An After NaNo E-Mail

Dear NaNoWriMo participant, Holy cow! What a November. As I mentioned in my 2009 stats round up, it was a big year for NaNoWriMo. We welcomed more than 40,000 new writers and saw the highest win rate since 2000, when NaNoWriMo was just me, my grandmother, and her fourteen cats. Some participants, myself included, come [...]

NaNo Is OvEr

I’m actually kind of revealed it’s over. It was killing me that I had only five-thousand eight-hundred words. And my goal was fifty-thousand. Everyone I know that has done NaNo has learned a few things from doing it. Me, I’ve learned only ONE thing: don’t start a story who’s idea you end up hating three [...]

NaNo E-Mail Twenty

Hey there! Can you stare into space and imagine worlds that don’t exist? Do you get into arguments with the characters in your head? Do you keep a notebook with you all the time because sometimes you get these amazing ideas that you have to write down because if you forget them there is a [...]

NaNo E-Mail Nineteen

Dear Writer, We’re closing in on the final lap of NaNoWriMo. Just one weekend left! From my perusal of the NaNoWriMo forums, it looks like we’ve now split into three groups. Group One: The Superheroes. You put in your 1667 per day, and your word-count graph has grown tall and mighty like a redwood forest. [...]

NaNo E-Mail Eighteen

Dear writer, As I write this less than twenty-four hours before NaNoWriMo’s deadline for this pep talk, I also have a book due in eight days. Not just due. Absolute, final, already overdue, my-editor-is-a-patient-woman-but-publishing-schedules-are-publishing-schedules, due. When NaNoWriMo contacted me last April about writing a pep talk for this year’s masochi—er—enthusiastic writers, I had just decided [...]

NaNo E-Mail Seventeen

Dear NaNoWriMo Writers, Keep going. Really, I could stop right there, because that’s good advice—in many endeavors, not just writing. But if you’re writing an entire novel in a month, I think I should give you more than two words. Truthfully, though, the secret to completing a novel is mostly just a matter of not [...]

NaNo E-Mail Sixteen

Greetings, fellow novelists! So, now that you’ve been writing for a few weeks, here’s my question. Have you started to realize what you’ve gotten yourself into? Is the realization accompanied by a creeping sense of panic? If your answer is no, rock on. But if your answer is yes—if your novel has gotten more complicated [...]

NaNo E-Mail Fifteen

Dear NaNoWriMo Participant, Can I tear you away from your noveling for a second? We’re heading into the home stretch for NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. Participant numbers for the year have been incredible—between both programs, we’re currently hosting over 200,000 high-velocity novelists! Having received donations from 4.5% of this year’s participants (thank you [...]

NaNo E-Mail Fourteen

Hi there! How are you all doing? Flagging at the keyboard with heavy hands and a mind full of whirling words and images, or skipping through the scenes as though there’s a movie playing behind your eyelids and all you have to do is take notes? Believe me, both are part of the writing process, [...]

NaNo E-Mail Thirteen

Hello Fellow Writers, I started writing when I was very young. And lots of people gave me advice about what I should put into my stories. Some of it was good advice. So it took me a long time to realise that the only person who could decide what I would write about was me. [...]