The Office of Letters and Light Blog

10 Tips on How to Finish Your NaNoWriMo Novel

I learned about National Novel Writing Month through my creative writing professor, Randon Noble, during my freshman year at American University in Washington, D.C. In October of 2006, almost everyone in my creative writing class decided to give NaNoWriMo a try, including me. Most people mentioned writing about home, dating, or other personal and realistic topics. 

On the night of November 1, Edward P. Jones visited American University to read from his book, The Known World. During the Q&A, a student in the crowd told him that this was the first day of NaNoWriMo. When the student asked Mr. Jones if he thought someone could write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, Mr. Jones said absolutely not and if someone did, it wouldn’t be worth reading. After that book reading, I think half of my creative writing class decided not to participate in NaNoWriMo.  

But I did participate. 

Read More

Rediscovering the Craft and Writing Despite Doubts

If any writer has sweep, it’s Lynn Viehl: a New York Times best-selling author, she’s written nearly 50 novels in eight different genres. This year, she’s asking her readers to help her to choose what to put on paper for NaNoWriMo, and will be posting her draft as she goes at her fiction blog.

She tells us about rediscovering her love for her craft, the perks of letting yourself be a little crazy, and writing the stories you want to during NaNoWriMo:

I adore NaNoWriMo. It’s exciting, it’s crazy, and it motivates more people to write than Saturday detention. Every year I support the madness via my blog by finding resources, encouraging those who commit, and otherwise behaving like a book-writing nag. This doesn’t endear me to the snobs, but I can make fun of them throughout November, which is a nice bonus.

Read More

How to Write the “Impossible”

Michelle is a Wrimo of great, terrifying, admirable ambition. Writing 50,000 words in a month is a feat, doing it every month for a year is the stuff of legend. With nearly ten novels under her belt so far, she tells us what she’s learned about what makes for an enjoyable creative journey:

I began this year with a simple, terrifying goal: to write one novel every month for the whole of 2012. I wanted the rush of NaNoWriMo full time, to study what it is to write and keep writing. I wanted to dive into my own stories and not come up for air until 2013.

And, so far, I’ve done it. When NaNoWriMo starts, I will have written ten novels this year for a total of 500,000 words—and I won’t stop there. I have learned so much about writing, about starting, ending, and continuing through all odds. And while all novels are different, here are some lessons I’ve used to get me to the “The End” these past ten times:

Read More

An Artist’s Date with Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron was a successful screenwriter by her late twenties, but she realized she was writing with the pains of her ego instead of the lightness of her soul. She went through a process of “creative recovery” that she’s now shared with millions of people through such books as The Artist’s Way and her website Julia Cameron Live.

Cameron’s approach to writing mirrors NaNoWriMo’s framework in many ways. She discusses banishing “the Censor,” jumping into the mess of writing instead of honoring the judgments of perfectionism, and inviting in creative whimsy to nurture the artist’s soul. We interviewed her for some ideas on how to get the creative juices flowing before NaNoWriMo. For more NaNo Prep ideas, you can track #nanoprep on Twitter, read the NaNo Prep tag on this blog, and visit our site here.

Tell us about your writing career. How did you decide to become a writer, and where has it led you?

Read More

NaNoWriMo Professor Shares His Secrets for a Productive November

Ian Randall Wilson is an author, and professor at UCLA Extension. For those of you committed to winning this year (you can do it!), read on for his advice on how to reach the goal you’ve set:

NaNoWriMo is not far away and for the seventh year, I’ll be running a class at UCLA Extension called: Write a Novel in a Month as Part of National Novel Writing Month. People come with many different levels of experience. Some are working writers, others are graduates of MFA programs, many have never written much at all. They’ve been thinking about writing a novel for a long time but can’t get started.  They’ve tried and never finished. They think they have nothing to write about.  The common linkage is that this time, they’re going to succeed.

