Preparing & Surviving Through NaNoWriMo

Every writer knows what it means when the month of November us just around the corner; the time to write the novel you have been wanting to write for ages, but never having the time to write it! Now is the time to write the story you have been itching to write for such a long time.

Are you a first time writer? Nervous about to do NaNoWriMo for the first time? I know exactly how you feel. When you sit down to write your first novel, it's terrifying. So I've put together a post to help you prepare and get through the month.

1. Have your characters ready
Keep in mind who your characters are. Their physical appearance and their personality. If you have a hard time trying to visualize what they are suppose to look like, use pictures of actors who you would pick for the role in your book if it was made into a film. Once you have your characters and feel their emotions, it's much easier to write them.

2. Write a small synopsis or Outline of the book
Some of my writer friends will write a detailed synopsis about the main plot first which would be around 30,000-40,000 word, then the authors would work their way backwards writing the events leading up to the main plot twist. I find myself sometimes writing the main plot first then working backwards in the story. Do what you think will work for you. 

3. Write, Write, oh and Write
If you have not picked up Stephen King's books for writers, it's highly recommended that you buy copies and read them. King's advice is when writing the first draft, don't look back. That's the key to NaNoWriMo folks, once you begin writing that manuscript, keep writing, don't go back and edit, don't stop until it's complete. Even if you feel like every word you are writing is absolute crap, that's okay, that's what months of editing are for. Spend the entire month of November writing that book until it's complete. There are writers who have to go back and edit as they go complete a chapter, but that takes up too much time and you will soon see yourself already at the end of November before you have even finished your manuscript. You spend so much time perfecting those three opening paragraphs  you will never get to finish the story. Your best bet as a writer is to finish writing the whole manuscript, then that way you can at least say to yourself, "There, I finished my first novel." 

4. Set a word limit.
Most writers I know will set themselves a word limit they will write each day to achieve their final word count. An average goal is to write 1500-5000 words a day. I set myself a goal to write 5500 words a day. Since most of my completed novels finish at roughly 55,000-60,000 words, after months of editing I get to about 80,000 words.

5. Rest your eyes
Once you have completed your manuscript and thrown confetti in celebration. Close the document and do not open it for one month or two. After enough time has passed, open the document and edit. You will see the manuscript with fresh eyes, and you will be amazed at how much needs to be corrected. You may be grossed out looking at it, but I promise, take one month and fight to prevent yourself from opening the document. After a month, open the document and edit it away. The time spent away from your manuscript will also give you some different ideas as to what to throw into the story. A literary agent once said "Sometimes you have to force yourself to close that document and not look at it for a while."


With NaNoWriMo coming up I hope some of these advice and tips will help you. I use this advice and it helped me write my first novel last year complete at 55,000 words by writing each day 5,000 words. NaNoWriMo is the perfect way for a new author to get their foot into the writing door! Hopefully some of these tips work for you!

Manuscript Word Count

So when I first finished my Young Adult Urban Fantasy story, I didn't realize that it would be considered too long to sell to a publisher, let alone an agent. My friend, whom I showed the manuscript to first after I finished revising it, suggested that I split the book into three and make it into a three book series, or trilogy. She told me a publisher, or an agent will be more than willing to take a good books series. I remember Twilight was a really thick book, as well as the Harry Potter books. 

After what my friend told me, I started to get even more curious and decided to investigate. I got some really good information from this website Fiction Factor, she even mentioned how as a debut author my story, which I completed at over 100,000 words, is something that an agent and publisher would not read. Mostly because of tight editing schedules, and after Twilight was released not many editors will take on a story that long. Another source that gave me this good information was Agent Query. Also the blog Literary Rambles had a really good post.

1 page            250 words 

100 pages      25,000 words 

200 pages      50,000 words 

300 pages      75,000 words 

400 pages      100,000 words 

500 pages      125,000 words

After reading that I think I will follow the advice my friend, and that website stated and split the book into three, a trilogy. The final word count after revisions was 175,000 WORDS! So what I can do is read through the whole thing all over again and see where would be a good place to split the book.

