Are you a ‘pantser’ or a ‘plotter?’ For me, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I plot, get two paragraphs in, and then find myself winging it, and the plot goes in a new direction. Then I replot and let it fly again.
Also, my first drafts are not written linearly. I write what I am inspired to, skipping the spots I have no clue about. I fill in those places later. Even after completing the first draft, things will change structurally with each rewrite.
But what if you aren’t interested in writing a novel? What if you are a poet or your best skill is the short story?
In thirteen years of participating in NaNoWriMo, I have discovered that there is no one way that fits everyone. You’ve had this idea rolling around your head for a while now for something you’d like to read. You wish your favorite author would write it. In my experience, you must write it yourself, or it will never happen.
Your favorite author can only write so fast. Not only that, but what they’re in the mood to write might not be your wished-for book.
I’ve noticed a trend—most authors don’t live beyond 100 years of age. Unfortunately, dead authors rarely publish new books unless they are ghostwriters.
So, there you go–if you want that book, write it yourself.
My addiction to NaNoWriMo began innocently, as all good habits do: A young writer in the Philippines whom I had met through a gaming website mentioned he planned to do this writing challenge. I had never heard of it.
November’s Goal
It was a worldwide thing where hundreds of thousands of people began writing a novel on November 1, intending to have it finished by November 30. The catch was that you couldn’t start until 12:01 a.m. on November 1st; it had to be at least 50,000 words long, but it could be longer. And you had to have it validated by 11:59 p.m. on November 30th to earn the coveted winners’ goodies.
I wasn’t sure I could do this crazy thing. All I had to do was write 1,667 words daily, which I felt I could do. I figured the worst that could happen was that I would fail to have anything to write about.
Fear of failure had never stopped me from ruining my life, so I googled the national website and signed up. I chose the handle dragon_fangirl.
At 6:30 a.m. on November 1, 2010, I looked at my laptop and had no idea what to do. I wrote the first line as if I were telling myself a fairy tale. Inspired by my misspent childhood reading such disparate works as Don Quixote and the heartily misogynistic adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, I wrote:
There was a cabin in the woods.
It wasn’t exactly literary brilliance, but it gave my idea a jumping-off point. I just began telling the story as it fell out of my mind. Surprisingly, I discovered my word count averaged 2,500 to 3,000 words daily. By day fifteen, I knew I would have no trouble getting to 50,000, and by November 21st, I had passed the 50,000-word mark.
At the 68,000-word point, I had completed my rollicking tale of snark and medieval derring-do. It was utterly unpublishable (say that hokey phrase three times!), but I didn’t know that until later.
What I did know was that I had written a complete novel and told the kind of tale I would have sought out at the bookstore.
All it needed was rewriting, editing, revising, rewriting, and putting it in a drawer, never to be seen again.
But I took that incoherent mess apart, and over the next ten years, it became three books: Huw the Bard, Billy Ninefingers, and Julian Lackland.
One rule they tell you at NaNoWriMo is never to delete and don’t self-edit as you go along. This is all strictly stream-of-consciousness, so write how it falls out of your head. That was hard for me, but eventually, I got into the swing of things.
My rules for NaNoWriMo:
- Write at least 1,670 words every day. Technically, it’s three more words than the pros suggest, but it gives me a little cushion and takes about 2 hours. I’m not fast at this.
- Write daily whether you have an idea worth writing about or not. Write that grocery list if you have nothing else. When stuck, I work on my characters’ personnel files, visualizing them as people I might want to know. Every word counts toward your ultimate goal. We will talk about my approach to writer’s block next week.
It helps to check in on the national threads each day. Look at your regional threads on the national website to keep in contact with other local writers. You will find out when and where write-ins are scheduled.- Be brave! Attend an in-person write-in or join a virtual write-in at NaNoWriMo on Facebook. The company of other writers keeps you enthused about your project.
- Try NOT to self-edit as you go. Just get that story down from beginning to end.
- Delete nothing. Passages you want to delete later can be highlighted, and the font turned to red or blue so you can easily separate them later.
- Remember, not every story is a novel. If your story ends, draw a line at the bottom of the page and start a new one in the same manuscript. You can always separate them later; that way, you won’t lose track of your total word count.
- Update your word count every day. It’s an honor system, but you get little badges for updating every day and achieving specific goals. One badge is for updating your word count more than once in one day. I try to earn all the badges, and most years I do.
In 2015, I took a different path from the usual novel-in-thirty-days approach. I named my project November Tales. I suffered from a bout of pneumonia and worked from my bed for most of the month. Even so, I managed 42 short stories, all fueled by Nyquil and desperation, totaling 107,000 words.
Included in this mess were ten dreadful poems, along with chapters 7 through 11 of Bleakbourne on Heath.
