NaNoWriMo - This November, Write Your Novel
NaNoWriMo is short for "National Novel Writing Month" (the "National" in the title has been rendered obsolete; NaNoWriMo is now a worldwide phenomenon). Every November tens of thousands of people from around the world aim to produce a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days.
It's the perfect opportunity for would-be writers to nurture their creative selves. Having a firm, short deadline puts the goal of writing a novel solidly within reach.
Chris Baty, instigator of NaNoWriMo, explains that the key is to lower your expectations "from 'best-seller' to 'would not make someone vomit' ".
Some of the things you'll need to keep in mind while writing your novel are the following:
- Genre
- Setting
- Characters
- Conflict
- Theme
- Plot
- Scenes
- Climax
- Point of View
This lens will help you get started on your NaNoWriMo adventure (by the way, registration is free).
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Register, for free, here.
NaNoWriMo on Wikipedia
National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is a creative writing project held annually in November in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. The project was begun in July 1999 by Chris Baty and started out with only 21 participants. In 2000 the project was moved to November and by 2009 over 170,000 people participated.
The NaNoWrimo Rules
- Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
- Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people's works).
- Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
- Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
- Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
- Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.
50,000 words in 30 days is 1,667 words a day. That's probably 1 - 2 hours work.
Intro to NaNoWriMo by The Pagan Writers Community
Summary of the Major Elements of a Novel
- Setting is the "where" and 'when" of the story or novel.
- Characters are the "who."
- Conflict is the "what." (What is the problem?)
- Plot is the "how." (How is the conflict developed and resolved?)
- Theme is the "why." (The author's message and one of the reasons why the author wrote the story or novel.)
The best advice in choosing a genre is to write the type of novel that you like to read.
Genre Types
- Action - Adventure
- Drama
- Mystery
- Fantasy
- Horror
- Literary
- Romance
- Science-Fiction
- Western
- Satire
Genre on Wikipedia
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works (novels, short stories) written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre. In contemporary fiction an elastic term used to group works sharing similarities of character, theme, and setting?such as mystery, romance, or horror?that have been proven to appeal to particular groups of readers. Genres continuously evolve, divide, and c...
NaNoWriMo Tip #1
Don't worry about the quality of your writing, just focus on getting to that 50,000 word target.
Theme
The theme is the central message of the novel which is conveyed through the characters and circumstances; it's the statement you want to make about the human condition. In addition, it's the unifying element for everything you put in your plot.
Here are two examples:
- The theme of Shakespeare's "Othello", is jealousy.
- A main theme of the novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is racism.
Setting - When and Where
Setting is the background in which the story takes place. Basically, it's the when and where, but it can also include lifestyle:(a) Place: This is the geographical location of the story. Throughout the novel, the story may move from one place to another. Make a map that shows where all the action will take place. This will help you gauge distances and figure the length of time necessary to move your characters from one place to another.
(b) Time: First, this refers to the period of history. Your story could be set in the past, it could be a contemporary novel, or it could even be set in the future. When describing the setting you may want to specify the season, month, and even the time of day. Make a timeline for the events of the novel. This will give your plot anchor points.
(c) Lifestyle: This refers to the daily life of the characters. If a story takes place in a particular historical period, the lifestyle of the characters--poor farmers or part of the aristocracy--is part of the setting.
"Wuthering Heights"--Emily Bronte's only novel--takes place in the late 1700's and early 1800's. All the action is set in or around two neighboring houses on the harsh and desolate Yorkshire Moors of Northern England: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. These two manor houses are just four miles apart, but they could not be more different in terms of the conditions that exist in each house and the people who inhabit them. Emily Bronte grew up in the Yorkshire Moors, and so her depiction of it is very accurate.
Get a Coffee Mug Specially for NaNoWriMo
You'll be needing a lot of caffeine. :-)
Smiley Happy Face Mug Coffee Cup Great Gift item
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PEANUTS SNOOPY Revered Pet Coffee Tea MUG cup NEW
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Bearded Iris Coffee Mug
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Garfield The Cat Classic 80's Coffee Mug "Is There Life Before Coffee?" Great Gift And Collectible Mug
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WARNING BEWARE OF THE WRITER Mug for Coffee / Hot Beverage 11 oz. YELLOW
Amazon Price: $16.99 (as of 12/23/2009)
NaNoWriMo Tip #2
Get into a routine and begin writing at the same time each day.
