Tag: writing community

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Who’s Doing #NaNoWriMo? We Are!

Howdy gang! I hope you’ve had a great summer and are enjoying the new season. Fall came rushing in on me and I can hardly believe next month is November!

Join Us During November

Anna and I are doing #NaNoWriMo next month and we hope you are, too! If you aren’t signed up yet, go to http://nanowrimo.org and do it now.

We had a heck of a lot of fun last June doing word sprints with you guys. Because of that, we’re bringing it all back during November to help support your NaNoWriMo experience. Follow @junowrimo on Twitter to join in. I’m excited about seeing all my JuNo buddies again.

Remember our word count spreadsheet from June? How cool was it to see  everyone’s daily counts? Did you have as much fun racing with your fellow WriMos as I did? I have good news. We’re bringing it back for NaNoWrimo.

We will have a post letting you know when the new spreadsheet is ready, so stay tuned. We had over a hundred people input their names this June. Let’s see if we can get even more next month. Make sure you’ve created a JuNoWriMo account which will grant you access to the spreadsheet.

The best part about this site is the accountability. NaNoWriMo is a big place and it can be hard to get to know people, but here you’ll find a smaller and tighter community. If you’re new, then welcome aboard! We’re happy to have you with us.

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

Are you prepped and ready for what it’s going to take to write a novel in thirty days? October is prewriting month and I encourage you to take advantage of it. Starting NaNoWriMo without a plan isn’t just difficult—it’s setting yourself up for failure. Get the bones of your novel sketched out ahead of time so that when the clock turns midnight on October 31st, you’re armed and ready.

What is prewriting and exactly how do you do it? Aaron Pogue has a great walkthrough of how to get ready to write a novel. This post is the first in the prewriting series. Follow his advice and you’ll be ready for November.

More Tips and Free Stuff

One final thing. I’ve saved the best for last. There’s a great new ebook out there called @WriMo: A 30-day Survival Guide for Writers by Kevin S. Kaiser. I highly recommend it for everyone doing NaNoWriMo. This book is full of motivation to inspire your writing journey. It’s especially useful for making you stick with it in those times you really don’t want to write. I read it and loved it. Even better, all the proceeds of the book are donated to NaNoWriMo which means that buying this book is akin to sending them a donation check.

I’m so excited about this book that I’m going to give away a free copy next week! Come back on Monday for a chance to win!

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Related Posts:

Prewriting for JuNoWriMo

Prewriting: the Steps

So Many Choices, So Little Time

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June 2012 Is Over–What’s Next?

After a whirlwind of a month, June is finally over. For some of us the end of the month is met with shouts of joy and relief and for others it’s received with a few tears and sighs of nostalgia. You might be wondering, “What on earth do I do now?”

JuNoWriMo Stats

This was our (Anna’s and my) first year hosting this event, and it was even bigger than we’d anticipated. Was JuNoWriMo 2012 a success? Most definitely! We started spreading the word around April, but even with only a few short months to drum up excitement, we had a great turnout this year. Here’s the breakdown: Continue reading “June 2012 Is Over–What’s Next?”

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Featured Author: EM Castellan

E.M. Castellan

My name is EM Castellan and I am a YA Fantasy writer. I live in an English castle, travel extensively, read voraciously, listen to bands few people have heard of and watch too many movies to count. In case you are wondering, I also have a full-time job, so I mostly write at odd hours and drink a lot of tea. I have been writing for years, but during the past year, I have written the first book in my Epic Fantasy trilogy THE DARKLANDS. I will soon start looking for an agent with it, but in the meantime, I want to take a break from that story. Thus, JuNoWriMo is for me the perfect opportunity to put THE DARKLANDS in a drawer for a month and to work on something else. Continue reading “Featured Author: EM Castellan”

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Featured Author of the Week: Felicia Kay Wetzig

F.E. Wetzig

Most people know me as Fel Wetzig and I write Paranormal and Suspense, sometimes with bits of drama and romance thrown in as life gets in the way for my “fictional” characters. In High School, after a strange dream in which the characters in my head – calling themselves the peasants – planned a rebellion, I adopted the phrase “The Peasants Revolt” to describe my literary process. I have a Master’s Degree in Public History, and it wasn’t until my last year of college that I realized how much I miss writing fiction. Since then, I’ve finished two novels, and both are in various states of editing. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Felicia Kay Wetzig”

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Featured Author of the Week: Melinda McGuire

Melinda McGuire

Hello fellow JuNoWriMos!

