All NaNo Eve: The Importance of Backing Up Your Work

On this day before we all start writing our novels, a serious topic must be discussed. Mostly because I've seen this happen to friends and family alike. It's happened to people that I don't know and maybe you don't even know. It could even happen to you. Your computer decides that this is the day it bites the bullet. It can happen at anytime, especially during NaNoWriMo, and, if you haven't taken steps, you can lose all of the hard work that you've done.

However, there is hope. It's known as backing up your work. In this day and age, it's not only smart but insanely easy. There's OneDrive, Dropbox, and even Google Docs. You can buy a thumb drive to go on your keys for as low as a venti Starbucks Pike's Place and you should. There is no excuse to not back up your work and to do it every night before you turn off your computer. If you can set it up so your work automatically gets backed up to an online source, even better.

Now, you might be thinking "but Liz! Those can be hacked!" to which I go "then get a freaking thumb drive". There's no excuse people. None. While I will be sympathetic if your computer bites the dust, I will shake my head at you if you haven't backed up in some way. It's really not that hard.

So, yeah, getting off the soapbox now. Rest up my friends! NaNoWriMo comes. I'm starting at midnight central, what about you? Feel free to poke me on Twitter or Facebook or even blow in the comments. Until next time, happy writing!

Friday Five: Podcasts of Note

Thought I'd bring this back for a little bit of fun before we head into November. Also, you might find these a bit better while writing as you just have to listen to them. You don't really need to spit your attention to two screens. All of these can be found on iTunes but I cannot say if they are on Soundcloud or other ways of listening to podcasts. I will say that I've got a lot of political podcasts that I listen to, with one listed as the bonus #6 because I feel it needs to be highlighted, but, for the most part, they're not listed here. If you want to know what I'm listening to political wise, hit me up in the comments below, Facebook, or Twitter.

1. Coffee with Chrachel: Their iTunes description says "the only thing filtered is the coffee" and that's so true. They talk about everything and anything. I love listening to them and find myself laughing along because they're funny. I recommend this podcast, especially when you're feeling down, as they get me laughing and I can't remember what I was feeling bad about. It's nice to listen to when writing, even if I have to stop and rewind to make sure that I heard something right. Definitely check it out.

2. Good Job Brain!: This is a trivia show centering around different themes. Every five or so episodes, they do an all quiz bonanza. It's fun to listen to, although sometimes I get caught up in listening and answering the trivia vs writing. 

3. The West Wing Weekly: So... I love West Wing. When I heard that Josh Molina (he played Will Bailey) and Hrishikesh Hirway (Song Exploder). It's an episode by episode discussion of the show with guests - past guests include Aaron Sorkin and stars of West Wing. For someone who loved the show and was sad when it ended (it was a perfect ending though), this is a very nice cherry on top. Also, hello perfect timing for this during the election season.

4. NaNoWriPod: Why, yes, there is a podcast centered around NaNoWriMo. They do other podcasts during the year, but it is mostly about the event we're all gearing up for. Or you might just be watching me gear up for it and laugh. That works too! 

5. Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!: This is NPR's current events quiz that I like listening to here and there. Like with Good Job Brain!, I sometimes get too caught up with the trivia vs writing. But it's nice for a bit of a brain break, which we will all need during the month.

6. TWiB Prime with Elon James White: This is my bonus and has a special place for me. There are a ton of politics and going off the rails but they speak about current events with a spin that I don't hear anywhere else. Also, they cover stories that you sometimes won't hear on the regular news, which I think is always an added bonus. You can also find them on YouTube at Blackness.TV or search for twib. It'll be the first search result that comes up.

Also, T-minus 3 days until NaNoWriMo! Are you ready yet? I am! Have a good weekend everyone - see you Monday.

What to Watch While Writing

You're probably looking at the title of this post and going "really Liz?". I know, I get it, you're supposed to write in a place where there are no distractions but for light jazz or classical music. If you can do that, then I really need you to teach me your ways. My mind wanders too much while classical or jazz is on. I need some rock and lyrics but this isn't what music to listen to.