The following year began the same, this time with a severe case of bronchitis. I named my project November Tales 2016 – 30 Days of Madness and Pot Pies. I started by writing short stories, flash fiction, drabbles, and poems. Within five days, I was writing the first draft of a novel and managed to get 90,000 wonky, misspelled words.
That novel is still in the first draft stage, but I intend to finish it in this year’s NaNo rumble.
If you choose to join this writing free-for-all, go to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up! Pick your name, start your author profile, and look up dragon_fangirl (that’s me). Add me as your writing buddy, and I will be part of your writing posse, cheering you on when you need a morale boost.
Conferences are excellent places to make good connections with other writers. You meet people you can talk to about every aspect of the experience of writing as well as craft. No one’s eyes glaze over when you try to explain your main character’s inner demons and you find people with struggles similar to your own.
Some new writers are completely fired up for their novels, obsessed. They go at it full tilt for a week or even two, and then, at the 20,000-word mark, they take a day off. Somehow, they never get back to it. These writers will continue to write off and on and may participate in NaNoWriMo again.
Cooking is my love language. I have many tips and ideas for getting word count and having a proper family feast. As a dedicated writer, I know how to plan for all aspects of life.
How to get inspiration? That translates to getting a story idea. I used to think up nifty situations and wondered how an average person would deal with it. That’s the good ol’ what-if set-up you find mostly used in sci-fi stories. The problem with focusing on the cool idea is that usually the characters who have to deal with it become rather cardboard. That’s fine when you’re a young writer or producing a first draft. Slap it down and keep going. You can come back later to beef up the character, add description details, and so on. Whatever the idea is, get it out of your head at any cost.
What is serious writing? Even if it’s comedy, it’s the writing you take seriously. What you want readers to admire, no matter the genre. That is all well and good, but you will find that what you think is good isn’t always what readers think is good. Got nothing to do with what you’re writing or how well you write it, it’s just the way it is. So don’t take yourself too seriously; you can take your writing seriously, of course. The idea is that the writing will get better for readers each time you go through a manuscript and revise and edit it. How many times you go through it is your decision. It helps to get someone else’s eyes on it at some point, especially if you are new at writing. You can look at a map but until you get to your destination you can’t be sure that map is accurate and you’re going the right way. Sounds like another thing I learned.
I started reading a long time ago. Started writing soon after, making up my own stories which I thought were better than the ones I read. I borrowed here and there – and in later writing had to tone it down so as not to sound like the sources I borrowed from (sci-fi authors, mostly). You develop your own style eventually if you write enough. So write a lot; you don’t have to show it to anyone. I like to try writing in different styles, too. I like trying to have characters speak in different ways, some slang, vernacular, accents, different levels of education, just for my own amusement – which is cruel, I’ll admit. But trying different things is good for a writer. Read different styles, too, and try to imitate them. Read the juicy parts aloud, let them get stuck in your head. Consider what is special about the style the author uses. Compare and contrast with other authors you read, and with your own writing. Most of all, read a lot in different genre and different writing styles. How much you absorb from that differs for everyone, but try it.
Finally you have a complete story (or novel) from beginning to end and the plot is satisfying, characters compelling, dialog crisp, and so on. What next? Read and revise at least three times, but put it away at least a few days between each reading (a month is optimal; go get some coffee). Yes, I know you’re eager to get into it again but make yourself wait. Go to your slush file and work on that erotica. Now back to your masterpiece. Try to read it as a reader who’s never seen it before: what would the average reader think and feel in this scene or on that page? You’re no longer thinking of how to write the story so now you focus on how someone you don’t know might understand it. (Sure, go ahead and correct those pesky mistypes as you find them. No rule saying you have to do that in a separate pass.) I like to look at scenes in isolation: every scene should do something, even if it is “only” showing a character’s personality. I read dialog aloud (or, recently, have my computer read it to me); I catch a lot of mistakes and sloppy or weak sentences that way. Run spellchecker until it’s about to fall off the rails but understand it is not actually reading and still will miss errors. You must read your manuscript with your own eyes and ears more than twice. Look for pet-peeve errors (e.g., I type ‘form’ a lot when I mean ‘from’; obviously the spellchecker will not catch it because ‘form’ is correctly spelled, just the wrong word). I run a search for them. Most importantly, never ever hit “replace all”!
Stephen Swartz is the author of literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and contemporary horror novels. While growing up in Kansas City, he dreamed of traveling the world. His novels feature exotic locations, foreign characters, and smatterings of other languages–strangers in strange lands. You get the idea: life imitating art.
By just doing that, I will have 50,000 (or more) words by midnight on November 30th.
Be willing to be flexible. Do you work best in short bursts? Or, maybe you’re at your best when you have a long session of privacy and quiet time. Something in the middle, a melding of the two, works best for me.
A good way to ensure you have that time is to encourage your family members to indulge in their own interests and artistic endeavors. That way, everyone can be creative in their own way during that hour, and they will understand why you value your writing time so much.
