NaNoWriMo – I need help!

Yesterday was the halfway point of the month and while I’m not halfway to my 50K goal yet I am so much closer to it than I was two weeks ago.  Currently I have almost 13K words.  I’m having all the usual issues with making time to write… there’s that life thing.  The “sick”  count for the month is son 2, husband 1, and I’m still waiting for the laundry and kitchen fairies to show up and take care of those chores.  And if someone could figure out how to lock my TV so it won’t turn on until my writing is done for the day, I’d pay good money for that gadget!

Then there’s the weather thing.  The November Nor’easter as they are calling it made a mess of everything last week, including a 15 hour power outage.  Ever since we rode out hurricane Isabel I have a very hard time focusing on much of anything except the trees on a windy day.  Usually I make a point of getting out of the house (the wind only bothers me at home) but the rain was so awful, my couple of forays out ended quickly.  The day job must be attended — fortunately it’s part-time.  The critiquing biz is going gang busters (and I’m loving it!).  And my writing buddy who provides an external check on my wandering and procrastinating by meeting up with me several times a week to write, has the audacity to leave town for part of this week.

So, with all that going on I’m in need of some concrete ideas for keeping myself focused on the task at hand (that would be writing 50K words this month). 

The best one, so far, is to arrange to write with someone else outside of my house.  I have a hard time dragging myself out when I don’t have anyone to meet, and then it’s waaay too easy to procrastinate or find other, easier things to do (like write a blog post!).  Other than that I’m at a loss.

Do you have any tips or tricks for keeping butt in chair and fingers on the keyboard?  I’d love to hear them!  I can use all the help I can get!

Laurin

It’s time for NaNoWriMo!

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo for the third time this year.  We kicked it off here in Williamsburg with a write-in at a local B&N cafe.  Eight of us were there and lots of writing was accomplished!

I meet regularly to write with a friend I met two years ago at my very first NaNo write in.  We both find the structure of making an appointment to meet and write keeps the procrastination demons at bay.  This is probably the single most important thing that has come out of NaNoWriMo for me.

I’ve yet to “win”.  50K words in the month of November is truly a challenge, not just because it requires a committment to write regularly, but because there is so much else that happens this month (including, this year, my son waking up with the flu this morning).  The past two years I’ve done well — 35K+ — but I didn’t really commit to the 50K.  This year, though, I’m committed, and my friends are helping me keep my eye on the prize.

What prize?  A completed first draft.

I hate first drafts.  I love revising.  So getting through a first draft is the hardest part of the entire process of creating a book for me.  This way I get to sprint through the hard part with lots of people all over the words pushing me to keep up my word count, pushing me to keep my fingers moving, pushing me to create without editing, without questioning.  It’s all about getting those 50K words on the page.

The real prize is that I’ll give myself December to catch up with all the things that fall by the wayside this month while I put my writing front and center. Then, come January, I get to tackle my very favorite part of writing a novel.  I get to take the SFD (**itty First Draft) and craft it into a compelling story.  What a way to start the new year!

If you haven’t joined the madness of NaNoWriMo, it’s not too late.  Check out nanowrimo.org and sign up for free.  Then plant your butt in the nearest chair and get to work.  Your first draft could be finished by November 30th!  What are you waiting for!

NOTE: The NaNo site is REALLY slow this first week or so of the challenge, so be patient.  If you can’t get signed up right now, start writing.  In a few days you can make it “official” on the site.

Now go write!

Laurin

Drum roll, please…

And the winners of the birthday presents are…

Scene and Structure, by Jack Bickham (my favorite writing book!) goes to Tina Glasneck!

The free 25 page critique goes to Anna G. — but I don’t have any contact info for Anna.  

Anna G., if you see this please contact me at Laurin @ Wittig.com (no spaces).  If you know Anna G — I think she might be a Washington Romance Writers member — please let her know she won. 

If I don’t hear from her by next Wednesday I’ll let the random number generator genie choose another winner, so stay tuned!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and left good wishes!

Laurin

P.S. (Friday AM)  Anna G has been located!

It’s been one year!

It’s our first birthday here at Between the Lines.  One year ago today I launched both this blog and Between the Lines Critiques.  It’s been a fun year of finding my way as a blogger and reading so many new-to-me writers.  I’m looking forward to continuing both in the coming year!

I’m a strong believer that birthdays should be celebrated, so in honor of this milestone and as a way to thank all the folks who have joined me here on the blog, and all those who have allowed me to critique their work, I’m offering up two birthday presents.

I’m giving away one free 25 page critique (first 25 pages of a manuscript)

and

one copy of my favorite writing reference, Scene and Structure, by Jack Bickham.

What do you have to do to win one of these presents?  Simply leave a comment before midnight Eastern time on Tuesday, Oct. 27 (happy birthday! will do) and I’ll randomly choose two posters (one present each). 