Real Life vs NaNoWriMo

This is one part procrastination and one part how not to be a dick to your friends and loved ones in November. I say this with love but, honestly, we as writers cannot completely shut out the real world. It is very tempting to do so and I get why some go off and shut themselves off in their rooms but it's not practical. It's mostly not practical because I believe a lot of us have day jobs. Even if you don't have day jobs, you have responsibilities and so on that need to get done during the day. Therefore, we're going to try and balance out real life and NaNoWriMo.

Pretend it's day one of NaNoWriMo (1 week and a day people!). You decided to start right at midnight and stayed up until 3 am writing. However, you also need to get to work at 9 am or earlier. What you should do instead is only stay up until either you have half of the day word's count (834 words) or until 1 am instead of 3 am. Now, you can do the other half on your lunch break. Or when you get home or on your commute home if you don't drive. What I am saying is not to be a hero and sacrifice the fact that you will fall asleep at your desk if you stay up until 3 am being a writing machine. Go for half of what you really want to write or cap your nighttime writing.

Another idea to try that I've touched on before is figure out what time of day is best for you to write. It might be just after dinner, before anybody else is up, or after everyone has gone to bed. You don't need to go and be a hermit. You can wait until everyone else in your family is off doing other things and write. If you have housework that you need to do during that time, then do 20 minutes on, 30 minutes off. In 20 minutes, write as much as you can and then do 30 minutes of whatever housework needs to be done. Or flip it and write for a half hour and do 20 minutes of housework. Continue to do this until you reach your goal for the day.

Now, the one big problem of November (if you're in the US) is Thanksgiving. There's two ways to deal with this. Inflate your daily word count so it doesn't matter that you have to take anywhere from 1 to 3 days off before Thanksgiving or do it at the end of the month. I highly recommend doing it before Thanksgiving as you're going to be riding high on the feeling good part of writing. You're not going to be at the hard parts of your plot or writing (the dreaded middle) and you'll be able to get more words out of your fingers. Another idea is to give up the nap that you're going to want to take after eating turkey. Power through it, possibly with coffee, and use that time of everyone else sleeping to write.

Those are the three big ways to help you continue to write as real life creeps into your writing time and your writing time creeps into real life. Unless you are cool enough that you can basically go on a retreat for 30 days, you're going to have to learn to balance the two. If you've done this before, what are your best coping methods? What hasn't worked at all? Feel free to leave it down in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting!

The NaNoWriMo Reward System

You're going to be writing and you probably need a bit of carrot on the end of that stick. Now, the NaNoWriMo website has these nifty badges you can get on the website for doing things. Some of them are updating your word count, getting to a specific word count, validating, and so on. These are nice and they're nifty if you're really gung-ho about NaNo. I know that I liked them when they were introduced last year and I'm happy they're still there this year.

However, what if you want more reward than just that? What if you want a physical reward? Well, that's what this post is going to be about.

Time for the Outline!

We talked plot, now it's time to talk about how to do your outline. There are several ways to do an outline and I'll walk through one or two of them before I get into how I do my outline. As always, these might not work for you but I suggest that you try them.

In Order to Plot, Pick Your Genre

Happy Monday! We are two weeks and a day away from the start of NaNoWriMo. You get a few minutes to panic and then we'll start with the topic of the day. I'll time you.

....and done. Today, we are talking about plots and I know this is a weird time to talk about them. We've done the ton of world building, the characters, and now I want to talk about plot. Here's the thing about plot... when you're doing the rest of it, you might already have the glimmer of an idea in your head. I mean, you've created an entire world, you have a cast of characters, therefore, you must have an idea of why you did such a thing. Now, that's not to say that you didn't lay out your plot first and then built up everything else. It can go either way.

