nanowrimo tips

NaNoWriMo Tips: Unleash Your Descriptive Inner Voice

As you work your way through NaNoWriMo and your novel, memoir, or whatever writing you choose during the November writing sprint, unleash your inner descriptive voice and make your sentences more interesting by adding more descriptors. Look for words or phrases that paint a picture.

The ball hit the window.

The black and white soccer ball Bob kicked with all his might hit the Peterson’s large front picture window with a dull thud.

Close your eyes and picture the scene. Pay attention to all your senses. Can you hear the sound Bob might make as he kicked the ball? Can you hear the thud of the window rebounding from the collision? Can you see Bob? Is he dripping with sweat or have glowing red cheeks from the exertion?

Let your imagination become a paint brush with strokes that put us in the middle of the action, feeling everything you do in the moment.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Avoid the Blank Page Woes

During NaNoWriMo, you will be writing every day. Returning over and over again to a blank screen or page can be intimidating.

Don’t let the blank page get in your way. Put the date at the top of the page and say out loud, “I’ve already started the page. It isn’t blank!”

Then start writing. One obstacle down.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Verifying Word Counts

Some of the members of Writers in the Grove participating in NaNoWriMo have the same concerns as others about the process of verifying their month long writing word counts. There is much fear about copying and pasting their writing into a word count verification app or program and trusting that their words won’t be stolen.

Word count verification is required by NaNoWriMo by the end of November to verify that you have written the required number of words in order to qualify for completion of your goal, and the rewards of winning offered by NaNoWriMo and its sponsors.

Let’s make this very clear from the start. The official NaNoWriMo word count verifier does not save your words. It is an online took that merely checks spaces between words and average word lengths to estimate a word count, then deletes your words. Again, it does not save your words nor store them.

The same is true for most word count verifiers online.

With your confidence restored, let’s look at how to estimate your word count for handwritten or manually typed content, and explore your options for submitting randomly generated words for your word count verification. Don’t forget, we’ve covered how to track your word count during NaNoWriMo a few weeks ago.

Calculating Handwritten or Manually Typed Word Counts

There is another challenge facing NaNoWriMo participants. What if you write by hand, not entering your story onto a computer. There are still ways to estimate your word count. NaNoWriMo recommends having a friend verify the numbers you’ve written by counting them manually, a tedious labor of love, then use a random text generator to submit the representation of that number of words.

There are still a number of writers that avoid computers, writing on manual or electric typewriters. They will either estimate their word counts using the examples below or scan the pages and have them converted to text with an OCR program.

Before we get to examples of how to use random text generators for submitting your word count to NaNoWriMo, here are some ways to estimate your word count.

A handwritten page, single spaced, is generally estimated to represent 100 words.
Between 3 and 4 single spaced handwritten pages represents a single typed page.
A single spaced typed page represents approximately 700 words in 10pt font, 535 in 12pt font.
Count the number of words on each of 10 lines of writing. Average the words per line and then count the number of handwritten lines and multiple that number by the average number of words per line.
If the handwritten or typed content is doubled spaced, or you are using wide rule on handwritten paper, adjust the estimates accordingly.

To estimate typed word counts by page, the Word Counter blog calculates 50,000 words is 100 pages single spaced, 200 pages double spaced.

Let’s look at the various options for submitting your word count for verification using random word generators.

Scrivener Random Words Compile

If you are using Scrivener, use the NaNoWriMo Scrivener Project Template released every year. When you are ready to verify your word count for NaNoWriMo, go to File > Compile.

There you will find the custom compile setting that will compile and save your manuscript to a text file with all of the letters converted to garbage words like “xxxx yxyyx zyxxxxxxy, yyzy zzxxyxy.”

Simply copy the nonsense words from the file and paste those in. They represent a very close approximation of your actual words, replacing each letter with another.

Random Text Generators

The popular Lorem Ipsum random word generator is commonly used to generate your estimated word count. Select words and enter the number of words to generate the randomized words.