Fabulous Creativity Resource
This is my ebook on creativity (click on the book for more information):
"What does your main character want more than anything else in the world?"
Creating Character Profiles
Write a Biography for Each of Your Characters
One technique that a lot of writers use is to create a character profile for their main characters. This helps in creating characters that are as real as possible, and in providing continuity throughout the story. How detailed you make your character profiles depends on what works best for you.
Careful consideration to things such as the character's relationship with their siblings and their secret phobias, will create an impression of a character that has more to them than simply what is revealed within the novel.
- Age
- Appearance
- Occupation
- Income
- Education
- Marital Status
- Recent Relationships
- Children/Siblings
- Likes and Dislikes
- Favorite Music
- Hobbies
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- Special Characteristics (movement, speech, laugh, and so on)
- Favorite Sayings
- Idiosyncrasies
- Birth date/Sign of the Zodiac
- Nickname
A rule of good storytelling is that the protagonist will confront the thing he fears the most and overcome it in order to win the thing he desires the most. (Source.)
Links to Help You Create Character Profiles
- How to Create a Character Profile
- In interviews many famous authors have stated that they came up with the basics of a character's personality and then they found that the character just "came alive" for them and ended up driving the story all on his own. But for the beginning writer, sometimes a more concrete approach is helpful.
- Character Creation Form
- I have devised a way to have all of this in one easy place, a list of questions to answer about any character for any setting so that I can have a complete history, personality, and everything else all at my finger tips. How often have you started on the third chapter, or even the third page, and had to go back to the beginning and remind yourself that "gee, her hair was blond, not red."
- Developing Fictional Character Profiles
- Biographical and background detail of fictional characters will help create a clearer picture of the sort of people they might be, where they are going in life and how they will drive the plot.
- 100 Character Development Questions for Writers
- Here are 100 questions you can "ask" your characters.
- Character Development Chart
- Use this worksheet to assist you in the development of your fiction characters.
NaNoWriMo Tip #3
Create a profile for each of your characters similar to those of popular socializing networks such as Myspace, Twitter, or Facebook.
Use Archetypes as Blueprints for Your Characters
The greek gods and godesses represent the basic archetypes:
Creating Female Heroes and Villains:
Aphrodite - The Seductive Muse and The Femme Fatale
Artemis - The Amazon and The Gorgon
Athena - The Father's Daughter and the Backstabber
Demeter - The Nurturer and The Overcontrolling Mother
Hera - The Matriarch and the Scorned Woman
Hestia - The Mystic and the Betrayer
Isis - The Female Messiah and the Destroyer
Persephone - The Maiden and the Troubled Teen
Creating Male Heroes and Villains:
Apollo - The Businessman and the Traitor
Ares - The Protector and the Gladiator
Hades - The Recluse and the Warlock
Hermes - The Fool and the Derelict
Dionysus - The Woman's Man and the Seducer
Osiris - The Male Messiah and the Punisher
Poseidon - The Artist and the Abuser
Zeus - The King and the Dictator
Beware that stereotypes aren't the same thing as archetypes. Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations which will limit your character.
Character Profiles
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Creating Character Profiles
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A character is a person about whom you write. Every work of fiction (book, screenplay, SCA persona, RPG, LARP, MMORPG, video game, etc.) has characters in it. Question is, do you as a writer, really know as much as you should about your characters? T...
NaNoWrimo Tip #4
Write what a typical day looks like for your character. In addition, create your character's backstory; even if you never include a word of the backstory in your novel, if you know your character's past you'll be able to make him or her more convincing to the reader.
Here Are the Last Five Posts on My Blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand by"The plot is the story. It's what happens in the novel and why it's interesting."
Plot
The Classic Three Act Structure
Act 1: We meet the characters and discover what the main problem of the story is. This is the preparation act for the reader (set it up).
Act 2: Here we have the complication. The problem that we set up in the 1st act becomes more dangerous & difficult. The hero's attempts to solve the problem come crashing down and our hero is lying on his back with no apparent means of escape.
Act 3: The resolution of the problem. Tie up loose ends.
