Category Archives: Tales from the Trenches

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

 

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? That’s right. Every November thousands of slightly crazy people all over the world (200,000 last year) participate in this month-long novel-writing frenzy. “The goal,” says the NaNoWriMo web site, “is to write a 50,000 word (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.” But wait, fingers off that keyboard! You can’t start before November 1. You can prep (i.e., outline, make notes, etc.). But the NaNoWriMo guidelines say you’re not allowed to actually start writing the novel before the “starting gun” fires.

Some of you may be thinking: “Oh, that’s not for me. That’s for veteran writers with several books under their belt.” Not true. Sure there are lots of experienced writers who participate. But NaNoWriMo is actually perfect for the individual who has always wanted to write a novel but is too daunted to actually begin.

“Because of the limited writing window,” says the web site, “the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality.” The site goes on to say, “Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create.” Perfect for breaking the meanest of writer’s blocks!

There’s even plenty of support and community surrounding NaNoWriMo. Just check out their web site (below); there are forums, groups, and ways to share the experience.

Have I ever participated in National Novel Writing Month? Hell no! (My body hurts just thinking about sitting at the computer for that many hours.) But if you think you can do it without hurting yourself, then go for it! It’s certain to get you past any writer’s block.

So, get yourself ready. NaNoWriMo starts in just 4 days. But don’t forget to sign up!

To Sign up for NaNoWriMo: http://www.nanowrimo.org

To read more about NaNoWriMo: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/about/whatisnano

For the guidelines: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/about/hownanoworks

The Timer Is Your Friend

 

A few years ago, a trusted mentor (a well-established writer and generally wise woman) told me: “Write for twenty minutes a day . . . period.”

“What?” She had to be joking. I knew my own writing process; I’d been writing for many years. It took me an hour just to warm up. The good stuff didn’t start happening until the second or third hour. “There’s no way I’m going to write anything of value in twenty minutes,” I said, and I explained my writing process to her, thinking she would drop this tack and come up with another that suited me better.

But she pressed on, insisting I give it a try. I had come to her in a quandary. I wasn’t writing at all. I had a particularly full plate at the time, editing and coaching other writers, and didn’t feel I had any energy or creativity for my own writing. Every time I tried to get back to my own project, my paying work received less time and attention than it needed. Ultimately, I would end up ditching my own writing again in order to catch up with my “day job.”

The cycle kept repeating. It began to seem an impossible juggling act.

So I took my mentor’s guidance and tried writing for a measly thirty minutes a day (yes, I’d negotiated an extra ten minutes!). After trying this out for a couple of weeks, the same thing happened that always happened. My energy poured into my own writing, and my other work suffered.

I came back to my mentor for further guidance.

“Did you stop when the timer went off?” she asked.

“Well . . . no,” I confessed. “But I kept getting on a roll . . . and you don’t want to interrupt a writing flow, right?” I had ended up writing for an hour or two each time.

“Stop when the timer goes off,” she said. “If you’re excited about what you’re writing when you stop, you’ll be excited to sit down the next day to pick up where you left off.”

So, I tried one more time. I had been “granted permission” to make some notes when the timer went off, so I wouldn’t lose track of the good ideas that were bubbling up, but other than that, I intended to obey the timer.

Well, the following weeks, and months, brought quite a surprise. I got to learn that my writing process was not as fixed a feature of my personality as I’d thought. I wrote four chapters over those few months, writing for only thirty minutes a day, five days a week, and usually producing less than a page in each sitting. In this slow-and-steady manner, I finished the first draft of that novel (and my paying work didn’t suffer for it).

Sure when I read over those chapters at the end of those months, they were a little rougher than something written in a series of three-hour sessions. But they were written, which was much more than I’d been accomplishing with my prior tack.

Now when a client or student tells me, “I just don’t have the time to write,” I ask: “Do you own a timer?”

Confessions of a Perfectionist

 

“Wipe that grin off your face,” I said.  “I’m not working today.  I can talk however I want.”

I was responding to a friend who loved to catch me mid-sentence as I committed grammar faux-pas.  This time I had said who instead of whom . . . or maybe it was there’s when it should have been there are.  In any case, it was my day off and I wasn’t in the mood to have my grammar policed.

The problem with being an editor is that one loses the right to make mistakes.  People expect me to be perfect in my grammar, spelling, and punctuation . . . even when I’m not editing a book.

I can’t really take advantage of the relaxed cyber-atmosphere of all-lowercased letters and punctuation-free run-ons. Of course, I’ve been grammar-aware for so long, I don’t think I could let it all hang out if I tried. (You should see me trying to text . . . It takes me 15 minutes to send one message because I’m making sure all the periods and commas are in place.)

So . . . in light of this profession-appropriate perfectionism, you can imagine my dismay when I noticed yesterday that my second post, made on August 22, had an error not only in the first sentence . . . but in the first word! My perfectionism was slipping and I was only two posts into this new blogging enterprise. Grateful that my blushing couldn’t be seen across the cyber-waves, I quickly corrected the typo and hit “update.”

I suppose I had better get used to having “my slip show” if I’m going to play in this public sandbox. (Mixed metaphor, I know, but I’m practicing letting my hair down.)

Check back at a later date when I write more about perfectionism and the role it plays in Writer’s Block.

Nomi’s Blog

 

Nomi Isak (aka Nomi Kleinmuntz) is an award-winning book editor and writing coach. She has been the editor on more than 35 published books, and her clients include the J. Paul Getty Museum, Time-Warner AudioBooks, University of California Press, and numerous individual authors. She was the developmental editor on Illuminating the Renaissance (J. Paul Getty), which won the international Eric Mitchell Prize in 2004. She is also a writer herself and has been published in regional magazines. Currently she is at work on a novel.