Winners will be announced on Wednesday, October 28th, so you’ve got a full week to comment!

Laurin

Formatting 101

One of the very first things I learned when I started taking writing workshops, back in the dark ages when personal computers were so new most people still wrote on a typewriter, was the industry standard for formatting a manuscript.  It was based on typewriters and their limitations along with the needs of publishers and typesetters.

The technology available to writers has changed, but the standard format in most ways has not, and yet, again and again I see manuscripts that don’t conform to these very simple formatting requirements.

Here’s the basics:

Margins  = no less than 1 inch all around, no more than 1.25 inches all around

Lines per page = 23 – 25

Line spacing = double… not 1.5, and no extra space after a paragraph.  Double.

Font = this one has loosened up some, but generally Courier or New Times Roman, and always 12 pt.

Headers = a header is required on every page except the title page.  It consists of, at the left margin, the title of the piece, a slash, and your last name.  If you have a common last name, like Smith, use your first initial or full first name.  Ex:  Charming the Shrew/Wittig

At the right margin, a page number.  It’s up to you whether you want to put the word “page” before the number.  Make sure there is sufficient white space between your header and the body of the text so they don’t look like they run together.  The easiest way to do this is to simply add a return or two after the page number.  Page numbers must be sequential through the entire manuscript.

And the newest formatting quirk = only one space after a period.  For those of us who learned to type on typewriters where we were required to put two spaces after a period this one is a hard habit to break.  Autocorrect is your friend if, like me, you find decades of typing two spaces after a period virtually impossible to change.  Seriously.  My fingers have a mind of their own.

When starting a new chapter move your cursor about 1/3 of the way down the page and center the word Chapter followed by a number, either numerical or spelled out.  It’s up to you.  You can also choose to capitalize the whole chapter heading, or not, or underline it, or not.

And my pet peeve… folks, when you leave a line intentionally blank, say for a scene break or a change in your point of view character, put a symbol there to indicate you did this on purpose.  A simple # centered will do, or asterisks if you prefer.  1 – 5 symbols is commonly used.  But really, one is enough.  Sometimes it’s obvious that a scene break or pov change has occurred.  Sometimes it’s not.  Don’t confuse your editor/agent/contest judge/critiquer.

That covers it.

Why is this necessary? 

Some of it is simply the convention, but most of it is to make reading manuscripts and making comments, line edits and/or copy edits easier to insert.  It also made it easy to estimate the number of words in a manuscript before the days of word counters on the computer.

The number of lines of text on a page, which is bounded by the margins and line spacing, combined with a 12 pt font gives you a quick and dirty estimate of total word count.  For a fixed space font like Courier, you’ll get approximately 250 words per page.  400 pages then equals a 100k word manuscript.  With Times New Roman (a variable spaced font) you’ll get closer to 270-280 words per page.  So a 350 page manuscript is approximately 100k words.

As we move further and further away from paper copies all of this standardization of format may be less and less necessary, and indeed, there may be publishers who already have moved on to their own preferences for manuscript formatting.  However, unless you know for sure a publisher wants something different, following these simple guidelines will make you look like you know what you are doing.  They’ll make you look like you take this process of publication seriously enough to mind the details.

In short, they make you look like a professional and editors, agents, copy editors, and your critique partners will all appreciate your effort.

Laurin

Kate Duffy

The romance industry lost an amazing editor, and a hell of a woman, this week when Kate Duffy passed away.  She will be sorely missed.

Smart Bitches blog has a wonderful tribute to Kate.

Laurin

Workshop for Virginia Romance Writers

I had a wonderful time yesterday in the company of my friends and colleagues at Virginia Romance Writers.  I presented my new craft workshop, Scene CPR: Breathing Life into an Ailing Scene, then had a great lunch where we got to talk writing to our hearts’ content.

Gotta say, I love hanging out with writers. 

I got to say hi to old friends and meet some new friends. I’m sending out a big thanks to everyone who turned out yesterday! 

Laurin

Top 5 Writing Books

Well, the youngest kid is back in school today, so I’m bidding a fond farewell to summer, and turning an excited eye towards fall.  I’ll admit it, I was one of those kids who yearned for school to start back.  I whiled away the hours reading in the summer, but lived for September.  

Let’s just say it, I was (and still am) a nerd. 

I love to learn. 

I particularly like to learn something new, then teach it to someone else.  If I were to teach a creative writing class this fall, the following would be the Top Five books on the reading list:

1.  Scene & Structure: How to Construct Fiction with Scene-by-Scene Flow, Logic and Readability by Jack Bickham.

This one is my bible.  I go back to it again and again.  Bickham’s points about scene goals and disasters, and sequels, help me plan my scenes before I write them, and help me revise them when the time comes.  They also help me make sure I’m being true to my characters’ goals instead of forcing them to move through the plot machinations I dream up, which in turn helps to make my characters more real.

