National 2013 novel month

Worldwide, the national month of novel or NaNoWriMo writing, returns about us. If you have not yet participated in it, do so. It's great. Even if you are a writer, slow, working a month at a different rate will help improve their skills.

So, what is NaNoWriMo, exactly? It is an annual event of writing in which authors from around the world are trying to complete a novel of 50,000 + word in 30 days. The competition takes place in the month of November. Today is September 30, so you have a month to prepare.

If you think that it is difficult, remember, which means an average of 1,666 words per day 50,000 words in 30 days. That is not much, right? If you want to see some aspects that could help end the competition, look for my post from last year: how to complete your novel 30 days NaNoWriMo.

You should use the month of October as a period of preparation. Don't trap, meaning not to write any text already, but come prepared. These are some of the things you can do:

Decide what you want to write: is literary fiction fiction or gender? If gender, what gender?If you're a plot-driven writer, starting point of plot ideas. It takes about a week. Then, begin to add the flash and characters. If you are a writer, based on the character, create some good characters and then start to make a plot around them. The idea about how your novel begins and ends how his novel. Fill in the gaps, but without going into much detail.

The main point here is to get some kind of idea about: genre, plot, characters, setting, serious incidents, so when on 1 November, you can start writing freely.

If you participate, and I hope that add me to your friends "writing" does it,:
http://NaNoWriMo.org/en/participants/julusian

NaNoWriMo: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Good luck!!

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About the author:Iulian Ionescu is a writer of fantasy and science fiction. He wrote a series of short stories and is now in the process of publishing his first two novels. Iulian blogs fantasy parchment waiting to share their knowledge and struggles as a writer with the writing community. You can also find him on Twitter at @iulienel and @fantasyscroll.

Writing By Time Might Work For You

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In some previous posts I advocated setting daily, weekly, and monthly word count targets, with an emphasis on the weekly targets since those are the easiest to achieve. Lately, my full-time job has been increasingly complex and I want to dedicate more of my time to my family. I talked about this before in a post on writing when busy.

Unfortunately summer is usually a killer. I’m not saying that, as a writer, you should not get to enjoy your summer. I actually recently blogged about writing while on vacation. What I find is that during times of high stress and vacation, when it is very easy to get distracted, setting a word count target is still good, but might be an evil in disguise.

All it takes is one week of not achieving your word target, and you will think the next week will be good enough to catch-up. But it never is; it turns into a downward spiral of missing word targets. And that’s why I came up with a different system:

Writing By Time

What do I mean by that? First of all, it’s very good to know your writing speed. On average, how much can you write in one hour? If you don’t know do two tests:

Take 3 pages and type them. How much time did it take?Think of a new idea for a story and start writing. Stop after 3 pages. How much time did it take?

Now, count all the words in the six pages and divide them by the amount of time in minutes. You should be getting an average number of words per minute. Times that by 60 and you get a pretty decent average number of words per hour. My guess is you will probably get something between 1000 to 2000 words per hour.

Now, let’s backtrack: what is your word count target? If it’s 10,000 words per week, and your average words per hour is 1,500 (let’s say), then you are looking at a total of 7 hours in a week (rounded up).

I know you just stopped right now and said: “What?? Only 7 hours?? Come on! There are 168 hours in an entire week and I only need 4.16% of it to achieve my word count!?”

The answer is: YES.

So what stops you from finding those 7 hours? I can’t answer that, but I can tell you how you can fix it: scheduling time.

Schedule Your Writing Time

So, if we are talking about 7 hours in a week, we are really talking about an hour a day. Let’s split that in two and we get 2 chunks of 30 minutes per day. This step is optional; if it’s easier for you to do a complete hour, keep it that way. This is what worked for me: I set my alarm clock 30 minutes earlier, I wake up and I write for 30 minutes. I set my phone for an alarm at 9:30 PM. When it rings, I jump up, go to my keyboard and type for 30 minutes.

You get the idea? Decide what are the times of the day when you have the ability to give yourself 30 minutes for writing. As soon as that time comes, stop whatever you are doing and go write. Set yourself a timer and write for those 30 minutes without stopping. Don’t even worry about word count. Just write. Have a little paper or Excel document where you mark the time you spent.

When you get to the end of the week, take your word count and your hours count. Normally, if you stuck to the schedule you should have hit the target word count.

How Is It Different?

How is this different than setting a word count? Well, setting a weekly word count makes you prone to this internal thought: Oh, it’s Monday… I can skip today and write tomorrow. Oh, it’s Tuesday… I have time Wednesday. And then… It’s Sunday. Oh, crap!

By setting yourself daily short timeslots you achieve two things: you are on a precise schedule and take the guesswork out of it, and secondly, you do not get into a situation where you have to write 5000 words today, something so overwhelming that you are unable to write even one word.

Divide et Impera or divide and conquer is a good way to solve a huge task, such as writing a novel. Breaking it into chapters, scenes, pages, and ultimately into chunks of time will take this daunting task from an overwhelming hurdle, to a systematic process.

