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The list below is an updated repost of my Nanowrimo tips. Every year that I fail at Nanowrimo, I learn something. Here are my tips:

NanoWriMo Tips

If you are considering doing National Novel Writing Month in November, here are some tips from a two-time failure. I may not have ever made 50,000 words but I did learn something along the way:

1. Try to do more than the required 1,666 words a day. It’s always good to have a buffer if you miss a few days. If you can get to 2000 words a day, you will have a nice buffer if you miss a day or two.

2. Make as many notes and outlines as possible during October so you don’t have to think too much out where your story is going. You don’t want to be on a roll only to get snagged by a plot point.

3. Pick a point of view that you comfortable with. It’s easier for me to write in the first person, so I usually use this POV during Nanowrimo.

4. Try to write at the same time everyday. This will help you get into the swing faster and will also build good writing habits in the future.

5. Tell your friends and family that you joined the contest.  Good supporters will cheer you on and yell at you if you’re not writing. Find some Nanowrimo buddies and stay in contact with them during the contest.

6. No editing. Don’t go back and edit anything until the month is over. Getting caught up in editing is certain doom. DOOM!

7. Create and account at the NanoWriMo site so you can upload you’re word count at the end of the day. There is something satisfying about seeing that little bar go up every day!

8. If you get really stuck, take a break, look at your outline and try to figure out different paths to take your story on.

9. The first week of Nanowrimo is easy, when you get into the second and third week, you start to feel the drag. Stay positive, and focused. Remind yourself what an accomplishment it is to get as far as you did, and keep writing.

Good luck!

In the last few weeks, I’ve read numerous articles about recording artists forgoing the traditional route for distributing their music, and doing it their own way.

The biggest story was about the band Radiohead, who decided to sell their new album online only without any record company support. A few days later, Nine Inch Nails announced that they were free from their record company, and would distribute their music themselves in the future. Even Madonna, whose contract with Warner is up, is hinted that she would distribute her music in a different way because of the “paradigm shift in the music industry”.

The press and peers of these musicians praise their actions. Fans love it too since, basically, the record industry is universally loathed.

Which brings me to my point:

Self-publishing is cool…if you are a musician.

Self-publishing is not cool…if you are a writer.

A writer who self-published (POD included) is considered by his/her peers to be a hack who could not..er…hack it in industry. This person obviously could not get a traditional publishing house to release their book, so they had to do it on their own. It is assumed that the book will be riddled with errors and such a piece of crap, that it’s not worth stocking on a shelf.

Sure, this is true of some self-published books, but guess what, for every poorly produced self-published book you can show me, I can show point you to a self-published band/musician whose work contains the same inconsistencies (bad recording/packaging/songwriting). I’ll even go a step further and say that a good portion of books that ARE published by the big houses are poorly written and contain errors.

The strangest thing about this whole self-publishing debate in the book world, is that it’s mostly fostered by our fellow writers. Most people who walk into a bookstore wouldn’t know the difference between a book published by a traditional publisher on a book created on Lulu.

If you want proof, log onto the Absolute Write forum and tell everyone how you are going to self-publish your book and see the responses that you get.

Something has to change…and it should start with us.

The other day I opened up the folder on my computer called “Novels-Unfinished and found no less than 25 sub-folders. Each sub-folder contained files related to some unfinished project. I have to admit that it was fun reading some of my older ideas. Some files contained no more than a paragraph of text, while others contained pages and pages.

I never get rid of anything that I write, no matter how bad or seemingly useless, because sometimes those abandoned ideas can be salvaged. I often combine several older ideas together into one story. I usually take the best bits and leave the fat behind.

This year I started two projects and abandoned each one. The first project is a sequal to my finished novel, and the other was an attempt to write something lighter and geared toward younger readers. I stopped work on both projects for various reasons. While I had loads of ideas for a sequel, all of the little parts didn’t seem to hold together. I couldn’t figure out the overriding theme of the story. I will probably go back to it eventually and try to figure it out. I started the second project and kind of just forgot about it, which is always a bad sign.

About three weeks ago, I had another idea. I picked up a cheap notebook and started to fill it up with ideas. The core idea of the story is new, but it contains a lot of old ideas that I’ve been wanting to use for a long time. I have a few chapters outlined, so I will probably get started with the writing soon.

So keep those old scraps, you never know when they will come in handy!