My success rate has been excellent: 84% finishing (while the international average completion rate for NaNoWriMo is around 19%).  How does this happen? Why would anyone pay for a class to sit and write a novel?

Read More

Pantser? Planner? Percolator?

One of my favorite NaNo terms is “pantser”—as in writing by the seat of your pants, without an outline.

The term brings up the age-old debate about how to best go about writing a novel: pantser vs. planner. I’m intrigued by people’s approaches to writing a novel because writers’ processes can seem as indelibly etched in their psyches as their genetic makeups. Some of us like clutter. Some of us need clean, organized spaces. Some of us live somewhere in between.

Read More

Pre-NaNo Go Time

The season is nearly upon us! NaNo approacheth, ready or not.

The office is all abuzz as we work behind the scenes to get nanowrimo.org; OLL’s online store; and all noveling resources for classrooms, MLs, and our bookstore and library partners ready for site relaunch and the November noveling madness beyond.

But site, store, and resource-readiness doesn’t necessarily mean I’m mentally and emotionally prepared to start writing my next novel in just over a month. How about you?

Read More

What Doctor Who Taught Me About Inspiration

I used to have this recurring dream as a kid. I’d be sitting in a park somewhere, or at the dinner table, or in a classroom, and suddenly the sky would blink open, or the roof would come apart, and this hand would reach out, palm open, waiting for me to take hold.

It sounds a little terrifying written down like that, but they were never nightmares. I always felt this excitement in my gut, because I knew that as soon as I took that hand, I would be flung into a new adventure: I’d wake up to find myself in an undiscovered Incan ruin, or the bowels of space.

Read More

A Wrimo’s Guide to Noveling Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Linda Ge is a Northern Californian high school student by day and a writer by night. A longtime NaNoWriMo participant, she is the co-proprietor of Teens Writing for Teens. She wishes the Wall Street Journal had a horoscope section and would love it if you left a comment or a hundred on the TWFT blog. We were lucky enough to have her spin some wisdom for us on our blog:

At the age of 17, I consider myself a NaNoWriMo veteran. I’ve been participating since the seventh grade, and I’ve won four times (we won’t talk about the times I didn’t quite make it).

For y’all out there who are participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, congratulations! You’re entering into that home stretch. Now making it through the home stretch is mainly about keeping your focus. As a longtime participant, here are some mistakes that I’ve learned to avoid. I hope this helps you, too!

Read More

Writer’s Block

You know that feeling you get when you are staring at a blank page that you know is supposed to be filling up with beautiful language, only to find that nothing is happening? Of course you do, you’re Wrimos. Writer’s block can come with making writing a part of your daily reality for an entire month, whether in November, or June or August, for those campers among you.

A 2010 Psychology Today article by Dr. Bill Knaus offers ten tips for overcoming writer’s block—that sensation of creative emptiness we sometimes experience when we intend to write. Since I’m currently dealing with a bout of creative blockage (regarding what to blog about, if you hadn’t guessed), and I imagine that many of you have or will suffer the same affliction this month, I thought I’d share his tricks.

Read More

Ten Ways Poetry Can Improve Your Prose

A few years ago, while plodding through a revision of my novel (revisions require the writer’s equivalent of heavy-duty hiking boots), I got bored by my writing. It was too literal, too realistic, too earnest, and too flat.

Most writers are all too familiar with this feeling after a red-eyed reading of a draft. I needed a way to literally jar my narrative sensibility. I needed jazz, punk rock, Jackson Pollock, Merce Cunningham, something.

Around this time, I read a quote by Emily Dickinson that remains among my favorite writing advice: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

I started reading poetry avidly and discovered that by focusing on the exquisite “slant” poetry offers, the “truth” I was trying to capture became more piquant, surprising, nuanced, playful, and meaningful to me.

So, in honor of National Poetry Month and Poem In Your Pocket Day, here are my 10 reasons prose writers should read—and hopefully write—poetry.

Read More