Example: The Choking Doberman
- Martha walked up the flight of stairs to her second floor apartment and wearily opened the door. As soon as she made her way into the apartment she was greeted by the sight of her pet Doberman pinscher choking and unable to breathe.
Filled with fear and anxiety, Martha rushed him to the vet and was told to leave him there for emergency surgery. Feeling a bit calmer now that her beloved pet was being looked after, she returned to her apartment.
No sooner had Martha set her purse down on the small table near the door when the phone rang. She picked it up and was surprised to hear the vet's voice urging her to get out of her apartment right away. Martha quickly grabbed for her purse, ran out of her apartment, and knocked urgently on her neighbor's door. Fortunately, Marge was home and she let Martha in. Martha told Marge of how she had come home to find her dog choking and of the bizarre phone call she had received from the vet.
A few minutes later the two women heard the sound of sirens nearing the apartment building. Four police cars screeched to a stop ouside the building and several cops made their way up the stairs and into Martha's apartment.
After waiting what she considered to be a prudent amount of time, Martha ventured out of her neighbor's apartment to see what was happening. She was told by one of the cops that after a quick search of her apartment they discovered a burglar hiding in the bedroom closet bleeding profusely from one hand.
Analysis of "The Choking Doberman"
As Ronald Tobias explains in "20 Master Plots", "The Choking Doberman" is completely plot driven; the characters take a backseat. In addition, it has three movements: the story is set up when the woman comes home and finds her pet Doberman choking. She takes the dog to the vet.
The second movement starts when the woman gets home and her phone starts ringing. A startling complication is introduced when the agitated vet urges her to get out of the house. The woman flees the house and the unknown danger.
The third movement begins with the arrival of the police, with the climax ocurring when they tell her that they found a burglar hiding in her bedroom closet who had been bitten by the Doberman. By the end of the story the mystery is solved.
photo credit: tinali778 No Plot? No Problem!
No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 12/23/2009)
This book was written by the founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty - it's a great guide to writing a book in a month
Blockbuster Plot
Blockbuster Plots: Pure & Simple
Amazon Price: $16.50 (as of 12/23/2009)
Blockbuster Plots Plot Planner & Scene Tracker Writers Workshop DVD: 7 Secrets of Plot
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/23/2009)
Blockbuster Plots The Ultimate Guide to Creating Plot DVD Plot Planner Writers Workshop
Amazon Price: (as of 12/23/2009)
Ideas to Save Your Plot
- Kill a main character.
- Hit shuffle on your iPod and the first song that comes up is the title of your next chapter.
- Your main character finds an old letter in a library book.
- Include an element of betrayal: someone is having an affair or has lied about their past.
- Flip through magazines or art books. Look through the newspaper.
- Go people watching: sit at an outdoor café; go to the mall; ride the subway or the bus.
- Write a list of words that are common to your genre and combine them in interesting ways to come up with titles for your chapters (dragon, castle, moat, knight). Once you have a title, create a plot twist based on that title.
- Think of your family's stories which you've heard your relatives retelling over and over again.
- Thinking of an important, far-off goal your character is striving to reach and write about your character's quest to achieve this objective.
- Your character loses someone or something that is very dear to them.
- Your character's business is in trouble. Brainstorm ten possible ways to solve the problem. Choose the most unexpected approach to write about.
- Steal from the best. Think of a novel you love, take elements from the plot, and make them your own.
- Use social media for ideas (delicious, Stumbleupon, Twitter). Here's something I found while stumbling: Armed Thieves Steal Magritte Painting in Daylight Raid.
- Visit One Sentence or PostSecret.
Help for Finding Ideas for Your Novel
The Pocket Muse
Amazon Price: $10.39 (as of 12/23/2009)
The Pocket Muse Endless Inspiration: New Ideas for Writing (No. 2)
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/23/2009)
The Writer’s Idea Book
Amazon Price: $10.19 (as of 12/23/2009)
The Writer's Block: 786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination
Amazon Price: $9.95 (as of 12/23/2009)
The Writer's Book of Matches
Amazon Price: (as of 12/23/2009)
How to Be More Creative - A Handbook for Alchemists
"How to Be More Creative - A Handbook for Alchemists" explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field, from medicine to business, and from engineering to developing a creative solution to a negotiation impasse. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.The ebook has 130 pages and 20 chapters and is chock full of value.
