out and reworking forever. The heroic quest deteriorates into a dog chasing its tail.

That's why a deadline—like the one you're working to—is such a good idea.

With my Bartimaeus Trilogy I had a big fat fantasy novel to write each year, three years in a row. One novel a year? That's not so hard. Or so I thought. Then I figured out that what with the time taken up with editing and revising my manuscript, and then with printing and distributing it, I actually had about five or six months to get the first draft done. And it wasn't long before I was mired in the phony war period, with lots of fragments, half-ideas and wasted weeks behind me, and saw my deadline looming.

So I did exactly the same thing you're doing this November, and set myself a strict schedule of pages per week to get the first draft done. In my case this worked out at about 100 pages per month for 3-4 months. Each day I kept strict records of what I achieved; each day I tottered a little nearer my goal. Five pages per working day was my aim, and sometimes I made this easily. Other times I fell woefully short. Some days I was happy with what I got down; some days I could scarcely believe the drivel that clogged up the page. But quality was not the issue right then. Quality could wait. This was n't the moment for genteel self-editing. This was the time when the novel had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into existence, and that meant piling up the pages.

So I did it, one page at a time, even when it was like pulling teeth or squeezing blood from a stone. I did it. And you can do it too.

This is just a first draft, after all. It doesn't have to be a perfect thing. I once met an author who claimed only to write when actively inspired. She was a fine and venerated writer, so I didn't let my jaw loll open too widely in her presence, but I didn't really buy her claim, and I still don't buy it now. If 'inspiration' is when the words just flow out, each one falling correctly on the page, I've been inspired precisely once in ten years. All the rest of the time, as I've been piecing together my seven novels, it's been a more or less painful effort. You write, you complete a draft in the time you've got, you take a rest. Then—later, when you've recovered a little—you reread and revise. And so it goes. And little by little the thing that started off as a heap of fragments, a twist of ideas trapped inside your head, begins to take on its own shape and identity, and becomes a living entity, separate from yourself.

Getting that first draft out is a horribly hard grind, but that (perversely) is where the joy of it lies. There is nothing better for me, nothing more uniquely satisfying in the whole process of making a book, than the sensation at the end of each day—good or bad, productive or unproductive—when I look over and see a little fragile stack of written pages that weren't there that morning. A few hours earlier they didn't exist. And now they do. In a strange way this is more actively thrilling than even holding my finished, printed, book in my hands. It's where the magic lies. Alchemists tried for centuries to turn base metals into gold. Every time we sit down and put words on paper, we succeed where they failed. We're conjuring something out of nothing.

So what does my advice boil down to? Sweat blood, churn out the pages, ignore the doldrums, savour the moments when the words catch fire. Good luck with your novels. Those old legendary heroes may not have sat around like us drinking cold coffee and tapping steadily at their keypads, but for them—and for us—it's the journey that's the thing. That's where the fun is.

Jonathan

[Ginny Moon]

Phillip Pullman (November 6)

Dear NaNoWriMo author,

You've started a long journey. Congratulations on your resolution and ambition! And the first thing you need to remember is that a long journey can't be treated like a sprint. Take your time.

The second thing you need to remember is that if you want to finish this journey you've begun, you have to keep going. One of the hardest things to do with a novel is to stop writing it for a while, do something else, fulfill this engagement or that commitment or whatever, and pick it up exactly where you left it and carry on as if nothing had happened. You will have changed; the story will have drifted off course, like a sh ip when the engines stop and there's no anchor to keep it in place; when you get back on board, you have to warm the engines up, start the great bulk of the ship moving through the water again, work out your position, check the compass bearing, steer carefully to bring it back on track ... all that energy wasted on doing something that wouldn't have been necessary at all if you'd just kept going!

But once you've established a daily rhythm of work, you'll find it energising and sustaining in itself. Even when it's not going well. This is a strange thing, but I've noticed it many times: a bad day's work is a lot better than no day's work at all. At least if you've written 500 words, or 1000 words, or whatever you discover is your most comfortable daily rate of production, the words are there to work on later. And when you do visit them in a month's time, or whenever it i s, you often find that they're not so bad after all.

The question authors get asked more than any other is "Where do you get your ideas from?" And we all find a way of answering which we hope isn't arrogant or discouraging. What I usually say is "I don't know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again." That's just another way of emphasising the importance of regular work.

