NaNoWriMo A to Z

As I record this it is the first day of NaNoWriMo 2022. For those who haven't heard of it. it is National Novel Writing Month. Today I talk about the ins and outs of NaNoWriMo and how it can help move your writing forward

https://nanonwrimo.org

Transcript

Wendy Jones: 0:02

Hi, and welcome to the writing and marketing show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. it's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast. So it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to episode 147 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H. Jones. As always, it's a pleasure to have you join me. Today, I'm going to be talking about NaNoWriMo because I'm recording this on the first of November 2022. And November is traditionally NaNoWriMo month now some of you are probably saying, Hey, I'm NaNo Pro. Others are probably saying what on earth is NaNoWriMo? Well, I'm going to explain that in today's show. Before we get on with the show, what's been happening in my life? Well, as I say, I'm recording this on the first of November, and I've been writing up a storm. And I really have been and I've also been doing a lot of editing on some of my books. I thought it was time to go through them, give them a tidy up, then, you know, give them a refresh. And that's what I've been doing. And it's been great. And I found it really useful. So not a lot else has been happening in my life. I've been busy as always, you know, I never seem to get a second. I've been doing book signings, I want to give a shout out to the wonderful globe bookshop in Motherwell where I will be going on Saturday. That is Saturday, the fifth of November 4 of November 5 of November, this year 2022. I will be at the GLO, bookshop, Motherwell with lots of other authors. And we're going to be doing a book signing. So if you're anywhere near there, anywhere near Motherwell come along, meet the authors and get some signed books, because signed books make fabulous, fabulous presents. No, I know, we're, you know, looking at difficult times in the UK. And people might be saying, Oh, can we afford to buy books? Can we do that? You know, do you know what book, all my books are under 10 pounds, a lot of books are under 10 pounds. If you're looking for presents for people under 10 pounds, then that's a fabulous way of doing it, you can get them a book at last and longer than you know, a cup of coffee or, you know, a gift card like that, to go to a coffee shop, something like that. So you can get them a nice signed copy of a book, they make fabulous presents. So you can get my books from my website, that's when it went to H John's dot com. If you go there and you go to the bookshop, now that's my email, it's Wendy jones.com is the website, go to the bookshop on there, and you can order signed copies, and they make fabulous presents, or you can go and get them from the various book signings that people were doing throughout Britain, throughout America throughout the world at the moment. And you can get people a gift of a book. So before I get on with the show, I would like to say that as I say, it's a pleasure to bring you this show every week, I do so willingly and I enjoy doing it. But if you would like to support that time, you can do so out by going to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones and supporting me for just $3 a month. That's the price of a tea or coffee per month. And I would be very, very grateful it would mean you like the show it would mean you want it to continue, it would mean that you're finding it useful. And it would help an author difficult times. Now I understand that maybe doing that monthly might be a bit tricky for you at the moment. But if you're able to afford a one off$2, go to my website, Wendy jones.com. And you can buy me a coffee, and just for the price of a coffee. You can you know, listen to the show, but for $2 a month to listen $3 A month sorry.You know, you can listen to the show four episodes a month, and it's well worth doing. So you can listen for free as well if you can't afford it. So what of NaNoWriMo? Well, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel writers month or sorry, National Novel Writing Month should I say and it's something that happens every year in November, throughout the world. Now I say that you can do NaNoWriMo throughout the year, but that's a totally different concept. It started out with everyone pledging to write 20,000 words in the month of November. Now you can find out more about it and its nanowrimo.org and I'll put that in the show notes. But basically what you do if you sign up, you you're pledging to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Now you're probably thinking oh my goodness That's horrendous. I could never write 50,000 words in a month. Do you know what, what it does is it breaks down to 1667 words per day for the whole of the month of November. Now, if you want a day off, see you like to have one day off a week, you may want to write 2000 words a day. But that is doable. But you might still be saying that's a heck of a lot of words. Do you know what you can do it in chunks. And I've been doing mine in chunks today. So I'll give you an example of what I did today. I started at 6am. And I chose to do that because I'm running a writing on Zoom every morning at 6am. And I'm doing that for anybody, only my friends that want to join me and we write together. I'm doing it at 6am for two reasons. First of all, I do have several book signing engagements that will help me out the house by 7am on several mornings, during November. So I obviously need to be available to