I have a new hat, one to keep the Madeira sun off my face. If you want to see it, you'll need to become my friend on Facebook. Right now, I'm toying between putting on my macro editing hat - the one I use to 'see the big picture' - or my micro editing hat - so I can seek out those insects in the grass. And there's yet another hat:...
The morning after the night before! Congratulations to everyone who validated their NANO 2015 novel before the deadline at midnight last night. Congratulations to everyone who took part. Even if you didn't write 50,000 words, you wrote words - and that means you have the beginnings of a first draft. Today, I'm hosting three TGIO (Thank God It's Over) webinars: 2pm, 6pm and 9.30pm. On the agenda: Celebration time What to...
Faced with the prospect of editing five NANO novel drafts, all written in Word, all in various states of chaos, I found myself pushed towards adopting a better, more organised approach this year, using Scrivener. This time, the planner in me was determined to have an outline in place before I started. And she did. But the pantser in me, who lets my characters have free rein, has been having fun,...
Where does the time go? Two weeks have flown by and tomorrow is the halfway mark for NaNoWriMo: 25K words! If you are struggling, I recommend you visit the NANO site and watch a pep talk. I particularly liked Neil Gaiman's which dates back to 2007, gave me inspiration then and still does the job now. Plus, you could attend one of my free MIDWAY webinars tomorrow, Sunday 15 November. There are three-time...
I know you are all up to your ears in NaNoWriMo (as am I) and I don't want to interrupt your flow ...
Day 1 and the waiting is over. I kicked off at midnight and wrote my first 882 words in a word war with some of my buddies, the Devon Wrimos, in the NanoDevon chat room - and then needed some sleep. What's a word war? Scroll down! What's a buddy? Scroll down even further! Now that NANO has officially started, a new feature has appeared to the right of my Inbox icon at...
The current rage - I'm told - is adult colouring books. I'm sure they provide hours of inspiring, magical enjoyment. I don't have time for such distractions ...
You know how excited kids get, and how they ask you how many sleeps until some event? Their birthday, Christmas, the start of the school holidays ...
The secret of winning NANO - going through that 50K barrier before time runs out on day 30 - boils down to setting goals and meeting targets. On the NANO site, each time you enter your word-count-to-date, a bar chart tells you how you're progressing. If you're on schedule, writing your 1666 words per day, it's good to see today's column above the target line. If you're slipping behind, it can...
NaNoWriMo fast approaches and it's crucial, before I start writing for real at midnight on 31 October, that I make some decision on tense and voice. First question: which tense to use? Past or present? Past tense would be the easy option. It's the natural way of telling a story - something that happened in the past, recounted now. Using the present tense can create a sense of immediacy. It can...