You know which page of a novel is the most difficult to write? It's page 70. The first page is easy: it's exciting, it's new, a whole world lies in front of you. The last page is easy: you've got there at last, you know what's going to happen, all you have to do is find a resonant closing sentence. But page 70 is where the misery strikes. All the initial excitement has drained away; you've begun to see all the hideous problems you've set yourself; you are horribly aware of the minute size of your own talent compared to the colossal proportions of the task you've undertaken. That's when you'll want to give up. When I hit page 70 with my very first novel, I thought: I'm never going to finish this. I'll never make it. But then stubbornness set in, and I thought: well, if I reach page 100, that'll be something. If I get there, I reckon I can make it to the end, wherever that is. And 100 is only 30 pages away, and if I write 3 pages every day, I can get there in ten days ... why don't I just try to do that? So I did. It was a terrible novel, but I finished it.

The last thing I'd say to anyo ne who wants to write a novel is not actually a piece of advice, but a question. It's this: are you a reader? Every novelist I know—every novelist I've ever heard of—is, or was, a passionate reader. I don't doubt that someone with determination and energy, but who didn't read for pleasure, who only read for information, could actually write a whole novel if they set their mind to
it and followed a few rules and guidelines; but would it be worth reading? Would it give any pleasure beyond a mechanically c alculated sort? I doubt it. Novels that last and please readers are written because the novelist is intoxicated by the delight and the endlessly renewable joy that comes from engaging with imaginary characters—with story; and that engagement always begins with reading; and if it catches you, it never lets go. Write a novel if you want to win a competition, or impress your friends, or possibly make some money—do so by all means. But if you're not a lover of stories, a passionate and devoted reader, don't expect your novel to please many readers.

On the other hand, if you do love reading, if you cannot imagine going on a journey without a book in your pocket or your bag, if you fret and fidget and become uncomfortable if you're kept away from your reading for too long, if your worst nightmare is to be marooned on a desert island without a book—then take heart: there are plenty of us like you. And if you tell a story that really engages you, we are all potential readers.

Good luck!

Philip Pullman

[Ginny Moon]

Kathrine Paterson (November 11)

Dear Friends:

At this point I feel I should just say: "Times a’wasting! Stop reading this note and get back to work." But I promised to try to cheer you on, so I’ll do my part, if you’ll promise to get right back to your novel after you’ve read it.

Yes, yes, the hardest part of writing a novel is keeping at it. Some years ago when I was totally stuck in the first draft of a novel, I was having lunch with my dear friend, the novelist Mary Lee Settle. "Oh, Mary Lee," I moaned, " this is my seventh novel and I haven’t learned a thing."

"Yes, you hav e," she said, fixing her eagle gaze upon my whining face, "you’ve learned that a novel can be finished."

So I went home and finished the first draft. Now you’re determined to write 50,000 words in a month. I just said to myself that I had to write two pages a day before I could do anything else. The margins could be wide and there was no requirement for quality. I just had to finish the two pages. Eventually, the log jam broke and I found myself moving forward without that iron rule.

I aim always to get to the end of the first draft even though all the time I’m telling myself that I’m writing nothing but garbage that no one on earth would ever want to read, especially me. But I tell myself that this poor little attempt, this garbage, deserves a chance. Just as our beautiful dog Annie, who was the runt of her litter, grew into the most beautiful, loving dog anyone would want, so there may be hope, even for this pitiful mess of words I’m accumulating. So I say to myself: Don’t read back too far, don’t try to start rewriting, just get to the end.

I live in Barre, Vermont which calls itself the "Granite Capital of the World." Outside our town are enormous quarries, so when I speak in local schools every child has a mental picture of a granite quarry. "You know how hard it is to get granite out of the quarry," I say. "You have to carefully score the rock and put the explosive in to make the great granite block break loose from the face of the stone. Then you have to attach the block to the chains so that the cranes can lift it slowly out of the hole a nd put it on the waiting truck. That’s the first draft. It’s hard, dangerous work, and when you’ve finished, all you’ve really got is a block of stone. But now you have something now to work on. Now you can take your block down to the shed to carve and polish it and turn it into something of beauty. That’s revision."

But first you’ve got to get that block of granite out of the earth, friends. You won’t have anything to make beautiful until you do that. Now go back to work. That means you too, Katherine.

Best wishes,

Katherine Paterson

[Ginny Moon]

Meg Cabot (November 13)

Dear NaNoWriMo Author,

I know what you’re doing. You’re thinking about cheating, aren’t you?

Ha! Caught you!

Come on. One cheater knows another. You think I’ve never been there?