The purpose of this ebook is not just to give you information, but to transform you into a more creative and innovative person.
Print it out and place it in a ring-binder; you'll be creating a work file and adding lots of things to your binder, including creativity techniques, journal pages, quotes, photographs, ideas, and so on. At the end of almost every chapter in this ebook you'll find instructions on what to do with your work file.
Here's a .PDF file that contains the ebook's table of contents and the introduction:
"Table of Contents and Introduction"
More Books for Getting Ideas
The Write-Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/23/2009)
A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words: Image-Driven Story Prompts and Excercises for Writers
Amazon Price: $17.09 (as of 12/23/2009)
"Conflict is the source of all growth and is an absolute necessity if one is to be alive. Jean Miller"
Conflict
- A character struggling against nature.
- A struggle between two or more characters (relational conflict): Here it's usually the protagonist and the antagonist competing or clashing with each other.
- A struggle between the main character and some aspect of society (social conflict): This is a human v. group conflict; the protagonist has a problem with a group of people.
- A struggle of opposing forces within one character (inner conflict).
Scenes: Miniature Stories
- "Scenes are capsules in which compelling characters undertake significant actions in a vivid and memorable way that allows the events to feel as though they're happening in real time. When strung together, individual scenes add up to build plots and storylines."
Blockbuster Scenes
Blockbuster Plots Scene Tracker Kit
Amazon Price: $45.00 (as of 12/22/2009)
Blockbuster Plots: 7 Essential Elements of Scene DVD Scene Tracker Writers Workshop
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/22/2009)
Free Online References fo Writers
- Dictionary
- Dictionary.com
- Thesaurus
- Thesaurus.com
- 49 Free Online Reference Tools for Freelance Writers
- Today, I've accumulate some terrific free resources for writers. Some are dictionaries, some encyclopedias and others are tools to bookmark to use as needed. I hope you find these links handy and helpful.
NaNoWriMo on Flickr
novel inspiration
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NaNoWrimo Tip #5
Make sure that you write every day. You may tempted to skip a day and promise yourself that you'll write twice as much the next day, but every day in which you don't write makes it that much more likely that you won't cross the finish line on November 30th with 50,000 words down on paper.
NaNoWriMo on Twitter
- NaNoWriMo
- aka NaNoWriMo
- 16,181 followers
- 3,527 following
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- @annaluna Good call!
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- @annaluna I think it's okay to finish the manuscript in the class. @lanidianerich? What say you?
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- Two free slots available in online revision class lead by bestselling #NaNoWriMo author Lani Diane Rich: http://tinyurl.com/ylahsky
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- The images are back, too! Apparently they were out on the back pitch playing rugby. Glad that is all sorted...
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- And we're back! The sites are up, but the images are still on a walkabout. We'll let you know when they are fully restored!
More NaNoWriMo Lenses
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NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 using EelKat's Methods
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NaNoWriMo 2009 will be my 5th year at NaNo. So far I've had 4 years and 3 wins and this year I'm going for my fourth win. I failed my first year (2005) ...did like 2,000 before I got bored with my plot. I did 183,000 my second year (2006) ... kind...
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The Top 5 NaNoWriMo Tools
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Every November thousands of writers gather together to take part in the world's largest writing contest: The National Novel Writing Month 50,000 Words in 30 Days Contest also known as NaNoWriMo. Myself, I've been doing the contest every year since 20...
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Get Ready For NaNoWriMo
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National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, encourages ordinary people to write a novel during the month of November. The novel must be at least 50,000 words in length, which is short by most novel writing standards. This feat can be accomplished by wri...
NaNoWriMo Participation
Must-Have Writing Books
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
This little book describes the rules that govern the use of: apostrophe, comma, colon, semi-colon, dash, hyphen and period.
Amazon Price: $8.64 (as of 12/22/2009)
The Dictionary of Concise Writing: More Than 10,000 Alternatives to Wordy Phrases
Amazon Price: (as of 12/22/2009)
Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus
Amazon Price: $26.40 (as of 12/22/2009)
Concise Oxford English Dictionary: 11th Edition Revised 2008
Amazon Price: $23.10 (as of 12/22/2009)
Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition
Amazon Price: $10.08 (as of 12/22/2009)
Fun Resources for Writers
- Cliché Finder
- Have you been searching for just the right cliché to use?