Don’t be afraid to use what the Roman Emperors used to conquer the world. It works. Use it to your advantage, and I hope this will bring you success.

Make sure to leave your thoughts about this method. Do you already use it or do you prefer the word count target method? Leave your comments below.

Best of luck,

 

About the author: Iulian Ionescu is a writer of fantasy and science fiction. He wrote a number of short stories and is now in the process of publishing his first two novels. Iulian blogs on Fantasy Scroll hoping to share his knowledge and struggles as a writer with the writing community. You can find him on Twitter at @iulienel and @fantasyscroll.

Writing On Vacation

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First of all, should you be writing on vacation? I am curious to know what people think on the subject, so please leave some comments at the end. Now, since I have the microphone, let me give you my thoughts on this.

To Each His Own

I think there are two categories of people: those who write A LOT, and those who write LITTLE. Of course, both are highly subjective quantities, but you should be able to make your own estimation. In my view people who write very little are those who only write the bare minimum per day, which in my head is 1000 words. But more realistically I like to stretch this number to 2500. I know, I know, everyone is different, but these are my numbers. If I write 1000 words in a day, in my head I barely wrote. If I write 2500, I am happy, but not ecstatic. If I write more than 2500 words I feel like I wrote a LOT. That’s me. You are probably different, but you know your numbers.

Now, it’s not surprising that people who write little (by their own standards, let me reiterate that), are also people who have full-time jobs, not related to their writing. On the other hand, many people who write a lot are people who have more free time, generally speaking.

Write With Your Mind

So, for people who write a lot, a vacation might need to be a real vacation. A time when you close your mind, lay on the beach or where ever you like and let your brain relax. That could be right, but for this situation I would definitely suggest using the vacation to create ideas.

Remember, writing never stops. Just as a painter never stops imagining things to paint, a writer’s mind is always at work, even when the writer is asleep. So, with the excitement of vacation, there are lots of ways you can boost your imagination:

Look at the local people. Do you see characters?Talk to others. Do you see story ideas? Do you see plots?Peek at the local news or newspapers. Anything out of the ordinary?Walk through local stores and shops. Do you see anything that you have never seen before?Street names and people names. Any of them good enough to make it into your writing?What about setting? Is there anything you see that would be a good backdrop for your story?

If you don’t want to bother with your laptop, if you made a vow not to look at it for 7 days, keep a small notebook in your pocket and a pen. When you see something, write something. Take notes of anything that is outside of your regular world and it might turn into a story later on.

Write With Your Fingers

Now, for people who write little, category that often includes yours truly, vacation is the perfect time to get some writing done. Here are a few ways to do that:

 On the plane, train or car. I believe the plane is a perfect place to write. Turn off that darn TV, you’ve been watching it everyday, and turn on your laptop. On my last trip to Eastern Europe I had a total of 13 hours. The first leg was 8 hours. I got 3 short stories written. Why? Simple: no internet, no distractions. Just me and my laptop. When you are a passenger in a car, it might be more tricky, but you can still clock a few hours of writing, depending on the situation. For me, writing on the plane has been by far one of the most productive time when it came to my writing on vacation.

Mornings. The vacation morning is a wonderful time to get some writing done. It takes me maybe a day or so to get into vacation mode and when I do, even if I go to bed late, I still find myself energized in the morning and able to wake up before the others (even before my 2 year old!). So what I do, is use the time before everyone else wakes up to write. The ideas and thoughts I gathered during the previous day, nicely grouped in my head after a good night sleep, now just want to explode out on the paper. It’s a great feeling. If you have a nice balcony with a fresh breeze and view of the ocean, that makes it that much more appealing.

The rules above also apply to this category. Combining writing with gathering of ideas is a powerful combination. You will feel great when you return home an you have not only a lot of great ideas for plot, setting, and character, but also a lot of words already on the page, waiting to be edited.

Final Rules

A few rules for writing on vacation: don’t edit. Remember, you are now away from your safe zone. You are out of your ordinary life, and away from the ordinary things. Your imagination will get bombarded with new information, new feelings and emotions. Cherish them and foster them and let them seep into your fingers. Just let your writing flow on the page and forget about editing. You’ll do that once you are back home; while you are away simply write new stuff. You will thank yourself later.

One time, during a recent vacation I write about 15,000 words. It was a story I never thought of, something totally brand new. It later turned into a novel that is now part of a 4-novel series that is my work in progress. So, I’d say my vacation paid off really well.

So, what are your thoughts about this? What is your take on writing on vacation?

bout the author: Iulian Ionescu is a writer of fantasy and science fiction. He wrote a number of short stories and is now in the process of publishing his first two novels. Iulian blogs on Fantasy Scroll hoping to share his knowledge and struggles as a writer with the writing community. You can find him on Twitter at @iulienel and @fantasyscroll.