Tag: nanowrimo
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What I’m learning as I write my novel
When I say I’ve written six novels, this is what I really mean: I’ve written the rough draft of six novels. Sure I like to say “I’ve written six novels” to try to impress people, but if anyone would read these “novels”, he would read for five minutes, stick out his tongue, squinch up his…
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Now that I don’t have a deadline . . .
On Friday morning, November 30th, twelve and a half hours before midnight November 30th, I passed 50,000 for NaNoWriMo. My story is not finished. What is to keep me motivated? Well, besides being an interesting story to me, I need to set a deadline for myself. My goal is to finish the novel before midnight…
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Help. I’m addicted to grammar
Ten years ago, when I started teaching as an adjunct English teacher at a local college, I brushed up on my grammar. I fell in love with the basics of writing all over again: the parts of speech; verbals; clauses–both dependent and independent; appositives; and so on . . . I had forgotten so much…
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I’m four-fifths done so I might as well finish it
Yesterday afternoon I passed 40,000 words on my manuscript for NaNoWriMo. Only 10,000 words to go and I have until midnight next Friday. So I’m feeling pretty good. One thing though: my story won’t be finished. Yeah, I’ll have 50,0000 words but I haven’t even gotten to the part that I thought I would be…
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Some things I’m learning from this year’s NaNoWriMo
When I finished working on NaNoWriMo last night, I had finally completed a word count ahead of schedule for the first time this NaNo year. By the end of the day November 11, I should have had 18, 337 words and last night around 9:30pm, I had 18,597. I’m also learning some new things along…
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My first NaNoWriMo write-in
Even though this is my fifth NaNoWriMo, Monday night I went to my first write-in. I attended the write-in at Bearnos by the Bridge, a pizza joint in an old building that used to be a hotel. It sits next to a bridge that goes across the Ohio River. It also happens to be a…
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He gripped her hand in an even tighter grip. Whaaaaat?
That was the second line in my NaNoWriMo manuscript. I don’t remember using a form of “grip” twice in one sentence, but, hey, isn’t that what National Novel Writing Month is all about? Writing a story that humiliates you upon review? Writing prose that makes you dash to the bathroom and vomit in the toilet?…
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Toolkit for writing fiction
It’s midnight on November 1st and, even though it’s in the middle of the week and you have to go to work tomorrow, you stayed up to write your first sixteen hundred word quota for NaNoWriMo. You’ve thought out a dozen characters in your mind and you have a protagonist who is a thinly-veined version…
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Making a scene
One thing I find helpful for NaNoWriMo is making an informal list of scenes. The key is to not get married to this list; just use it as a jumping point. I usually end up moving the order of the scenes around. Here are some things to keep in mind when thinking of scenes: Think…
Andrew M. Friday 