The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Camp NaNoWriMo Presents “Ask a Published Author!”

Camp NaNoWriMo is getting some visitors. Don’t worry—we won’t have to tie up our food. In the coming weeks, we will have seven published authors acting as honorary Head Counselors: every Monday starting next week, a new published author (or two!) will answer your questions.  

Ask your questions in the comments, or through our Ask NaNoWriMo box. Any and all planning, writing, publishing, or process questions are welcome!

Here’s our line-up:

• First up? Suzanne Lazear, Wrimo and author of steampunk novels Innocent Darkness and its upcoming sequel Charmed Vengeance. 
• Jennifer Bosworth, author of the YA novel Struck and writer of horror scripts directed by her husband, Ryan.
• Julia Crouch, British Wrimo and author of thrillers Cuckoo and, most recently, Tarnished.
• Sarah Duncan, UK author of romances including Kissing Mr. Wrong.
• Ari Marmell, author of fantasy novels such as The Iron Kingdoms Chronicles’ In Thunder Forged as well as multiple roleplaying games.
• James R. Strickland, Wrimo, and author of science-fiction and cyberpunk novels, including Looking Glass.
• Susan Dennard, author of YA gothic mystery Something Strange and Deadly, and it’s prequel and e-novella A Dawn Most Wicked.

Have any questions for our first author, Suzanne? Maybe you want to know how to maintain a mythology like Suzanne does with her steampunk faeries. Or maybe you’re not sure if you’re planning enough as Camp NaNoWriMo approaches. Now is the time to get those burning writing questions off your chest!

“Fall In Love With Your Characters”: How to Find Writing Motivation

During NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive, we’ll be posting “My First NaNo” stories from you, our amazing participants, and the writing tips you learned from your maiden voyage. Today, participant Sonia Mahajan shares why embracing your characters is so important: 

I remember that first, magical time: sifting through my piles of one-paragraph novel ideas that had never been completed, coming up with different names, finding the right font, and marking down the days on my calendar until that mind-boggling date: November 1. I waited, tingling with anticipation on October 30 for the sun to rise again so I could finally start writing.

And then, of course, when the morning of November 1 arrived, I met NaNo-itis: I banged on the keyboard for not planning enough and debated throwing my one-paragraph manuscript out the window. Of course, I didn’t—otherwise I might not be typing this right now—but instead grabbed my cup of tea, flexed my fingers, and set out to novel!

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“Anyone Can Defeat This Challenge”: Finding the Confidence to Write

During NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive, we’ll be posting “My First NaNo” stories from you, our amazing participants, and the writing tips you learned from your maiden voyage. Today, participant Maya Ziv shares the cathartic experience of writing her first novel: 

I remember it like it was yesterday. My palms were sweaty; I didn’t know what to expect but I knew that this night I would embark on a journey that would make memories for a lifetime. 

I had been thinking of tackling NaNoWriMo for years and finally committed last year: my birthday is in November, and I decided it would be a great present to allow myself to shirk all other responsibilities for a month and write a book. 

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“If It’s There, Use It”: Pushing Through Writer’s Block

During NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive, we’ll be posting “My First NaNo” stories from you, our amazing participants, and the writing tips you learned from your maiden voyage. Today, valiant intern Michael Adamson, finds himself grappling with severe writer’s block two-thirds of the way through his story: 

There was a dark moment for me around day 21 of my first NaNoWriMo experience. I was faced with a word-count debt fast approaching 12,000 words, and any realistic chance of winning was evaporating.

I had only myself to blame. Doubt and lack of motivation had impeded my progress during the first three weeks; sometimes I would go five days without writing so much as a single word.

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“We Are All Authors”: Finding Inspiration In the People Around You

NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive officially launches today! We need your help to make our sites mobile-friendly; in return, we promise to get you 100% ready for July and November’s noveling madness, with exclusive donor goodies marking you as a NaNo-pro.

We’ll also be hosting a series called “My First NaNo”, where we ask you, our amazing participants, about your very first NaNoWriMo adventure, and the writing tips you gleaned from your maiden voyage. First up? Denise Krebs, who took on her first NaNoWriMo with her crew of eighth-grade students: 

My first NaNoWriMo was in 2008: My sister had written a novel the year before, and I was so impressed. “I want to write a novel too,” I mused in her presence. She remembered my proclamation and sent me an invitation to join her in October. I remember feeling tentative and scared as the calendar days ticked by.

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Why Deadlines Are Every Writer’s Secret Weapon

Happy Camp NaNoWriMo Launch Day! Camp is fresh out of the oven, with new features to spice things up. And to help you get ready for your July writing project, we’re excerpting No Plot? No Problem!, written by NaNoWriMo’s weird-and-wise founder himself: Chris Baty. Today, he explains the magic power of a writer’s deadline:

When I actually sat down to write my first novel back in 1999, I discovered that my ideas about novel writing were woefully mistaken. You don’t need a plot before you write a novel, nor do you need an evocative sense of place or a winsome, engaging cast. You don’t even need coffee (though I still haven’t allowed myself to fully come to terms with that yet). What you really need is a secret weapon.

