Denise Jaden's Blog, page 35

An Honest Post About #nanowrimo

As you can see, I'm an official 2011 NaNo Winner! (though I can't claim my winnings officially until the 25th I think). I've actually blown by the 50k mark, which is still quite amazing to me, since I've always been known as an under-writer.

Even at nearly 74k I'm still not done my book, so I'm racing against the clock to try and get it finished by the end of the month. I figure if I don't wander too much, I might get there in another ten thousand words.

But as this year comes to a close, I've been reflecting on my NaNo experiences, and thought I would share, for those who might be interested.

2007 was my first year participating in NaNo. As many of you probably know, my debut YA novel, LOSING FAITH was my first attempt at NaNo (but definitely not my first attempt at writing a novel). I wrote the first draft in 21 days. It came in at around 46k, and I had to pad some of the descriptions and so forth to get it up to 50k by the end of the month.

I took almost a year to revise it with the help of stellar critique partners. I sent out queries to agents starting in September, and by November, 2008 I had myself an agent. My agent helped me with some small edits and then submitted it to editors in January 2009. By April we had a deal with the amazing Anica Rissi from Simon Pulse. LOSING FAITH hit the shelves of bookstores throughout North America in September 2010.

This is the quickest I can imagine getting a novel traditionally published, from conception to on sale. Really, the edits all along the way were not the "rewriting-the-whole-book" variety.  And it still took THREE years. Just sayin.


2008 - This year during NaNo, I wrote a YA novel called BELLY UP.  And because of my success from the last year, I also decided to write a second novel simultaneously. We'll call this one "The Novel We Don't Speak Of Because It's So Bad." (TNWDSOBISB). I wrote BELLY UP  with an outline, revised it a couple of times, sent it to my agent, and I still need to do one more revision before we try to sell it, but I have confidence that one day it can be done. TNWDSOBISB, on the other hand, was written without an outline, just on a spurt of an idea, and yeah, we don't talk about that one.

2009 - This year I wrote a YA novel called PERFECT AIM. It's about a teen archer, and I still really love this book, but it needs some major work before I send it to my agent and so far I have not had the time. I started this one with a 38k outline (yes, you read that correctly). The one problem I found with this is because so much of the story was in the outline, I got a bit lazy while writing during NaNo, and the voice ended up a bit stilted. So that will be one of the main things I need to fix when I go back to revise.

Also, during this year's NaNo, I was under a deadline for LOSING FAITH revisions for my editor, so that kept me VERY busy!

2010 - This year I attempted a companion novel to LOSING FAITH for my NaNo Project. I wrote a basic outline, discussed with my critique partner, and started writing with a basic idea of where the plot would go. I ended up going out of character quickly with my MC, I figured out later because many of the plot points in my outline just didn't suit her personality. So I'm still in the midst of revising this one and the plot has changed so much that it really is a brand new book.

2011 - I've been working on another YA contemporary novel. The working title is Milano, but I suspect that will change. I had a short synopsis written prior to NaNo, which I had sent to my critique partner, which she shredded apart. I went through her criticisms and wrote a return email to her with some ideas of how to fix her concerns. Because of the busyness of life, I never got around to revising my synopsis. I just worked from the email that I had sent back to my CP, and I only looked at that once before November the first. I haven't looked back at it since.

To be honest, this has been my easiest year. I haven't felt blocked hardly at all. It has required a lot of research, but other than that, it has been going just amazingly well. It's definitely the most words I've ever written in a month, and I've loved this story every day I've been working on it. For those who follow my blog, you know I've had an incredibly hard year, and all I can say is that I believe this is just the favor and grace of God, a much needed refresher for my life. I'm so very thankful.

So those are all of my experiences with NaNoWriMo. I hope they help add some perspective to what you may have (or are) gone through, or at the very least, I hope my pain and suffering has made for entertaining reading! :-)

If you're looking to check out a published novel that was originally written during NaNo, there are several on the NaNo website, but some of my favorites (besides LOSING FAITH, of course) are WATER FOR ELEPHANTS and ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS.

Happy writing, and I'd love to hear about your NaNo experiences if you'd like to share!

November Giveaway Hop Winners!

I had such a great response to the November Giveaway Hop that I get to give THREE books away from my shelf. Unfortunately, my brain was absorbed in Nanowrimo when I posted the contest, and I neglected to have a "name" category on the form. So I"ll just have to announce the beginning of the winner's email addresses (I'll email them separately).

Congratulations to...

wilsondev, winner of CRESCENDO by Becca Fitzpatrick!

Jennifer, winner of THE 13TH REALITY by James Dashner

and xxsquigglesxx, winner of I AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus Lore

Thanks to all who entered! Congratulations again to the winners!!

November Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the November Blog Hop!

This contest will run from November 8-11, 2011.


Rather than offering one or two books for a giveaway, I've decided to open up an entire bookshelf for your choosing! I've tried to include lots of variety, so there's something for everyone here. All you have to do is pick your top three choices!

 In case you can't see them well enough, the books to choose from:I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE by Laura LippmanTHE HOURGLASS DOOR by Lisa MangumTHE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE by Benjamin HaleWEST OF HERE by Jonathan EvisonI AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus LoreJULIET by Anne FortierCRESCENDO by Becca FitzpatrickTHE DIVAS DIAMOND by Victoria Christopher MurrayI LIKE IT LIKE THAT by Cecily von ZiegesarTHE 13TH REALITY by James DashnerJUNGLE CROSSING by Sydney SalterTHE LIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE AND DEATH by C.K. Kelly MartinHUSH by Eishes ChayilSWOON by Nina MalkinREVENGE OF THE HOMECOMING QUEEN by Stephanie HaleCOOL CACHE by Patricia Smiley
Some are gently used, some are advance copies, and some are signed. This contest is open to anyone with a US mailing address. I'll give away one book from my shelf for every fifty entries I receive, so the more people you get to enter, the more books I will give away!