Let's take a baseline plot of a hero going off to save the world from something that will end it. For example, let's say that it's a evil overlord who, if he or she takes over the world, will plunge it into darkness for the next untold generations or something of the like. From that one little idea of a plot, you can do so much with it when you decide what genre you want to write in. If you're writing fantasy, then this is your good old fashioned standard plot line. You will need to do more in order to not appear stale. This is where a good what-if would come in handy. Perhaps write it from the world view of the evil overlord. Or perhaps a minion who really is the hero but works a crappy day job under said overlord. You will need to work on it.

Now, let's say you're writing dystopian fiction. You're somewhere in the darkness, possibly right after it happened or a generation or three in. You're going to need to figure out how your main character fights back against it and what he or she does to take down the evil overlord. Or, maybe he or she does, but realizes that, by taking said evil overlord down, it's going to kill off everything. So, now you're at a crossroads of what could really be done because your hero doesn't want to destroy the world. Or he or she could as destroying everything is a way to set everyone free.

For the third and final example, let's take mystery / thriller. For this one, it doesn't really need to be an evil overlord. It can simply be someone who is making the main character's life hell and he or she decides to do something about it. Or, someone else tried to, and now they're dead and your main character has to put the pieces together in order to find the killer. With this genre, you're going to want to figure out if you're dealing with the main character as the killer or as the solver. The killer needs to figure out a way to keep one or three steps ahead of the police in order to win. The solver needs to figure out the puzzle and catch the killer. Be wary of the hybrid unless you're willing to dive deep into what you're doing with your outline. Also, have a way out. I know it's cliche, but I never say no to the idea of an evil twin.

So, yes, the genre you write in will drive your plot. It's best to pick that before you fully flesh out the idea of your plot and what your story is going to be. However, you're got two weeks and a day - so not a reason to panic yet.

Until next time, keep on writing, plotting, and not panicking.

Friday Five: Some Links About NaNoWriMo

Happy Friday! We've made it through another week and now it's time for the weekend. Woohoo! Here's your links for the day, along with a freebie, as you know you need the NaNoWriMo link too.

1. 13 Ugly Truths About NaNoWriMo from David Swensen. Yes, they are true. However, it's going to be fine. You will be okay and come out the other end with 50,000 more words than you had before. However, you need to realize the truth about NaNo first.

2. Read Catherine Ryan Howard's post about how she's only going to say this once about NaNoWriMo snobbery. Yes, it's from a few years ago but I still love it. It helped a lot when there were some who were saying, to my face, that doing NaNoWriMo didn't make me a real writer. Yeah, I feel bad for them too because they had to be having a really shitty day to try to bring me down to their level of sad.

3. This is my favorite NaNoWriMo pep talk ever and it doesn't just apply to NaNoWriMo. Neil Gaiman talks about what happens to every other writer while writing a book. I get to the same part, more like half way than three-quarters of the way done, and my non-writer friends reply around the same way his agent done. With a lot less loving and a few more cuss words.

4. Lifehacker helps with getting a writing schedule started, not just for NaNoWriMo, but for after NaNo is over too. It's a lot of good advice, but, remember, sometimes the best thing to do is sit your butt down and do stream of conscious write.

5. NaNoWriMo Dos and Don'ts that is a lot of great advice. The best ever advice is this: "Do consider this a zero draft" because it is. You are writing to write, not writing for the novel to be completely polished and edited. That comes after, in December or January, and not while writing.

I hope everyone has a good weekend and that you keep on writing or plotting or both!

What to Write: What If's

Yesterday we talked about characters and how to build them. Today, we're going to switch off to talking about plot. Yes, plot, aka what you could write. Something that you could be writing is the what if. I have talked about the what ifs before, in the way of creating an AU Earth in world building, but this is now talking about the plots of what ifs. The plot of what ifs are taking something - either an idea, something that's already happened, or something already written but a classic - and flip it around.

For example, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a what if of one of our most famous presidents being a vampire hunter and the Civil War being about vampires wanting to keep the status quo. Yes, it is a lot more than that, but for our boiled down example, that's the plot in a nutshell to me. There are a lot of what ifs like that around, some from the same author, and some from others.