Maybe for some of you it’s not too late: you haven’t crossed the line…maybe you’re just entertaining the idea of abandoning the story you’re currently working on.

Maybe you’re just thinking of taking a break to jot down a few notes about the story you just thought of--that ultra-fresh, totally cool, sure-to-be-a-bestseller you dreamed up the other morning while you were supposed to be figuring out where you took the wrong turn on your work-in-progress.

But I’m here to let you know: That’s how it starts. The next thing you know, you’re doing character sketches. Then a little dialogue. Then whole scenes.

And then you’re through. You’ve given up on your work-in-progress entirely, and the next thing you know, you’ve started working full-time on this new story you thought up. I know only too well what comes next. The excuses. The rationalization: “So what? So I switched stories. I’ve still got a work-in-progress. It’s just not my original work-in-progress. So I’m a little behind in my word count. I’m still writing, right?”

Sure, it seems innocent enough. But the problem with doing this is that of course the new story always seems better than that old busted up, out-of-control story you’ve been working on for so long. That new story has the aura of dewy freshness to it. It’s calling to you! It’s all, “Yoo-hoo…look at me! I don’t have any plot problems and my characters are way-intriguing and some of them wear leather jackets and oh, yeah, you know that weird transition thing you’ve got going on near chapter four that you can’t figure out? I don’t have that!”

I know. It sounds good.

But how long until some other story idea comes along and twitches its enticing little characters at you, and you decide to abandon this new one for it? How many words will you have then?

Not enough for a whole book, that’s how many. And here’s the thing: If you keep doing this, you never will.

Do you think I haven’t been there? Cheating on your current work-in-progress with a new one is the oldest trick in the book! I have a plastic milk crate crammed full of stories I started and never finished because I cheated on them, t hen got so enamored of my new story, I never went back to the old one. Over and over and over again.

And that, my friends, is how you never finish a book. Take it from someone who has hundreds (maybe even a few thousand) of unfinished stories because of this phenomenon.

So stop right now! Stop using a new story idea (or whatever excuse you’ve come up with) to avoid the work you still have to do on your current work-in-progress!

Put the Shiny New Story away for later, when you’re done with your WIP! If your Shiny New Story is that good, it will still be there waiting for you.

And please…don’t end up like me, with a plastic milk crate full of half-finished stories. Think about what made you fall in love with your work-in-progress in the first place. Shower it with the attention it deserves.

And whatever you do, don’t let it end up in the Milk Crate of Shame. Think of where we’d be if all the great stories we love today ended up there, uncared for and forgotten by their authors, because they got distracted by some Shiny New Idea while they were working.

Take a deep breath. There. Feel better?

Yeah. So do I.

Now let’s get back to work.

And about the cheating…I won’t tell if you won’t.

Meg

[Ginny Moon]

Janet Fitch (November 20)

Dear Author,

It's happening. You're writing a blue streak. You're piling up the pages. You're roaring through this novel like a forest fire. Then suddenly you hit the immovable obstacle. WHAM. Ow. You're flat as a piece of typing paper, your mind as blank. Panic!

Whether you're taking a month or a year, this is always the question. What happens next?

Fiction is all about decisions. Let me give you a personal example. Working on White Oleander, I kept hitting this wall, about chapter 8. It was all going great, all the wheels in motion, and then WHAM. I just couldn't decide what to do next. I'd try this, try that, but each time I'd get stuck. The character would put her toe in and pull it out again. No, not that. Should I just bag it? Write a different book? Go to law school? Watch reruns of Hogan's Heroes? I was absolutely blocked at the crossroads.
Luckily I was seeing an amazing therapist at the time. I explained I was afraid that if I chose route 6, then I would be eliminating all the other possible routes. What if route 15 was better? Or 3 1/2 ? So I hedged. I couldn't commit. I was stuck. And she gave me the piece of advice which has saved my writing life over and over again, and I will give it to you, absolutely free of charge. She said, "I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all."

So you have these options, but which one to go for? When in doubt, make trouble for your character. Don't let her stand on the edge of the pool, dipping her toe. Come up behind her and give her a good hard shove. That's my advice to you now. Make trouble for your character. In life we try to avoid trouble. We chew on our choices endlessly. We go to shri nks, we talk to our friends. In fiction, this is deadly. Protagonists need to screw up, act impulsively, have enemies, get into TROUBLE.