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo and won, so I’m familiar with the set up of the WriMo concept, which is exactly why I signed up for JuNoWriMo. Honestly, I wish we had a WriMo every third month. I’d be a prolific writer then!

Nelson and Cora – The Journey is my planned JuNoWriMo story. This is the second book in a trilogy. The first book, Nelson and Cora – The Beginning, was my NaNoWriMo novel. If all goes according to plan (cue the maniacal laughter), the last book in the trilogy will be my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Melinda McGuire”

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Pep Talk Week 2: When Your Novel Talks Back

Author pic bwBefore I won my first novel-in-a-month challenge, I had been writing novels for at least 10 years.  Or, perhaps, almost writing them would be a better way to put it.  I would start them and somewhere between the 1/3 and the 1/2 way mark, I would suddenly become gripped with the conviction that this was a terrible story.  No one would want to read it, I should delete it and burn all my notes so that no one could every associate such a sophomoric, poorly written story with me.

And then one year, I won a novel-in-a-month challenge by doing one simple thing.

Okay, two simple things really.

  1. I refused to read anything I’d written except for perhaps a paragraph or two to get me going again.
  2. I refused to stop.

Both are easier said than done. The temptation to peek is insane! But don’t.  Nothing will kill your story faster than reading it right now.  So don’t do it!

And then, refuse to stop.  Because chances are sometime this week, your story is going to get all self-conscious and it’s going to start talking to you.

In the middle of week two that fateful November when I finally wrote a novel I could finish, I distinctly remember having this conversation multiple times with my novel.

Continue reading “Pep Talk Week 2: When Your Novel Talks Back”

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Featured Author of the Week: Jessie Sanders

Jessie Sanders

My name is Jessie Sanders, and I have one published novel so far, Into the Flames. Into the Flames is a young adult urban fantasy about Rahab Carmichael, a new girl at a boarding school in Boston, and her attempts to find normalcy. What she finds instead is a group of friends that are just as freaky as she is. For JuNoWriMo I’ll be working on the direct sequel to this novel. I’ve already written two other (unpublished) books in the world of Grover Cleveland Academy, and I’m excited to be starting this fourth book in the series. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Jessie Sanders”

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Pep Talk Week 1: Getting Started with a Bang

Author pic bwIt’s week one,  and our collective adrenaline is probably enough to light a small city right now.
Welcome to JuNoWriMo Week 1!
I’m sure we’ve all started our novels with at least two thousand words at the kick-off party after weeks and weeks of careful plotting and pre-writing, with pages of notes and plot points hung carefully by our computers.

Right?

Or maybe not.

For those of you who’ve done that, congrats! Way to go! Keep it up 🙂

If you’re like me though, you’ve got maybe a decent word count from the past few days and a handful of notes scribbled down somewhere.

Then what’s in the picture you ask?

Oh, that.  Well, that’s the timeline and plot sheets from my LAST novel, you know the one that’s almost done.

I confess that while I have the general idea of where this novel is going, I don’t have it concretely sketched out.  At all.  I didn’t the last time either.

Continue reading “Pep Talk Week 1: Getting Started with a Bang”

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Featured Author of the Week: Greg Welch

Background

Greg Welch

I’ve been writing seriously for about 4 years now. It started out in response to my quarter life crisis I guess, but the truth is, I’ve always been working on stories, even before I knew what they were.

I like to think of myself as a horror writer, but mostly I evoke disturbance, trouble, and tragedy. I like the darker stuff. I don’t think I went through anything as a child that screwed me up, but then again maybe it’s just a repressed memory?

Currently I’m in college working on an English major, bettering my craft, and settling into my identity, role, and responsibility as a writer. I’m finally coming into my own and finding my place. I’m feeling more sure of myself and all around happier with who I am as a writer and what I have to offer. Continue reading “Featured Author of the Week: Greg Welch”

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Come to the JuNoWriMo Virtual Kick-off Party!

June is almost here!

Let the Insanity Begin

Are you trembling with anticipation? With excitement? With frayed nerves about what you’ve about to  do?

Writing fifty thousand words in thirty days is a big deal. It’s quite a commitment, but it’s also an attainable goal. And you’re not alone in this. We’re all here with you. You can do it! Together we are going to ROCK this thing!

We’ve already had a great number of people sign up for JuNoWriMo. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time (it’s also your last chance to bug your writer friends who need to write that novel)! Click on the “sign up” link at the top of the page.

Something to Celebrate Continue reading “Come to the JuNoWriMo Virtual Kick-off Party!”