By tradition, the random words generated are in Latin, but there are many other random text generators you may use to create your word count material for verification. Some offer randomized words in other languages and offer quotes from celebrity shows and characters including Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

A favorite is the Blippity Fling-Flang random word generator, spilling forth this delightful nonsense to your word count number:

Zap tang hum jingle blappity bleewhack, bam dingle abracadabra dee bleepity wuggleshnozzle wubble. Zip loo woggle ting blangity blippity rizzle dongleslap? Shnozzle floo hum crungle roo slap?

Weeble! Bam zunkity flee shnizzle shnoz bam blap. Bluppity slop blung!

Bam shnazzy zingle blop zung zap tingle. Ha dang Moe…flupping blobbing bladong. Dizzle slop flangity ho blobdabba???

The only problem with using random text generators is that they often replace your words with words that are longer or shorter than the ones you wrote. According to NaNoWriMo representatives, their word count generator doesn’t measure word length but counts spaces between words, so this shouldn’t matter, but keep this in mind if your word count is drastically different from the verified number.

Verify Early

Many a NaNoWriMo writer waited until the last few hours of November 30 to verify their word count, using every minute to reach their 50,000 word goal. But experienced NaNoWriMo participants know to verify their word count early, even so much as a few days before the last day of the month.

Word counters are not perfect. Each program uses a different formula to generate their word counts. Your program and calculations may tell you that you’ve written 50,285 words but run it through NaNoWriMo’s word count verifier and you might find out you wrote only 49,892 words, and find yourself scrambling to add the last couple hundred.

Whether or not you are close to the 50K goal, consider verifying your word count on November 28. This way, you will know if you are over or under the count, and how hard you have to work on those last two days to reach your goal.

For more information on tracking your word count daily and throughout the year, check out our article on word trackers.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Reverse the Writing Order

One of the challenges in NaNoWriMo is that you may have the start of your novel set, most of the plot points on an outline, but what about the ending? Do you know where this thing ends?

Write your ending first.

Why not? Take a writing session and write the last scene, chapter, or maybe the last two or three chapters. Take your story to the end to see what happens, then start from the beginning.

You might discover that the plot outline you carefully planned out needs to be shifted around, the journey changed as you’ve decided to take this in a new direction. Or that you will have to add characters or remove them, or change other parts of the story to make it tie up with the ending you’ve written.

You can always edit and change the ending later, but knowing your destination might help you get there sooner, and enjoy the journey better.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Avoid Punctuation Police

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.
Kurt Vonnegut

This is wise advice, especially during NaNoWriMo. Don’t let the punctuation get in your way. Fussing over a comma, period, quote mark, colon, and semi-colon as you hammer out your story slows you down.

Fix all the punctuation in December. Then you can learn all about the rules and regulations of English punctuation and use it right.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Write Your Draft Fast

Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly.
Joshua Wolf Shenk

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: My Favorite Things

Do you remember the song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music?

Raindrops on roses
And whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles
And warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies
And crisp apple strudels
Door bells and sleigh bells
And schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Try this writing experiment:

Number a piece of paper from 1 – 25.
Set the timer for 6 minutes.
Now, make a list of your favorite things – exclude spouse and children.

When done with the list, look at which of the five senses are predominant. Taste of food? Smell of weather?

Be aware of how you remember things, and incorporate those descriptions into your writing, remembering to expand your favorite things to include all the senses, too.

You can find more writing tips, NaNoWriMo prompts, and writing tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Writing Sessions

Writing 1,667 words generally takes 60-90 minutes depending upon how fast you type. If you are hand-writing, it may take even longer, but not much.

Do you need to sit down and write for the full 90 minutes?

No.

Consider splitting up your writing session times into two or more sessions throughout the day. Thirty minutes three times a day still gets the job done if you prepare yourself well.

NaNoWriMo fan and author, Ysenia Vargas offers the following advice:

Basically, for every hour of the day, from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed, you are responsible for writing 500 words an hour. After writing 500 words for that hour, you can do whatever you want until the next hour begins.