The difficulty is that we create protagonists we love. And we love them like our children. We want to protect them from harm, keep them safe, make sure they won't get hurt, or not so bad. Maybe a skinned knee. Certainly not a car wreck. But the essence of fiction writing is creating a character you love and, frankly, torturing him. You are both sadist and savior. Find the thing he loves most and take it away from him. Find the thing he fears and shove him shoulder deep into it. Find the person who is absolutely worst for him and have him delivered into that character's hands. Having him make a choice which is absolutely wrong.

You'll find the story will take on an energy of its own, like a wound-up spring, and then you'll just have to follow it, like a fox hunt, over hill, over dale.

GOOD WRITING!

Janet

[Ginny Moon]

Gayle Brandeis (November 22)

Dear NaNoWriMo writer,

The metaphor of writing-as-birth is not a new one—perhaps it may even be a bit overused—but I can’t help but think about it this month. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man; you’re pregnant with a novel—congratulations!

Of course, one month is a pretty short gestation period, but hey, that’s all the time rabbits need, and NaNo certainly requires a “no time to say hello, goodbye” White Rabbit breakneck pace.

I remember how amazing it was when I was pregnant with my kids—each day, my body had transformed into something new. This month, you have transformed, too, moving from aspiring writer to novelist, from someone who has wanted to write to someone who actually is doing the hard, juicy work of getting words onto the page. You have learned new things about the creative process, about the depths of your imagination, about the themes and images central to your subconscious life. And even if you are way behind on your word count, even if you’ve only written the first scene of your novel, you have taken a profound leap. You are a writer now. How awesome is that?!

If your experience is anything my like NaNo experiences have been, this has been a time of exhilaration and frustration, inspiration and despair (and, hopefully, big slices of pumpkin pie!) A journey from that first thrill of conception, through moments when the story feels heavy and unwieldy, to times when it kicks inside you and fills you with awe. And now the end, your due-date, is in sight—at least as far as the calendar is concerned. Now you’re not just pregnant—you’re in labor.

In fact, you’re probably at what midwives call the transition stage—the point where the contractions are coming fast and furious, and you’re almost ready to start pushing your book baby, whole, out into the world. So me people get a rush of energy of at this stage, a super human surge that propels them through the birth—a mad flurry of words, a tumbling of scenes that seem to write themselves toward their own climax. Other people, when they get to this stage, suddenly feel as if they’re going to die. As if they can’t go on. As if they don’t know why they ever wanted to have a baby/sign up for NaNoWriMo in the first place. If you can breathe through this transitional period, if you can find a way to quiet those nagging critical voices and keep moving forward, your story will ultimately find its way into the bright oxygenated air (even if it’s long after November 30th.)

See if you can use this final stretch of time to stretch yourself creatively, to try something new and playful with language, to let your characters surprise you, to let yourself surprise yourself. Never let yourself forget what a profound thing you’re doing. As Margaret Atwood says “A word after a word/after a word is power.” You have that creative force inside you. You are poised to give birth to a whole new world.

Congratulations again!
Gayle Brandeis

[Ginny Moon]

Nancy Etchemendy (November 25)

Hi Writers!

It is a dark and dismal day. If the birds are singing, you can't imagine why, and you wish they would stop. You've taken a walk. You've taken a nap. You've sharpened all your pencils, even though you haven't written with a pencil since first grade. You've made yourself a cup of something hot to drink, but now it's cold. It got that way while you checked your email, and then your MySpace page, and then the "Things You Never Knew Existed but You Can't Live Without Them" website. You've cut your toenails. You've even brushed the dog. And still, you can't bring yourself to open the dreaded file that contains your novel and place your fingers on the keyboard.

STOP.

You've come to the right place. The NaNoWriMo people, in their wisdom, have supplied you with a stash of pep talks. Why do you suppose they would go to so much trouble? The answer is simple: because you have a lot of company, including me. Writing a novel is hard. At some point in the process, most novelists get bogged down, and it's perfectly normal. In fact, it's to be expected.

Okay, so now you know you're not alone. That's a relief. But the task of writing your way to a finished book still looms before you like the mountains of the moon, dark with mystery, and really, really high. So high, in fact, that the voice is whispering a new fear. You might actually expire before you get there, so why not just stop now?

Simple. Because you want to be a novelist. The difference between a novelist and someone who tinkers around with writing is this: novelists finish their books.