- The Story Starter
- The Story Starter provides 373,067,200 creative ideas and writer prompts. Here's one:
- Name Finder
- Are you writing a novel and are having trouble coming up with a good name for your secondary characters, or even the heroine of your story? Here's a tool that will help.
- Quick Story Idea Generator
- Here's one idea: The theme of this story: satirical caper. The main characters: antisocial technician and manipulative novelist. The major event of the story: longing.
- 36 Dramatic Situations
- Georges Polti says that all stories boil down to just 36 dramatic situations and takeoffs of those situations.
- The Brainstormer
- From the site: I recently found an interesting book called The Story Structure Architect. It broke down every plot idea into about 50-something different categories. I used this and narrowed it down to 45 for my Brainstormer.
NaNoWriMo Tip #6
Don't edit as you go; if you just can't keep yourself from going and back and looking at what you wrote, do minimum editing.
"As a writer, you already know what it's like to hold the power of creation in your hands. With a few strokes of a pen, you can forge a universe or start a galaxy spinning in space. You can mold brave new worlds and planets, complete with mountains, plains, and seas. You can even establish nations and cities, and populate them with culture and history. Like a living god, you can determine the future of an alternate reality." -- Corrine Kenner
Writing Tips
- Daily Writing Tips
- Daily Writing Tips is a blog where you will find simple yet effective tips to improve your writing.
- Language is a Virus
- All sorts of help to cure writer's block.
- The Scriptorium
- Lots of tools and resources for writers.
- How to Write a Great Novel
- From writing in the bathroom (Junot Díaz) to dressing in character (Nicholson Baker), 11 top authors share their methods for getting the story on the page (from the Wall Street Journal).
Tips for Writes, From Writers
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Tips For Writers, From Writers
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The entire writing process is fraught with perils. Many writers would argue that the hardest part of writing is beginning. When asked what was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, "A blank sheet of paper...
Point of View
First Person
Everything in first person POV comes from one character's perspective. We can only know what that character knows, and our knowledge may be skewed by that character's biases. For example: "Twilight" is told from Bella Swann's perspective (yes, I read the "Twilight" series, it's one of my guilty pleasures:
- "I'd never given much thought to dying-though I'd had reason enough in the last few months-but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me."
Third Person
This is the most commonly used - in other words, third person pronouns such as "he" or "she". When you write in the third person you have a couple of choices: omniscient, where you can hear the thoughts and see the action from any character's perspective; objective, where only narration, dialogue and description is used to tell the story and we aren't allowed into any character's thoughts; and limited omniscient, where we see the story from one or a few character's viewpoints and can hear only their thoughts.
Second Person
The second person point of view is uncommon - the "you" form. Most stories we read are in the first or third person, so using the second person may confuse your readers. But if it suits your novel, then go for it.
Write Great Fiction Series
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints (Write Great Fiction)
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
Plot & Structure: (Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish) (Write Great Fiction)
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
Write Great Fiction - Dialogue
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
Description & Setting: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Believable World of People, Places, and Events (Write Great Fiction)
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
Revision And Self-Editing (Write Great Fiction)
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
Nanowrimo Tip #7
Outline your novel so that you have a clear idea of how your plot and characters are going to develop before you start writing.
More Books to Help You Meet the Challenge
You Can Write A Novel Kit
Amazon Price: (as of 12/23/2009)
Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days
Amazon Price: $15.63 (as of 12/23/2009)
Write a Novel in 30 Days
Amazon Price: $10.95 (as of 12/23/2009)
Elements of Writing Fiction - Beginnings, Middles & Ends (Elements of Fiction Writing)
Amazon Price: $10.19 (as of 12/23/2009)
First Draft in 30 Days
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/23/2009)
The Story Structure Architect
Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters
Amazon Price: $13.59 (as of 12/23/2009)
How to Be More Creative
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How to Be More Creative
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Having the ability to come up with creative ideas can help you each and every day. Creativity is not the sole domain of the arts-whether it's painting, theater, music, architecture, dancing, literature, and so on-but is important in any field, from m...