Another type of what if is telling a fairy tale from another point of view. The most popular is taking the view of the villain and showing his or her side of the story. Wicked is a good example of this, with the story being told before Dorothy got to Oz and showing from the Wicked Witch's point of view, and there are a lot of others out there. If you want a movie version, Disney's Maleficent is a good example. It also twists the villain into the good guy, which you may or may not want to do. You can tell the villain's backstory without changing the fact that he or she is still the villain. You do not have to turn them into good or turn the good guys into bad guys.

The last type of what if you could write is about current events. There are a lot of what ifs with past events, but you could take something that happened in recent memory to twist the outcome. For example, you could take a page from the TV show Fringe and go through what would have happened if the 2000 election results were different. The only thing, with current events, is that you need to tread carefully on what your subject matter might be. I wouldn't recommend being completely recent, like from this decade or last decade, because there are raw emotions from them. However, it is up to you what you plan to write but that is something you should think about it.

So, there are the three types of what ifs that you could write about. There are ton others but these are the three that I have thought about or tried writing in the past. I hope that your prep is going well, as we're eighteen days away from the start of NaNoWriMo! Until next time, don't panic.

NaNoWriMo Prep: Characters

Today, we're going to talk about characters and how you go about creating them. There will be a three links at the end, to be helpful, but I'm going to ramble a bit on what I do. As always, this might or might not be helpful to you but I'm hoping that it will. Or that something in the links will.

One of the best ways that I've created characters is, again, from WriYe. What needs to be done first is try to figure out the motivations of your character, especially when it's your main character. That's going to drive your plot and your subplots to get things done. It means answering questions like how your MC sees the world, how do they react to conflict or successes, and how they fit in to their environment. Those three questions and how you unpack them with your main character will help with creating subplots. You can do this will all your major characters as well, if you want to, and try not tangle up in them too much.

Just Breathe

I'm writing this post around 12:30 in the morning on October 10th. I just let Cookie out so she could get in another bathroom break before bed and it was quiet outside. A chill in the air and a smell... just grass and leaves and I suddenly felt transported back to Beloit College. It reminded me of my friends, who are now scattered to all parts of the US (and world), along with the memories of walking along campus around midnight. Running for ice cream at the 24 hour Cubs Foods (no longer there) and slowly walking back. Or going for a ride to the 24 hour Perkins in Janesville that is still there (the Beloit one is gone and now a Buffalo Wild Wings).

So, with 22 days left to NaNoWriMo, I highly recommend that you go out and breathe. Take in a good deep breath of the air at whatever type of day you're reading this and brain dump your memories. From that, pick out what you love about them and see if you can't put them into the story that is slowly building.

We'll be back tomorrow with character building. For now, let's all go take a big giant breath in and out to remember our loved ones, near and far, maybe gone but never forgotten. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting.

The Extreme Bare Bones of Your Novel

This is going to be the easiest part of planning out your novel. It'll take you all of twenty minutes, mostly because of the synopsis, but you'll be fine. I will say that this is originally from the website WriYe and our NaNoWriMo planning sessions called OctoOctober. However, as much as this is basic, I never planned out the real basics of the novel until this.

Time to Write and Write to Time and Other Things

And we're back. So, last time, I wrote a sentence about how you can make time for NaNoWriMo even if you think that you can't. Yeah, you can. No, really, you can. I'm not going to talk about getting up early / writing on breaks / so on. You can find better qualified people than me to talk about that. I am a night owl, so I'm the person who would write after everyone's asleep. Anywhere between 9 to midnight is a sweet spot for me during the rest of the year and especially during NaNo.

However, here's how to make the most of your NaNoWriMo writing sessions, even if you're crunching it between everything else.

Plotting and Pantsing - Do Both

It is October 3rd. There are four weeks to NaNoWriMo, which is why we're talking about it again, and then we're going to let it go. Well, not completely let it go because there's a bunch more NaNo Prep posts to come, but we'll let it go in the ways of talking about it. I know I've done posts about it in the past, which is why this is going to be short and to the point. It's also the WriYe Blogging Circle topic for the month, so we'll be able to cross this off as well.