Writers and other artists do have to make some sacrifices for their craft. It’s just how things are. But don’t sacrifice your family for it.
But we all know infodumps are an insidious poison, so how do we apply this backstory without losing the reader?
Character A is a shaman, a fire-mage smith and warrior, and is slated to be the next War Leader of the tribes. His shamanic purpose is to unite the people, both the tribes and those citadels who have turned tribeless. He is the chosen champion of the Goddess his sect of mages serves, and his success or failure will determine her fate.
This void is vital because characters must overcome fear to face it. As a reader, one characteristic I’ve noticed in my favorite characters is they each have a hint of self-deception. All the characters – the antagonists and the protagonists – deceive themselves in some way about their own motives.
In his book, 
The story follows a group of 
However, when the antagonist is a person, I ask myself, why this person opposes the protagonist? What drives them to create the roadblocks they do? Why do they feel justified in doing so?
We must remember that the characters in our stories don’t go through their events and trials alone. We drag the reader along for the ride the moment we begin writing the story. They need to know why they’re in that handbasket and where the enemy thinks they’re going, or the narrative will make no sense.
I quickly regretted that decision.
Arthur and his court originated as ordinary 5th or 6th-century warlords. But the tales featuring them were written centuries later. Their 11th-century chroniclers presented them in contemporary armor as worn by 
I am an abject fangirl for Don Quixote, so different versions of both Galahad and Quixote appear regularly in my work. 
And sometimes a theme refuses to let go of me. I took Arthurian myth and the chivalric code and turned them inside out with the characters of Lancelyn and Galahad in 
During the 1980s and 90s, I listened to music on the stereo, writing my thoughts and ideas in a notebook while my kids did their homework. I drew dragons and fantasy landscapes and worked three part-time jobs to pay the bills.
For most of my writing life, I was like a toddler given a package of 
Build a glossary of words and spellings unique to your story, and be sure to list names. I use an Excel spreadsheet, but you can use anything you like to help you stay consistent in your spelling.
The master file might be titled: Lenns_Story
I gained a fantastic local group through attending write-ins for NaNoWriMo, the Tuesday Morning Rebel Writers. Since the pandemic, and with several of our members now on the opposite side of Washington State, we meet weekly via Zoom. We are a group of authors writing in a wide variety of genres.
Learn about structure and pacing from successful authors. Spend the money to go to conventions and attend seminars. You will learn so much about the craft of writing, the genre you write in, and the publishing industry as a whole—things you can only learn from other authors. I gained an extended professional network by joining 
The year that followed was filled with mistakes and struggles. Legitimate publishers NEVER contact you. You must submit your work to them, and they prefer to work with agented authors.
Short stories and micro fiction are a training ground, a way to hone your skills. They’re also the best way to get your name out there. I suggest you build a backlog of work from 100 to 5,000 words in length. Keep them ready to submit to magazines, anthologies, and contests.
One of my favorite authors writes great storylines and creates wonderful characters. Unfortunately, the quality of his work has deteriorated over the last decade. It’s clear that he has succumbed to the pressure from his publisher, as he is putting out four or more books a year.
This frequently happens to me in a first draft, but whoever is editing for him is letting it slide, as it pads the word count, making his books novel-length. I suspect they don’t have time to do any significant revisions.
When we lay down the first draft, the story emerges from our imagination and falls onto the paper (or keyboard). Even with an outline, the story forms in our heads as we write it. While we think it is perfect as is, it probably isn’t.
Inadvertent repetition causes the story arc to dip. It takes us backward rather than forward. In my work, I have discovered that the second version of that idea is usually better than the first.
You see things from a different angle when you start reading the chapter from the end and work your way toward the beginning. It’s amazing how many bloopers show up when you do this, even though you have already read it aloud. When you read it aloud you were going the direction you always go, the way you know so well. The mind tricks us, and we read what should be there instead of what is.
Here are a few things that stand out when I do this:
I am fortunate to have excellent friends willing to do this for me. Their suggestions are thoughtful and spot-on.
In my work, the suggestions offered by the beta reader (first reader) guide and speed up the revision process. My editor can focus on doing her job without being distracted by significant issues that should have been caught early on.
Characters: Is the point of view character (protagonist) clear? Did you understand what they were feeling? Were they likable? Did you identify with and care about them? Were there various character types, or did they all seem the same? Were their emotions and motivations clear and relatable?
Editing is a process unto itself and is the final stage of making revisions. The editor goes over the manuscript line-by-line, pointing out areas that need attention: awkward phrasings, grammatical errors, missing quotation marks—many things that make the manuscript unreadable. Sometimes, major structural issues will need to be addressed. Straightening out all the kinks may take more than one trip through a manuscript.
An editor is not the author. They can only suggest remedies, but ultimately all changes must be approved and implemented by the author.
A reader won’t be familiar with it and will notice what we have overlooked.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 