Guess what? There were lots and lots and lots of posts about NaNoWriMo again. No, really. (Whimper. Please God make them all go away in November. Please? I promise I’ll be a much nicer person for the whole of the month.)
Write Anything re-ran Karen Maxwell’s 2009 NaNoWriMo Workshop all last week, which is kind of like cheating, albeit pragmatic. I mention it only lest anyone out there is likely to find it useful this year and/or is already having the nasty attack of self-doubt I expect to encounter at 11:59pm on October 31st.
The advice given throughout the series is fairly standard, in-depth how-to-write-a-novel material. Personally, though, I got stuck on the title of the first Workshop item: Find, and Flush Out, an Idea. Flush? Like a lavatory or like a hare or like a strawberry? I’ll never know whether that was deliberate creativity or a typo, but for the rest of my life whenever anyone mentions rounding out an idea or bringing a plan to fruition I’ll have a mental image of a tiny, terrified Idea skulking in the undergrowth and hiding from the baying hounds who would tear it bloodily apart. Is that fair, I ask you?
Nathan Bransford posted a freshly-written three-part NaNoWriMo Boot Camp in which he covered all the bases pretty well, as he does. Lynn Viehl went seven better with a list of Ten Things to Try that had nothing–and everything–to do with writing a novel. I liked that, but even better was the Crowley-esque advice she gave at the beginning of her NaNo Q & A session on Wednesday: “Do whatever you want.“
Jen Brubacher will be posting story prompts Monday to Friday throughout the ordeal month, which may be helpful for some.
Anna Staniszewski bravely announced that she will be joining the merry throng this year because she wants to try out something new to her, and NaNo is the best time to do this. And Inkygirl’s friend Errol made another NaNoWriMo music video with at least one laugh-out-loud-funny line in it.
That’s it, that’s all, I’m not mentioning the N-word-ish-thing again until next Tuesday (when I promised Matt I would.) Let’s whizz round the best of the rest.
Two strong posts on characters: the inevitable Scott G F Bailey pondered upon character development and decided it’s less about personality change than about self-discovery. Gail Carson Levine wrote an equally thoughtful piece in which she discussed how to make dark characters likeable–never the easiest of remits.
On a completely different tack, Julie Eshbaugh posted a short essay on symbolism, and how to make it work in your writing. Now there’s a topic that doesn’t come up too often.
There seem to have been more ‘lifestyle’ posts than usual this week. Three survived my delete-button frenzy: Laurie Halse Anderson’s post about travelling light (because both Matt and I obsess over this too); Randy Susan Meyers’ review of a book which she refers to as “a writer’s shrink for the cost of a trade paperback“; and Elizabeth Spann Craig’s post about the odd reactions she has had to the simple confession, “I’m a writer.” Alison Janssen also amused with her Choose Your Own Adventure post yesterday, which makes it four survivors I suppose. I never claimed to be able to count…
Over at The Kill Zone Nancy J Cohen wrote an interesting piece about refilling the well of creativity, while James Scott Bell posted an item about first lines as story prompts, giving me an instant flashback to University days. Talking of which, Charlie Stross this week refused to write a potential non-fiction best-seller in his always-entertaining Books I Will Not Write series. Well, I think this one would be a best-seller. It would’ve been popular in our student household, for sure.
And finally, DON’T, whatever you do, click on this link.
You fool! You’ll be there hours. (Thanks to Joshua Mohr for the introduction/advert!)
