NaNoWriMo '10 - Why are You Participating?

There are many reasons why writers and hopeful writers join in the fun insanity of NaNoWriMo each year, but I thought it would be important to touch on a few of them, for the first year participants especially.

I want to write the Next Great American Novel.
That's awesome! I am all for that and I support you fully...but NaNo is not the place to start. The thing about NaNoWriMo is that you are writing so much on such a short, fairly unrealistic (in terms of a complete novel) deadline, that whatever you write is going to suck. Letting your work suck is the only way you will finish by 30 November, trust me. You will not be able to write an amazing work of Literature during NaNoWriMo, but you can get a start, which brings me to the next reason.

I want to get my ideas down.
This is the much more realistic and sane approach to option A above. Don't worry about specifics or quality, just get your ideas down on the page and get that word count up. 50,000 words of crap may not make a novel, but it makes for one hell of a detailed outline for the Next Great American Novel. Use it as a guide to help you actually write a novel after November has ended and I think you'll find it much easier to navigate your ideas when they are on the page than when they are floating freely in your head.

I want to get into the habit of writing everyday.
This, my friends, is what NaNo was created to do. NaNo is not about writing an amazing novel that you can send off to agents on 1 Dec (note: do not do this. Under any circumstances), it is about writing everyday, getting words out even when you feel like you don't have much to say. When you force yourself into doing it and have a quota to make each day, you are much more likely to write. And as Madeleine L'Engle said, "inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." Sometimes the hardest part of writing is just sitting down and starting—that's what NaNo is meant to help you with.

Querying The Damsel

Well, I did it: I just sent off query letters to four different agents, so cross your fingers for me! I'll keep you updated as I hear news, of course. Since many of you are in the same boat as I, looking for an agent or hoping to someday be published, I thought I might leave you a few tips on querying.

General Rules for Querying

1. Research First. Find out about the agent, what they represent, where their tastes lie, and if they are currently accepting queries. You can find an agent via a search engine like AgentQuery, or by querying the agents of works similar (but not too similar!) to yours.
2. Follow the Guidelines. Now, there's no hard and fast rule here and this goes hand in hand with the above rule, but please make sure you have read the guidelines specific to the agent you are querying. Some want specific fonts, some want only the query, some want sample pages; it all depends on the agent.
3. Keep it Professional. Publishing is a business, so treat it as such. Use formal block formatting in your query email or letter and treat the agent with respect. These agents are not your high school buddies, so please don't write to them as if they were.
4. Personalize Your Query. An agent can tell if you've written one query and sent it out to fifty people at once. Personalize your query to fit the agent, appeal to their tastes and add any information you feel is important that you've learned about them through your research.
5. Proofread Your Query. This may seem like a no-brainer, but do you really want to take that chance? Edit your query just as you would edit your novel to make sure it flows well, makes sense, and is free of those pesky typos. Additionally, have a friend/teacher/writing buddy read over your query as well.

The Time to Write Your Novel is Now

For four years I have cared for my hibiscus, pictured here. I water it when we're in a drought, I give it plant food at the beginning of the season, I pick the dead flowers off, I keep the bugs away, and I love it. From May to June I watch it grow strong shoots and wait anxiously for that first bud to burst open--and often worry that it won't, even though I know I just have to be patient. Then July comes and the heat index hits 90 or so and Bam! All at once, I'm hit with one perfect bloom and the next day, three! Soon enough I've got seven blooms a day and the whole thing looks genuinely gorgeous.

I love waking up to see my hibiscus covered in large, open flowers, but by the next day, those blooms are gone. A hibiscus flower only lasts about a day, maybe two, but by then it's drooping and starting to discolour. You have to savour the beauty while it lasts, the day it's available.

Free time, too, is a beautiful thing. You realize that it's there, wake up to its presence, but you choose to ignore it for the moment because you've got a TV show to catch up on or some errands to run. You get home at the end of the night and you realize your free time is dwindling and will soon be gone. You ignored its beauty, you didn't take advantage of it when you could.

The time to write your novel is now, while you've got the time. Don't wait until the flowers are gone, appreciate the beauty while it's still here. Fall and winter are coming, you may not have the chance after today.

General; The Wall

I won't normally do this, make more than one post a day, but I just had a conversation with my friend and I thought it was worth noting. Funny that this would happen just after I hit The Wall, but there you go.

He told me how when he writes he'll start, then he'll hit a wall, get discouraged, and stop. He'll go back and look at the story, but he never gets further than that wall. My advice to him was to stop planning. If it's not working, so you try something new. Push through and get past that wall, doesn't matter how you do it, so long as you get past. Only once you're on the other side do you look back and figure out what worked and what didn't. If something isn't how you like it, you change it, but first you get past that wall.

Here's what I told him:

You reach a wall, you do something to get past it. You climb, and if that doesn't work, you dig. You do not stop to look at the wall. The more you look at the wall the bigger and longer and thicker it's going to get and you'll start thinking you can't get past that wall anymore.