All well and good, you say. But how? How can you finish when you're pretty sure everything you've written so far is total garbage, you have no idea where you're going, and every time you look at the thing, you desperately want to go and do something else?
;
First, let's look at the question of whether you're writing something that belongs in the trash can. What you're working on right now is a first draft. Moreover, you're deliberately writing it at breakneck speed, which makes it a rough first draft. It's not going to be anywhere near publishable, nor should you expect it to be. I heard or read somewhere an observation by a gifted young novelist whose name escapes me now, for which I apologize. He said that a first draft is like a chunk of marble. It's a big, formless block. Later, you'll carve away the unnecessary bits, and you'll shape what's left into something beautiful. Michelangelo's Pieta was once a shapeless block, most of which ended up as dust on his studio floor. As you write, give yourself permission to create that formless block---the necessary first draft from which a wonderful book can spring.

Second, about not knowing where you're going. This will sound co unterintuitive and maybe even crazy: don't worry about it. Think of your everyday self as a lost rider on the back of a powerful black horse. The rider may be freaking out. That's understandable. It's frightening to be lost. But your everyday self is not who creates the first draft. The first draft is written by the big black horse---your subconscious mind. That horse is smart, and it knows exactly where it's going. So trust it. It will get you home. Just write. Put down whatever feels right, even if it makes no sense to you. Don't think too much about it, don't hold the reins too tight, and soon you'll see your way again.

Third, regarding the desperate wish to go and do something else. Every writer has to deal with this. When the work is not going smoothly, the world fills up with inviting distractions. The great novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick said, "A good citizen writer will put down her pen for a noodle pudding." I'm not sure about the good citizen part, but every writer I know is tempted to put down his or her pen hundreds of times during the course of a writing day. What kind of bird is that, calling from the tree outside? Has Uncle Harvey responded to your email yet? Wouldn't you be contributing more to the world if you were cleaning a toilet or eating a tuna fish sandwich?

No, dear novelist, you wouldn't be. The bird will wait. Uncle Harvey will wait. The toilet and the tuna will wait. You have something important to say, and you are saying it. That is your contribution, without which the world would be a poorer place, and it is one that only you can make.

Now, write!

Nancy

[Ginny Moon]

Piers Anthony (November 29)

Dear Writer,

You're a fool. You know that, don't you? Because only a fool would try a stunt as crazy as this. You want to write a 50,000 word novel in one month?! Do you have sawdust in your skull? When there are so many other more useful things you could be doing, like cleaning up the house and yard, taking a correspondence course in Chinese, or contributing your time and effort to a charitable cause? Whatever is possessing you?

Consider the first card of the Tarot deck, titled The Fool. There's this young man traipsing along with a small dog at his heel, toting a bag of his worldly goods on the end of his wooden staff, carrying a flower in his other hand, gazing raptly at the sky—and about to step off a cliff, because he isn't watching his feet. A fool indeed. Does this feel familiar? It should. You're doing much the same thing. What made you ever think you could bat out a bad book like that, let alone write anything readable?

So are you going to give up this folly and focus on reality before you step off the cliff? No? Are you sure? Even though you know you are about to confirm the suspicion of your dubious relatives, several acquaintances, and fewer friends that you never are going to amount to anything more than a dank hill of beans? That you're too d**ned oink-headed to rise to the level of the very lowest rung of common sense?

Sigh. You're a lost soul. So there's no help for it but to join the lowly company of the other aspect of The Fool. Because the fact is, that Fool is a Dreamer, and it is Dreamers who ultimately make life worthwhile for the unimaginative rest of us. Dreamers consider the wider universe. Dreamers build cathedrals, shape fine sculptures, and yes, generate literature. Dreamers are the artists who provide our rapacious species with some faint evidence of nobility.

So maybe you won't be a successful novelist, or even a good one. At least you are trying. T hat, would you believe, puts you in a rarefied one percent of our kind. Maybe less than that. You aspire to something better than the normal rat race. You may not accomplish much, but it's the attitude that counts. As with mutations: 99% of them are bad and don't survive, but the 1% that are better are responsible for the evolution of species to a more fit state. You know the odds are against you, but who knows? If you don't try, you'll never be sure whether you might, just maybe, possibly, have done it. So you do have to make the effort, or be forever condemned in your own bleary eyes.

Actually, 50,000 words isn't hard. You can write “d**n!” 50,000 times. Oh, you want a readable story! That will be more of a challenge. But you know, it can be done. In my heyday, before my wife's health declined and I took over meals and chores, I routinely wrote 3,000 words a day, taking two days a week off to answer fan mail, and 60,000 words a month was par. Now I try for 1,500 and hope for 2,000. That will do it. If you write that much each day, minimum, and go over some days, you will have your quota in the month. On the 10th of the month of August, 2008, I started writing my Xanth novel Knot Gneiss, about the challenge of a boulder that turns out to be not stone but a huge petrified knot of reverse wood that terrifies anyone who approaches it. Petrified = terrified, get it? And by the 30th I had 35,000 words. That's the same pace. If I can do it in my doddering old age—I'm 74—you can do it in your relative youth.