You need a superpowered, diabolical device that will transform you into a bastion of literary accomplishment. And I’m happy to report that this implement is in the house, and it’s just waiting for you to pick it up.

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The Camp Rebel Files: How Camp Can Help Your Study Habits

If you’d been in the office in the first half of April, you would’ve seen various NaNo staff members furiously working, writing inspiring pep talks, and being generally magnificent. You would also have seen Chris Angotti, the NaNoWriMo Program Director, in full teacher mode, quizzing me on literary theory, pastoral elegies, litotes, and other such nonsense.

Why, you ask? Because I was using this past April’s Camp NaNoWriMo to study for the GRE in English Literature!

When I first registered for The Test, as it was lovingly called by roommates and friends, I saw it as an impediment to my Camp success. But thus, my friends, began my month of literary abandon. I’ve been out of school for over a year, so my brain needed a wee bit of dusting. It went a little like this:

The Plan and Its Benefits

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The Camp Rebel Files: How Writing an Epic Poem Taught Me to Write Without a Net

The challenge: Write an epic poem – 22,500 words in 30 days.

What was I thinking? 

I hadn’t written a poem in years. I barely remembered the definition of an epic. It would have been smart to do some research and have a clearer goal. I should have thought about my character, plot, setting… but suddenly it was April. It was time to pursue the Noble Path of the Pantser.

How did it go?

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4 Steps to Cure the “I Finished My First Draft” Blues

Hello once and future Campers! How are you feeling on this fine May day? Blissful and free, like the pollen drifting on the breeze from tree to tree? Exultant, like the alpenglow that graces the mountain peaks with the first light of day? Triumphant, like the grizzly bear, emerging from a long winter with her playful cubs?

If you are anything like me, those three similes probably just made you a little bit nauseous (I mean, pollen? Really? You know what that stuff is, right?). If you had a Camp NaNoWriMo experience similar to mine, you might be feeling a little spread thin. You might be feeling disillusioned. If you are anything like me, you might be feeling unsure as to how to fill these new blocks of free time. 

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The Camp Rebel Files: 4 Tips I Learned From Researching

In some ways, the result of my April doesn’t feel as satisfying as a typical NaNo month’s. I don’t have a word-packed document on my desktop or a pile of ink-stained notebooks in my backpack; I just have a ton of facts, quotes, and ideas waiting to be turned into something else. 

The genre I’m most interested in—research-based creative nonfiction—requires time. When you’re trying to find out all you can about a particular topic, it’s hard to just dive in and write a complete draft in 30 days. You need to refine your focus, read background information, do interviews, and find a narrative.

Camp NaNoWriMo was the perfect opportunity to buckle down and finish these steps. And even though I only have an outline to show for it, it’s an outline with a whole lot of potential. If you’re interested in using Camp’s July session as a research and outlining month, I’ve got a few tips based on my experience:

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The Young Writers Program: Writing Geeks, Sci-Fi Plays, and Hunting Your Word Count

This past April, Camp NaNoWriMo allowed participants to choose both their word count and their preferred writing form, whether that was a script, short story, novel, poem, or even the back of a cereal box.

Educator Cynthia Garcia took the opportunity to keep alive the spirit of Script Frenzy, a retired program that challenged people to write 100 pages of a script in 30 days. Cynthia hosts two NaNoWriMo events every year at Fairmont Catholic School as an extracurricular activity for students. Since 2010, the participants have grown from twenty to 83.

“NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy have been the most dazzlingly successful of our projects,” said Cynthia. “Students are engaged with the writing, they are engaged with the project, and they are engaged with each other. They even share their writing with their parents and friends outside school, which I think is terrific, as it makes it that much more meaningful to them.”

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The Writer’s Road from First Draft to Submission

Congratulations, writer! You wrote a novel! …Now what? Kelly Loy Gilbert, whose first novel, City on a Hill, will be published in 2014, takes us from first draft to publication, and offers her best advice for each stage of the journey:

I’d been working on the same novel for four years, so when I decided to tackle a new project, it was jarring to start a whole new world where I didn’t know anyone or anything. The total freedom was, actually, incredibly paralyzing: why not have zombies show up at a high school? Really, when you’re staring at your blank pages at twelve a.m., there are a lot of ideas that seem a hell of a lot better than the ones you have. 

I wrote a draft NaNoWriMo-style to get everything onto the page. Writing something at that speed is immersive: the world of the story starts to bleed into your own, and it can be disorienting. But at the same time, it works. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you’ve pushed yourself to create something out of nothing, and all at once—in just thirty days!—you have the raw material to mold into the story you want to tell.

Putting feedback to use

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