Tigers Curse by Colleen Houck

So I finally found some time to read this book series that everyone is ranting about, and I was a bit curious because everyone has a specific reading taste and everyone has their own views on books. My friend Shilpa said this is something refreshing to read from all the vampire books that are taking up space at the bookstores.I bought all three books so that way I could read them straight through. I'm picky, I like to wait until all the books are out in a series before I read them. I like to read them straight through, because I get so anxious waiting for the next book to come out. Alyson Noel's series The Immortals did that to me, I was so impatient waiting for the next book in the series to come out, I was going nuts. That's one thing with me and my books I read, I like to wait until the entire series is out then read it because then I just go to the next book.

Tiger's Curse

Passion. 

Fate. 

Loyalty.

Would you risk it all to change your destiny?

The last thing Kelsey Hayes thought she’d be doing this summer was trying to break a 300-year-old Indian curse. With a mysterious white tiger named Ren. Halfway around the world. But that’s exactly what happened. Face-to-face with dark forces, spellbinding magic, and mystical worlds where nothing is what it seems, Kelsey risks everything to piece together an ancient prophecy that could break the curse forever.

Basically Tiger's Curse is a paranormal Romance series that follows a young girl falling in love with an Indian prince who is cursed. It's such a magical book and I really liked it.

This book series is a prime example of something unique and original to the paranormal romance that was self-published and made a big success among young readers. I thought the premise was unique but it lacked some things in the Indian culture it was more of something that Disney would make into a movie. It was a pretty good book. 

Ring Around the Publishing World

There are so many options for publishing a book now and days. The original advice from many brand name authors is to get an agent, and your book will be everywhere. 

Now we have small presses, self publishing and traditional, but now there are small presses who can get your books into the bookstores. There are so many options for publishing, and many of these small presses are in fact succeeding in many ways. I think one of the reasons a person will self publish is simple, they don't want to wait for the amount of time it takes to see their work out there, they want to see their books out there now. 

If you look at the way the traditional publishing model works, it can take you six months to a year or longer to find an agent. Then depending on if your agent is editorial, you and your agent might go through several rounds of edits to make sure your manuscript is in tip top shape before sending it out to editors for publication. Then depending on how good your agent is, there are agents who can sell books within a week and some who can take about a year to sell your manuscript. Then between covers, edits, the publisher sending you an ARC copy to make sure everything was caught, then the books being printed, promoting your book while writing the next one. Following the traditional model a writer can expect for it to take about two years to see your book in the stores. Then when the author receives the advance, their books have to sell enough through that advance. In some cases, if the books don't sell through the advance, there are some cases where the publisher will have the author give back some of the advance. There are independent publishers who can get the books into the bookstore who give you high royalties or a small advance. They are a new take on those who wish to publish the traditional route.

Most small presses take roughly around six months for each book to be published. Some don't have the best editorial staff, but they have been acquiring more experienced editors. What is better about the small presses is how they are strictly royalty. The author doesn't have to worry about their book selling more over their advance. The author gets to have input on how they want the cover of their book to look. 

Self publishing is quite simple, all you have to do is just upload the book to Kindle Direct Publishing (minus the costs of finding a graphic designer to design the cover of your books and finding a qualified editor) and within a few hours your book is live for everyone to buy. I think one of the reasons an author will self publish is the patience. They don't want to wait two years for a targeted audience to read their work, they want to put their work out there now. I have one trilogy I wrote that is dystopian, since most publishers aren't taking dystopian books anymore calling dystopian a dead genre I will have to investigate more into self publishing the trilogy.

YA adult Elana Johnson wrote a blog post from a made some valid points in which I happen to agree with one hundred percent about reading a book not showing prejudice against which way they were published and released to the public.

Here's my view, I don't give a crap whichever way a person decides to publish their book; self, small press, or traditional, I don't really care I just want one thing when I choosing books to buy, curling up with a cup of coffee and reading a good book on my e-reader, which I'm pretty sure many other readers out there in the world want. If an author writes and publishes a book that deals with the things I like to read about. Which ever way a person decides to publish their book shouldn't matter. Readers want only one thing to read a good book. It shouldn't matter which way we publish, we are all authors, friends with each other, and want the same thing, to see our books succeed.