NaNoWriMo: Post-partum thoughts

That's me in the red hat.

I fell 1800 words short of my 50,000-word goal for my first ever NaNoWriMo. Which is totally okay--no, really! I got so much out of doing this I don't know how to express my gratitude to the organizers. Here are four things I loved about my foray into this terrific exercise. And then three things I didn't.

Loved:

1. I realized I really can write 2,000 (good) words per day. Before NaNo, I considered a 1200-word day really spectacular. And I didn't do it that often. Certainly not every freaking day. This month I learned that I can whip out 2,000 at a sitting, feel good about what I've written, and still want to go for a jog afterwards. I plan to keep doing it.

Plotting the Second Half, Pt. 3

If you've been following this blog you've probably realized that I have slowed waaaay down on my posts, and I have NaNoWriMo to blame for it. I whizzed along for the first ten days thinking I could toss off this little 50,000-word exercise without breaking a sweat. When I hit mid-point in the novel those 1667 words per day began to come a lot harder.

Third Act Doldrums
So I called up a lady who knows a thing or two about plotting. Jamie Morris runs the Woodstream Writers Group in north Florida. I put the question to her: In a four-act structure, what the hell is supposed to happen in Act 3? Your character has bottomed out. She has to make it from that deep hole to the climax. Additionally, we're supposed to be right in the middle of "fun and games" as Blake Snyder puts it in his excellent book on plotting screenplays, Save the Cat. Where's my fun? Where's my games?

Here's what Jamie had to say:

Plotting the Second Half

Halfway through:
But what's on the dark side?

I've burnt up the first half of my WIP at a rate I'd never imagined possible during NaNoWriMo. But just as I'm about to reach what I've plotted as the low point (the worst that could happen) I feel myself getting nervous about what's to come.

In the plotting workshop I took in September, we talked about how the halfway point of a novel can be the place where your main character hits bottom. Hits it so hard you can hear the thud a hundred miles. Just after that point, your MC realizes she has to change. Something she's doing isn't working. She figures that out. Once she does, she's on an upswing, piling up small victories and realizing new strengths, until the novel's climax (the battle of the book.)

Fine so far, but how do you keep tension in your novel when your character is racking up the smaller victories, and those leading to larger ones, and it looks like all is well?

Speaking of Word Count: A Query Conundrum

Using method pictured above, my novel's
word count is 7,986,000. Is that too long?

Naturally since I'm doing NaNoWriMo, word counts are on my mind. I'm using my Scrivener program, which has a nifty little feature: At the bottom of the screem there's a scrolling word count, so I can watch it tick along while I'm typing. I can sort of experience my word count in real time. It's just so Meta-NaNo.

Here we are at Day Three, and I've managed to write 1672, 1791, and 1831 words per day, all by 10 a.m. I'm praying I won't jinx my mad productivity, but if I manage to pound out 50,000 words this month, I'm going to owe a few people. Like one of my teachers, Joyce Sweeney, who ran a plotting workshop in September, in time to ensure I had a solid outline and synopsis come November 1. Whoo, what a difference a plan makes! With synopsis in hand, I feel like I could whip out a 976-page masterpiece. Let me pull out my battered copy of Anna Karenina and swear on it: I shall never pants again, so help me Gaddis.

(And spending 30 minutes in the afternoon making notes toward tomorrow's writing hasn't hurt so far, either).

But I had another pressing question about word-counts, re: Querying.

Picture Book Idea Month Starts Tomorrow!

Good news for picture book writers! As we all know, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. But Tara Lazar also launches a sister project for picture book authors: PiBoIdMo. The challenge? Come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days throughout the month of November, beginning tomorrow.

Tara Lazar:
Writing PB's just got funner

Spiffy prizes
You have until November 3rd to go the website and sign up to vie for fabulous schwag: "Signed books, picture book critiques, art by pb illustrators, book jewelry, hand-made journals, vintage children's books, and feedback from one of three literary agents."

Our own Florida kidlit SCBWI maven Mindy Alyse Weiss is kicking off the challenge with a guest post detailing why she loves PiBoIdMo, including links to 400+ things kids like (which might be a handy source for middle-grade writers too).

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo?

Lit agent Janet Reid, pictured above, circa Dec. 2

National Novel Writing Month is seventeen days away. As I'm sure you know, the project aims to get tens of thousands of people around the world writing 1,666 words a day (every day, which means laptops perched on Thanksgiving tables) to complete a 50,000-word manuscript inside a single month. I've never tried it, but I'm planning to this time--in fact I'm cheating a little: I've already got 20,000 words written, and a solid outline, so I'm not starting from scratch.

I've heard tell that literary agents dread December because they're deluged with queries