get out the house by 7am. And I won't be available all day to do it. So 7am Sorry, 6am was a good time. For me, that was the first reason. The second reason is it gets the writing started a cracking way to start your day because you'd get into the habit of writing from the get go. And it also means that anybody who is working can still join me and get a bulk of the writing done at 6am. And I would doing that every single day for the 30 days of November, which I've enjoyed. And then I did another chunk because I joined the writing for the London writer Salon at atm and did another one hour chunk. Then I did the local chapter of my Sisters in Crime. And I did another chunk at 10:30am. And that so that was three hours of writing and I'd done my I done my 1667 words, I was over it by then. So I'm well ahead of the game. But I also have another hours. Chunk tonight, because I am the person who is running the Sisters in Crime 8pm UK time I might say GMT, nun NaNoWriMo writing. So I'll be doing that again at 8pm tonight, so I'm going to be well ahead of the game with my writing time. Now I won't be able to do that every single day, I am doing the one art 6am Every day, I am doing the one at 8pm Every day apart from Sunday's for the 8pm one because we don't do on Sundays for the Sisters in Crime one. So six days a week, I'll be doing that. So I will be every day for two months, for one month, I will be doing two chunks of writing. And that will get my 1667 words in. Now I'm going to try and get more than that in because I want to be able to write an entire novel. And you can only do that unless you're writing a 50,000 word novel. You can only do that by writing it more than 1667 words per day. So that is what I'm going to try and achieve. And I'm excited about it. I'm so excited about the challenge. So how do you go about NaNoWriMo? Why do I need to tell you about it? Because you've said well, you've just taught me what it is when do why do you need all podcast on it? Well, there's lots of different ways that you can do it. First of all, you sign up nanowrimo.org You just sign in, it's free. And then you pledge, you put in your project. And your project can be that you're writing the novel 50,000 words for November. And if you're doing that, then that is it, you have to put your novel and you have to do 50,000 words, minimum, you have to do that. That's the only thing you can put in front of ember. But you can also say that what you want to do is nonfiction. Or what you want to do is flash NaNoWriMo or poetry NaNoWriMo. And then you sign up for that. And that way, you don't have to do the 50,000 Words. But if you're doing a novel, it's the 50,000 words you're signing up for. So you can do lots of different things. It doesn't just have to be a novel. It can be nonfiction, Flash, poetry, short stories, whatever it is you want to do. It's the words that are important in terms of moving your word count forward. So you you write up your project, you set up your profile, you set up your project, now you're not actually typing into NaNoWriMo itself. That is something that stops everybody in their tracks because they think people will steal my work. I don't want to be putting my work into another project. Run, you're not typing into that you're typing on whatever you usually type on or writing by hand. All you're doing on NaNoWriMo is updating your word count each day, or each time you write. So for example, I have updated my word count three times already today, and then runs running total for you, you get a running total of what you're actually writing each day. And so don't don't fear, nobody's going to steal your work, you don't need to work in NaNoWriMo itself, it's just putting your word count in. But there's more to the NaNoWriMo ecosystem than just updating your word count. First of all, you can send buddy requests and accept buddy requests, and the buddies encourage each other, you can send each other messages on NaNoWriMo. And you can, you can help each other out. I have quite a few buddies on NaNoWriMo. And I have been cleaning them up because I'd been taking out last year's buddies who are not doing it this year. And that means I can focus on the people who are actually doing it. And that's always a good thing. Because you do and you know how they're getting on what the word counters, if they're ahead of the word count, you cheer them on and say, This is brilliant. If they're slightly behind your seat, you know, you give them encouragement, you say I can still do it. I'm here to help you. I'm here, cheering you on, you know. And you really just help each other, you can send each other messages, body messages. So I run a group on Facebook, and I've been talking about NaNoWriMo. And people have been saying, how do you send and accept body requests? Which is a very good question. So what you do is, if you want to send a body request, you get the nanoray. Mohan don't know, mine is Wendy H. Jones. But other people, their NaNoWriMo name might not be their real name, they might have something else. But if they haven't, you just type the NaNoWriMo handle or name and, and then when they're named to the search box, when the name comes up, you click on it. And then to the left, there is a box which says Send buddy invitation, you just click on that. And you've sent an invitation to accept a buddy invitation. If somebody has sent you one, you go, you go to your profile. And at the top, there's a box that says, or a menu item that says my NaNoWriMo click on that, there will be a little drop down menu, the drop down menu will see buddies click on buddies, look to the right, and it will