Tag: National Novel Writing Month
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Mucking around in the rough draft of your NaNoWriMo creation
For NaNoWriMo, here are some things I’m leaving in as I write: Before November, I’ve already written a one or two sentence summary of each scene. For NaNoWriMo, I write a “scribble version” of the scene. This is a more developed summary containing key phrases, important dialogue, cues when to describe this or that, etc.…
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The Non-Rules of NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) whips aspiring writers up to writing a 50,000 word draft of a novel in the month of November. I’ve been doing it off and on for ten years and I have about a fifty-percent success rate. By success, I mean I finish 50,000 words by November’s end. I can tell…
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Why NaNoWriMo?
I have decided to take a month-long break from my work-in-progress (WIP) and rediscover the excitement of creating an all-new story. Yes, I am going to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). In case you don’t know, November is NaNoWriMo. Click here if you are unfamiliar with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Ten years…
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Epiphanies in Writing, Part 1: Planning Your Novel
Currently I am writing a series of short novels part of a series called CONSORTIUM. One epiphany I learned a long time ago was that no two writers use the same method of getting their story down on paper. And something else: A writer may not even use the same method two times in a…
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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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The next step: The Snowflake Method
For National Novel Writing Month, I wrote a rough draft of a novel called The Deity Run. Instead of “rough draft,” a more accurate term would be “discovery draft” for in this first writing, I usually discover the characters, plot, theme and more about my story. Now that I have my “discovery draft” for The…
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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…
Andrew M. Friday 