Here's a question for the last week just before NaNoWriMo: have you ever hit up the forums? The forums, not surprisingly, are one of NaNoWriMo's greatest assets when it comes to the challenge, mostly because a worldwide community is at your fingertips. Much more than that though, the forum chat rooms all have one goal in mind regardless of their topics: to help fellow Nano-ers. Just being a Nano-er yourself means you are welcome to join whichever forum you need. As you

That "last day of camp" feeling's always a heavy one. You're packing your things, wondering if you lived it up to the fullest on your way out, heavy heart present. It's funny how virtual camps give off a similar feeling. I thoroughly enjoyed the little chats with my fellow cabin members, offering advise, getting advise in return and simply working hard together as we tried to meet our goals. So what's the status on my Camp NaNoWriMo victory? Nah, I didn't get my victory this

Camp NaNoWriMo is 26 days away officially today. It you're still asking yourself the question in the title of this post, you're not too late to decide. The fun thing about Camp NaNoWriMo is that its a much more customize-able goal (you don't have to commit to 50K if you don't want to), and you can even choose to revise your November project if you wish. So that leaves the floor pretty much open then for whatever goal the writer chooses, doesn't it? It does, and that freedom i

You know when you start off with a great goal in mind and life gets enough in the way to completely distract you? It occurred to me that this may have happened at the start of January when I spent the evening after long days of work playing the Sims 4 instead of completing part one of my first novel. I think the distraction really dawned on me when I got a glitch where my very exhausted, decaffeinated sim tried drinking earl grey tea while a cat was stuck to her wrist. Someth

NaNoWriMo is over! Did you win the challenge? Did you get close? No matter what, give yourself a round of applause! You challenged yourself and committed as much as you were able. Be proud! Here's the next step, and no, don't cringe in fear--I promise it will be ok. Now, however, it is time to edit your NaNo project. We began the month with the strict principle of locking our inner editor in a closet and gagging them to silence their incessant nagging for the sake of quantity

Nanowrimo's come to an end again this year, and for many this was a year of first-time victories! This year I was thankfully gifted with the time to claim my second victory in a row, which ultimately came smoother than the first. I say this of course, not to brag, but to shed light on two very different NaNoWriMo experiences I had and what little nuggets of advice I found in both. Before I get to that though, let's tackle the first order of business. Whether or not you claime

This is a HUGE deal. Colossal even! It's November 15th, which is officially the day that marks November, and NaNoWriMo's, half way point! How are we feeling? (provided above is a spectrum of most NaNoWriMoer's reactions depicted by GIFs) Need a tip on where you should be word count wise? If you've been following the mantra of writing 1,667 words per day: your target word count is 25,005! Not there yet? Now's your chance to catch up! There's exactly 15 days left of this month,

It's the 27th of October. November starts next week. Breathe that in for a second. We're finally here and November's not going to wait for you to be any more ready than you already are. This blog post is not intended to freak you out, just prepare you. Get your take-out menu's on the fridge, your writing workbooks at the ready and your coziest clothes in your closet ready because NaNoWriMo's about to start! Before that though, here's a bit of advice for prepping this final we

Here's another exceedingly important concern when it comes to NaNoWriMo. Pacing yourself. Don't leave generating word count to the last minute, or the mountain will be too high to climb. Alternatively, don't try to win the race in the first week or you'll burn out before the month has even started. It isn't about how fast you can rush through, its about using your time wisely. To review, last post we discussed how daily target word counts are key to victory. My daily target w

So we've picked the project and now its time to commit the rest of this month to a little planning. Planning doesn't just involve what your novel's going to be about and what portion of the project the 50,000 words are going to cover. I'm going to cover the Snowflake Method, which is a great tool for generating content on the fly. I'll also touch base with methods to help get through 50,000 words of your story, like apps to download, websites to help you focus and suggestio

Here's the age old question that attaches to any challenge when you're first starting out. Thankfully, when it comes to NaNoWriMo this one's easy to answer. You've got to pump out 50,00 words to win, which means a lot of things. You've got to to just pump out words, meaning you need to be able to work with an environment where the setting, characters, and plot are all familiar. You can't stop every two to three sentences going back and editing because, let's be real, you won'