Of course you need ideas. You can garner them from anywhere. I noticed that our daily newspaper comes in a plastic bag that is knotted. The knot's too tight to undo without a lot of effort, so I just rip it open to get at the goodies inside. It's a nuisance; I wish they'd leave it loose. But I thought, maybe there's this cute delivery girl who has a crush on me, and she ties a love -knot to let me know. Not that at my age I'd know what to do with a real live girl, but it's still a fun fantasy. Okay, there's an idea. I could use it in my fiction. Maybe even in a Pep Talk. The mundane world has provided me with an opening. It will do the same for you, if you're alert.

Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessary flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress. It may not be pretty at first. Prettiness doesn't come until later, at the polishing stage, which is outside your month. You just have to get it done by brute force if necessary. So maybe your ongoing story isn't very original. That's okay, for this. Just get it done. Originality can be more in the eye of the reader than in any objective assessment.

You can make it from a standing start, even from a foolish daydream when you should have been paying attention to the Pep Talk. You will want to try for a bit more quality, of course, and maybe a spot of realism. Garner an Idea, assemble some Characters, find a suitable place to start, and turn them loose in your imagination. Now go home and start your engines!

Piers

[Ginny Moon]

Kelley Armstrong (Post-NaNo, December 2)

Dear Fellow NaNo Writer,

So it’s all over. How’d you do? If you hit 50,000 words, congratulations! If you didn’t, and you gave it your best shot, congratulations! Whether you achieved the word count goal or not, you now have a brand new story. So what do you think of it?

When you reflect back on what you’ve written, you may be thrilled. You may be amazed at what you’ve produced. Or you may not… You may be disappointed. You may even feel like you’ve just wasted a month and an awesome idea. You haven’t. Trust me. I’ve been there.

I first did NaNo in 2005. I’d been hearing about it for years. By then, I was already published myself, but I thought it would be a great exercise for members of the online writing community I host on my message board. To truly support and encourage members, though, I needed to take the challenge alongside them. And I knew exactly what I wanted to write& mdash;the first draft of an idea I’d been toying with for years, that of a young adult story set in my Otherworld universe.

So I wrote that novel, called The Summoning, and this summer, The Summoning was released and made it onto the New York Times children’s best seller list. And that sounds so much more impressive if I don’t point out that the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo is not the same version that was published.

What NaNoWriMo gave me was a quick and dirty first draft, and by the end of it, I could see that my book had some good stuff…and it had some serious problems and missed opportunities. So I put it aside for a rest period and pondered how to fix it while I worked on my next contracted novel. The manuscript underwent significant revising, reworking and, yes, rewriting, before I let my agent take it to market.

If a multi-publishe d author can’t expect to turn out a publishable first draft during NaNoWriMo, then neither should you. Of course, you could—some people do—but what NaNoWriMo has given you is at least two things you didn’t have on November 1.

The first reward will vary. Maybe you have a first draft you can work on. Or maybe you’ve realized that your idea wasn’t as novel-worthy as you thought. Or maybe, in the course of writing this book, you got an idea for another.

The last two may not seem as rewarding as the first, but they’re equally important. If you’ve been writing for a while, you probably have stories you’ve labored on for months, even years, before realizing the idea wasn’t novel-worthy. To hit that realization in a month frees you up to start something new without lamenting all the time you put into a story that didn’t work.

The second reward is one that every NaNoWriMo participant ge ts: one full month of writing practice. It’s a rare writer who publishes the first book they wrote—I didn’t—so practice is invaluable. And whether you dream of getting published or not, you have just spent a month discovering and exploring the joys of storytelling.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I did hit 50,000 words this year. I just barely squeaked by with a win on Saturday, though. I can blame my near-miss on a month of book-touring and unexpectedly early edits, but I’m a full-time writer, so I really have no excuse for not hitting 50,000 words. For all of you who reached the goal words despite school or work or kids, I bow to you.

I’ll let you get back to your post-NaNo rest, right after I wish you good luck with your manuscript—this one or the next one. Because, even if you aren’t planning to edit this one, there will be a next one, right? I hope so. The world always needs more storytel lers.

Kelley