I find myself passing on Bickham’s wisdom again and again to my critique partners and my critique clients, from the multi-published to the newly writing, and I’m amazed at how few people understand these simple but powerful writing tools.

2.  Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder

This is a fairly new addition to my must have shelf.  I confess I’m transfixed by his “beat sheet” where you can test your plot against time honored story elements, but the guy has a way of making everything he talks about easily understood.  BTW, screenwriting books are great even if you don’t write screenplays.  Movies are short by comparison to books, but they are based on the same classic story structure.  I find it much easier to study that structure through movies.  If you are plot challenged, as I am, this makes for a great way to study lots of stories in a relatively short amount of time.

3.  The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not by John Vorhaus

Confession, I haven’t read this whole book, though what I have read has notes scrawled in the margins.  What I depend on for helping me develop both a story and a character is his chapter (#7) on “The Comic Throughline.”  This is a quick and dirty way to see if your character can carry the story.  I use it to help guide me in building a character, the steps acting as prompts for me to explore different aspects of my character and fine tune them.  I discovered Vorhaus’s (hilarious) writing book when a friend sent me a link to that chapter 7 (which Mr. Vorhaus kindly shares there).  You can find it here: The Comic Throughline.  I ended up buying the book because I thought he was brilliant and must have other gems to teach me.  He does.

4.  The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writersby Christopher Vogler

This one is a little denser than the previous three, but it breaks down the mythic structure of stories, originally identified by the great Joseph Campbell, into steps you can apply to your own stories.  I like to dip into this one when my plot is meandering, or when I’m trying to see the plot of a new book, and aways find nuggets of insight that steer me back in a productive direction.

5.  Myth and the Movies: Discovering the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films by Stuart Voytilla

This is a fabulous companion volume to The Writer’s Journey.  It takes movies (remember, that’s how I prefer to study story structure & plot) and breaks them down into the same categories that The Writer’s Journey identifies.  It also has lovely visual aids in the form of The Hero’s Journey Model (a circle that shows each of the mythic steps for each movie analyzed!).  What can I say, pictures are worth a thousand words — at least as a quick reference.

 

So, there’s my Top Five writing books, but wait…there’s more.  I have one more to share.  In New Orleans, where I once lived, they call this lagniappe (pronounced roughly, lan-yap) — a little something extra.

 

6.  Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter’s Guide to Every Story Ever Told by Blake Snyder

This does for Save the Cat! what Myth and the Movies does for The Writer’s Journey.  It takes the beat sheet that Snyder explains in Save the Cat! and applies it to movies in ten different genres.  Examples galore!!!  Examples are right up there with visual aides in my preferred learning tools.

 

So, it’s September. 

School is back in session. 

Teacher Laurin says pick up a new-to-you writing book and see if you can learn something new about your craft.  Then share that new knowledge with someone else!  Heck, come back here and share it with me.  I’m a nerd.  I love to learn.

Laurin

P.S.  If you have a favorite how-to writing book, please share in the comments!

Writer’s Serenity Prayer

One of my Virginia Romance Writers colleagues, Shara Lanel, posted this on the chapter loop and allowed me to share it here:

Writer’s Serenity Prayer

 

God grant me the serenity to accept the first draft as crap;

The courage to write the next chapter anyway;

and the wisdom to know it can all be fixed later.

Too true!!! 

This is the only way I ever move forward in a first draft.   I have to keep telling myself it’s okay if it all stinks like roadkill on a hot summer’s day, I can fix it later.  Since “fixing”, aka rewriting/revising, is my very favorite part of the writing process, that keeps me in my happy place long enough to actually get the $%#@*&!!!  first draft done.

Speaking of first drafts — mine is moving slower than I like, but end of school and a killer summer cold kept me away from the keyboard for over a week.  I’ve gotten back to it this week and I’m almost done drafting chapter two.  I’ve also sketched out my scene goals and disasters for chapter three, so I’ve got a roadmap for the next chapter, too.  Onward!!

Hope your writing is flowing!

Laurin

Romance Genre in the News

Just read an interesting article at The Huffington Post about the Romance fiction genre: Heaving Bosoms: A Tonic for the Recession? 

It always amazes me that romance fiction gets a bad rap so often.  My own mom (holder of a Master’s degree in English Literature) used to ask me when I was going to write a real book… until I pointed out to her that both Jane Austen and Shakespeare wrote romances.  Now when she tells people her daughter writes romances, she frequently follows up with: did you know Jane Austen wrote romances?  It’s an improvement.

It’s particularly gratifying to me that it’s Princeton University that hosted the symposium mentioned in the article.  There are more than a few of us in the Romance industry who are Ivy educated.

Write on!

Laurin