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing
This is not a book about how to write great dialogue or develop charismatic characters. This book is a blueprint, the scene by scene layout of your novel's plot structure. He gets as detailed as stating the order in which the first 15 scenes need to occur, what characters need to appear in those scenes, and what--in general terms--needs to happen.
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/22/2009)
The Marshall Plan Workbook : Writing Your Novel from Start to Finish
Amazon Price: (as of 12/22/2009)
Making Time to Write
Here are some things you can do to make the time to participate in NaNoWrimo:
- Write while you're riding the subway to work.
- Write in your car while your kid is in ballet lessons.
- Don't watch TV during the month of November and use that time to write (save your favorite TV shows and watch them in December).
- Write while you're on your lunch break.
- Get up half an hour earlier and write.
- Run as many errands as you can in October and use the time when you would be running errands in November to write.
- If you want to make sure that you make time to write, you can also take this drastic approach: "Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning until you've written a page. That way, you're guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel." --Charles Willeford
Making Time to Write
"I did my first novel 'The House of the Spirits' writing only at night after I worked all day for 12 hours; two different shifts at two different jobs. I wrote at night in a little kitchen. It was really hard. It's like falling in love, though; you make love behind closed doors if you have to."
-- Isabel Allende
Stein on Writing
Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 12/23/2009)
Follow Sol Stein's advice: "Write the sentence you want the world to remember you by."
Writing Advice from Meggin Cabot
Novelist Meggin Cabot answers the question: How do you write a novel?
Plan Your Novel by Creating a Mind Map
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Creating Mind Maps: Everything You Need to Know
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A mind map is a whole-brain method for generating and organizing ideas which is largely inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's approach to note-taking. The concept was brought into the mainstream by Tony Buzan and is based on patterns found in nature an...
(NaNoWriMo 2009 is November 1, 2009)
Follow Me on Twitter
- Marelisa
- aka Marelisa
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- @WpBlogHost I think it's going to be at least a couple of days before I get up the courage to mess with my code again. :-)
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Thank you for stopping by!
Everyone is welcome to comment, including non-squidoo members.
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Reply
- KimGiancaterino KimGiancaterino Dec 5, 2009 @ 12:57 am
- This is an excellent reference for writers. Thanks for explaining NaNoWriMo so clearly. Blessed by a Squid Angel.
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Reply
- Marelisa Marelisa Oct 30, 2009 @ 10:48 am
- Hi Linda, Thank you. I'm really getting excited now that the deadline to get started is almost here. :-)
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- LindaJM LindaJM Oct 29, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
- Good luck with your NaNoWriMo novel! I'm putting links to this page on both my NaNoWriMo lenses. 5* / Angel Blessed.
Fabulous Creativity Resource
Click on the ebook for more information.
Here's What You'll Find Inside
* Learn how to move sideways to solve problems by taking different perspectives, questioning your assumptions, and trying different points of entry. Stop trying to solve problems by digging deeper in the same hole.
* Create a "toolbox" of creativity techniques you can use to solve just about any problem.
* Discover the secret formula behind the amazing creativity of the world's most famous product design firm.
* Get lots of ideas on how to break out of your routine to look at problems and challenges with fresh eyes.
* Find out how to play your way to new ideas and laugh your way to solving problems.
* Learn how to approach almost anything creatively and how to see life as a series of opportunities for everyday creative acts: whether you're deciding what to wear, fixing dinner, or entertaining your child. The world-renowned psychologist Abraham H. Maslow called this kind of creativity "self-actualizing creativity".
* This ebook will teach you the secrets to get your ideas to reproduce like rabbits.
* Discover how to use visual thinking to get unexpected results (it's how Einstein developed the theory of relativity).
* Learn the traits that highly creative people share (it doesn't matter if you don't have these characteristics now, just fake it 'till you make it).
* Join the debate: is creativity work or inspiration? Learn how to skyrocket your creativity by answering that it's both.
* Learn tips on how to turn your ideas into reality.
* Get step-by-step instructions on how to enter the most effective creative state there is: the flow state.
* Discover even more ways to get your creative synapses firing.
by Marelisa
I hold a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Georgetown... (more)
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