say buddy invites click on that. And you can accept them. Or you can see if people have accepted your invite. So that's easily easily done. So the buddy system is a really good thing to use on NaNoWriMo. The other thing they've got is you can have local chapters, a municipal liaisons. Now the municipal liaison is the person in charge of your chapter in your area. And there's one for Dundee, and I'm a member of that. And we have a municipal liaison. And we have meetups once a week during NaNoWriMo. And we tend to do it throughout the year. But we have it during NaNoWriMo. You can either do it physically or you can do it as you can do it as a virtual, a lot of them are running virtual ones know as well. So again, another zoom time, when people write together. Now, it's good to get in touch with your local chapter, your local group, because they are the ones who will support you as well. And as I say, if you want you can have a physical meetup with them. Our one does it in a bar. So we can have a drink while we're actually writing. But in my case, it has to be Coca Cola, because I'm usually driving and you're not allowed to drink and drive in the UK. So I'm not encouraging that. Okay. I'm not encouraging that at all. But you can you know, you can maybe have a meal, whatever, but you don't have to go physically you can use the virtual one. So what else does NaNoWriMo have? Well, they're brilliant at supporting. They're brilliant at putting messages out every day with encouraging messages. They'll put blog posts out, they'll put writing sprint times out. So on Twitter, you can go and do the NaNoWriMo writing sprints, you can join them for that. And you can go to Twitter and the messages in the NaNoWriMo ecosystem. And they will give you a writing prompts and you can include them in your work or not include them in your work as the case may be. It's completely up to you how you do it. And so it's well worth, you know, reading all the messages that they send you each day, because they can really help you to grasp NaNoWriMo. And to complete it. And what of you're falling behind? Well, you know, if you're falling behind nobody's, nobody's there with a whip. That's not what it's about. What it's about is moving your writing forward. And if you decide, all you want to do is write 30,000 words, not 50,000. That is completely up to you. Nobody is going to tell you otherwise, because it's completely up to you do not feel guilty. If you're falling behind, and you want to do 50,000 words, all it does is it let you know, you have to write a few more words, the next day or the next few days to catch up. I got really ill during one of the NaNoWriMo is one year, I got a really, really sore throat. I was laid low for about four days. So I was behind. But I managed to catch up and catch up I did. And so I got my 50,000 words in in the end. And I just did it by adding more words on each day rather than trying to catch up and do five days worth in one day because that way lies madness, as they say. And the other nice thing that NaNoWriMo do is they actually prove that you get badges. So when you update your first day, there is a badge, a lovely badge that tells you you've updated on the first day and they award you it, then if you update it more than once in a day, you get a badge. If you do it on the second day, you get a badge. If you do on the third day, you get a badge, then they come down a bit and say seven days, 10 days, 25 days and you get badges for all, you get badges for doing your first 1667 words, you get badges for doing 5000 10,000 25,000 40,000. And the badges encourage you do not underestimate the power of a badge. Everybody likes a sticker, as they say, Never underestimate the power of a badge because it can work extremely, extremely well. And it's nice seeing the budgets building up and getting all your budgets by the end. Now what of the end? How do you prove you've done 50,000 words? Well, in the past, you had to upload something it was just uploaded to a computer. It was scanned, the words were counted in about three seconds. It was then deleted from the computer. And they said you've got a winner. And you got a winner badge, which was lovely. Everybody likes a winner badge. And so not only do you get a winner badge, but after nanodiamonds finished, you get winner prizes. And this usually takes the form of money off different get money off different writing products very often it's half price. And it's things that are really helpful. I've got some fabulous, fabulous deals off of there. And I've taken them up, and I have used them. So things like prorating aid, things like vellum things like I can't think of a minute Scrivener, you know all those things, you get really good deals on them. So it's where Aren't you going to win our certificate that you can download, which is rather nice. And you can stick it up in front of you on your, you know, on the wall in front of your computer to say that you're a NaNoWriMo winner. And that's quite nice as well. I mean, it's just a lot of talk. And so NaNoWriMo is well worth doing it if you want to move your word count forward is well worth doing NaNoWriMo and sticking with it. So if you you know, if you are doing NaNoWriMo Good luck with it. And let you know that I'm thinking of you. I'm thinking of everybody that's doing it and all the very best and I hope you meet that 50,000 word target. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy H Jones and you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash Wendy H Jones. I'm also went H Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing keep reading and keep learning