'NaNoWriMo' begins, and a participant who is now an author offers advice

1:40AM EDT November 1. 2012 - Hear that sound?

That's the sound of scrambling as people participating in NaNoWriMo try to find their Zen as they dive into the start of the race.

National Novel Writing Month. 50,000 words in 30 days. It's now five years since I took part in my first NaNo. ...

So Nov. 1, 2007, I began. 1,667 words a day is the goal of a NaNo -- which puts you at a 50K story by Nov. 30. I had no intention of writing anything more than my travel log. I wasn't a writer!

And then ... something happened.

I finished recording the river trip by the fourth or fifth day in. I couldn't stop writing now -- I hadn't made it out to the first coffee shop meeting! So I started a new story. Something for my teenage kids, full of river elves and humans, and secrets invasions of a fantasy land. I had Tolkien, and Eddings, and all the McCaffrey I'd ever read flooding my mind. So I wrote. And wrote, and wrote some more. Looking back, the story was rather horrific. Really. All the clichés that are, well, cliché? I had them. The story started with one character waking up in the middle of the forest. Backstory fell like rain. To be honest, the entire thing sucked badly, but I was having so much fun, I never noticed.

Caught that? It was fun. I might not have been a writer, but I was a storyteller, and having a damn good time doing it.

My craft improved even over the course of the project, but the biggest lesson I learned from that first NaNo was keep writing. I had motivation a'plenty as my daughter would read my completed pages each day and expect the NEXT chapter the following day. She didn't care the story wasn't polished, or had plot holes an elephant could fall into. She was all ... "More. What happened next?" To this day, that's one of my mantras when I write.

Long story short, I wrote over 100,000 words that November. The adventure led me to find e-books, and by March 2009 I had my first book published (Wolf Signs). I've just signed my 24th contract with Samhain Publishing, my 30th contract overall.

Five years.

So for those of you who have leaped into NaNo 2012, I give you two bits of advice.

Read the full article, including the advice, at USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/happyeverafter/2012/11/01/national-novel-writin...

I won't be doing the NaNoWriMo of 2012, but I will keep writing. And reading. And striving.

That's what writers do: they are writers. Twaddle, rants, fantasy, reality: always writing.

- Jon O

Posted via email from Jon Osterholm :: WMBC :: posterous