You can find more writing tips and prompts and tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Tips: Locations

Where does your story take place? Does it happen in one place or many places?

Take time in NaNoWriMo to write extensive descriptions of each location in each scene in your story. In the editing phase, you might only use a small part of this, but by exploring the surrounds around your characters fully, you have a wealth of information to choose from.

It’s difficult to write about a place you’ve never experienced, though science fiction and fantasy authors do it all the time. If you are new to writing, write about a location you are familiar with, one you know well. You can always change or rename the location later during the editing stage.

Consider the following as you describe each location:

Where are they?
When are they? What time of day? What year? What month? Which day of the week?
Describe the ground.
Describe the building(s) outside.
Describe the building(s) inside.
What is the most predominate color?
What do you smell? One thing or many things? Which is dominant? Which is a hint of fragrance?
What are the sounds? Are there many or few? Which is loudest, drowning the rest? Which is softest, heard only when paying attention or in a moment of silence from the rest of the sounds?
What is the temperature?
Is it dry, humid, wet, damp, windy, hot, cold?
What does the character(s) feel on their skin? Is the sensation the same on top of the head as well as the feet?
Where is the sun? Can it be seen?
Describe textures, of walls, ceilings, furniture, floor, plants.
Is nature here? What kind of nature? What is it, what does it look like?
Does anything in the scene trigger stereotype reactions?
Does anything in the scene trigger an emotional or memory response to one or more characters?
Are there doors, paths, or exits?
Are there windows? Open, closed? What is visible through them?
Does the space feel open or closed, restricted, or free?
Are there landmarks, statues, artwork, elements that serve as markers or direction indicators?
Which way are the characters facing? North, east, west, south, etc.
Is the sun/moon in their face or behind them? Or not anywhere?
Are their vehicles? Furniture? What man made objects are near them? Do they interact with them?
Find one element in the scene and describe it. Is it important to the scene, or an accessory? Does it help the story or help define the characters?
Find another element, one that might be missed. Describe it. Why is it there?

This should start a series of your own questions specific to the location. Write those down and create your own list.

You can find more writing tips and prompts and tips for NaNoWriMo on our Writers in the Grove site.

NaNoWriMo Preparation: Word Trackers

During NaNoWriMo, it is important that you track your word count or time as part of the self-discipline and goal-setting aspect of the month-long event. There are many tools available to help you keep track of your daily goals, adding up to the hopeful 50,000 words or 30 hours, goals we’ve set for participating members of Writers in the Grove.

When tracking your word count with NaNoWriMo, just remember you always enter the total of the words so far, not the total for the day’s word count, to their calculator. Their system will calculate the increase from the previous day for you so you don’t need the specific word count unless you are monitoring the daily word count for your own needs.

How to Find Word Counts

Tracking your writing time is easy. Just check the clock or watch, or set a stop watch or use the one on your smartphone.

Counting words should be easy, but some programs make it a little complicated. The key issue is that these word count calculations are based upon the entire document, not the words you wrote during that day’s session(s).

For NaNoWriMo’s word counter, this is idea, but if you wish to track your own word count daily, you need to determine how many words you wrote that day. Once you enter the number into NaNoWriMo’s word counter, it will estimate the daily total based upon the new total word count subtracted from the previous total word count. Sometimes you skip a day and total the two days together before entering it onto the website, or wish to calculate it daily, so the following will help you find your word counts, be it a total or for the day.

If you are not using Scrivener, there are two options for finding your daily word count.

Create, write, and save one file per day. You may merge them later, but it makes keeping the word count easier. Note the word count in the file before you save it and close it. It will represent a good estimate of the words in that document.
Write in one file. At the end of each writing session, note the total word count. Subtract the previous session count from the new total to determine an estimate of the words produced during that session.

Some programs will allow you to select what you’ve written and right click to report the word count for that selected block.

Let’s look at the specifics for finding the word count for Word, WordPerfect, and Scrivener. (more…)