Fill out the following form to enter:

<p><p><p>Loading...</p></p></p>

And here are the links to other great contests in this hop:

#NaNoWriMo Tips, Tricks, and Reasons to Start (if you haven't already!)

The other day I did my first school visit. It was a ton of fun, and most especially fun because I got to talk about NaNoWriMo! I seriously could talk about that all day long.

Since many of you are either A. Enduring the pain and suffering of NaNoWriMo along with me, or B. Think people who try to write a book in a month were dropped on their head as babies....

I thought I'd share a few notes from my school visit. For your enjoyment and/or argument:

1.    It's only a month.

You can use this month to do all the normal stuff you do, and feel the same at the end of the month, and wonder why your life never changes and why you never accomplish anything great. Or you can decide that this month you WILL accomplish something great. BTW, do you know that writing a novel is really something great?

2.    Do you even know how many people have thought about or attempted to write a novel?
Human nature – we want to be similar enough to the general population to not be a weirdo, but different enough to know we are special – to have a unique story that people would want to hear. Different but still relate-able. That's why writing is such a popular idea.

 Ask anybody you know over the age of 35. I bet they've either thought about writing a book or even tried it. So what percentage of those people do you think have succeeded and what percentage have failed? All it will take is 30 days to surpass that multitude of people.

3.    NaNo is a great excuse for not getting your homework done (shhh, don't tell your teachers this trick).
The next time you have an assignment that you haven't gotten done, ask your teacher if they're over 35 (then see point number 2) – have they written a novel? Do they have any idea how much work goes into writing a novel in a month? 'Nuff said.
4. On that note…It's a great excuse to stay up past your bedtime. Ask your parents if they're over 35.

5.    There's a great energy that comes with a bunch of people all trying to reach a similar goal.
Ride on that energy, and the momentum will carry you through.
Know that others have difficult writing days too, and be a support for them when they need it. Then they'll be a support when you need it.

6.    Your writing will be much better than you think it is. Even if you think it's craptastic.
When you come back to what you wrote in a month or a year, you'll be surprised how many great things you find in there.
NaNo allows you to explore directions you may not explore if you weren't letting your brain loose.
Always write forward. Kill perfectionism.

7.    Schedule:
I get up half an hour early in November. What's half an hour?
Write 1000 words when you're in that sleepy, weird-ideas-sound-amazing! state of mind.
Think about your story during the day.
Come back and write another 1000 words later.
Two chances for your muse to show up. If not one, maybe the other.

8.    Getting stuck
It will happen. It happens to everybody. Write anyway. Who cares if you have to scrap entire sections later? Sometimes you have to take detours to get where you're going. And often that's the ONLY way to get there.
Some of my best stuff I've written when I've been stuck. In Losing Faith, Tessa showed up. She wasn't in my outline, but my MC was wandering aimlessly, alone for far too long during my "stuck" period. To shake things up, I brought in an unlikely friend.

9.    You will be amazed how impressed people are when you tell them "I wrote a book. Yes, a real one.

Aloha Oe!

NaNoWriMo is upon us and I'm going to be very busy for the month of November. But instead of saying goodbye, or promising I won't be blogging at all during the next month, I'll say Aloha Oe, which loosely translates to "Until we meet again."

I'll be around throughout the month to let you know how my NaNo project is going, to give away that copy of Losing Faith, and for a blog hop with some awesome prizes next week, but I probably won't be saying much coherent on here otherwise.

Wish me luck! I'm still undecided on which project I'll be starting at seven AM tomorrow. Nothing like leaving things until the eleventh hour...

All the best to everyone else attempting NaNo. It's only a month. Give it all you've got, and I promise you won't regret the effort. You can find me on their site under denisej. And of course I'll be around on Twitter under @denisejaden

Hope everyone has a wonderful November!!

Sunday Boring Post

I warned you, this post has nothing exciting to say. I'm two days away from blogging every day of October, though, so I must finish!

Last night my husband and I went to a friends house. Kind of a party. Not really a Halloween party. During the day we discussed how it hadn't even occurred to us to dress up in costume and find a fun costumey place to go this year. We think this is a sure sign that we are getting old.

Today I slept until almost ten, which I haven't done in YEARS. Then I had an all day practice with my Polynesian dance group. I'm tired, but the pumpkins have yet to be carved, so I better run.

Let's hope tomorrow's post will be slightly more exciting! Did you do anything fun for Halloween? (Or will you tomorrow?)

Saturday Stuff

Eek! It's October 29th and I almost missed my first day of blogging this month! I just remembered, and I'm about to go out, so a couple of things real quick...

1. I haven't forgotten about the NEVER ENOUGH Cover Reveal Contest. I'll still be giving away my signed copy of a 2nd printing edition of LOSING FAITH, but I just wanted to give a little extra time for people who mentioned they would be featuring my new cover soon.

2. I'm still gearing up for NaNoWriMo, but I'm thinking I may be changing projects at the last minute. My agent and I need to discuss my "Tessa" project before I'll be able to write that, and I'm not sure we'll be able to accomplish that before Tuesday. I do have a couple of other outlines semi-ready, so I hope to look at those over the weekend.

3. I'm doing my very first school visit this coming week! I'm very excited, and I probably would be really nervous, but I'll be going in to talk to a class who's attempting NaNoWriMo, and I love talking about that so much that it's actually keeping me fairly calm. I'll be back to let you know how it goes.

I'm getting dragged away by my toenails here, so I have to run. Happy weekend, everybody!!

How to Write a Logline

Over the weekend at the Surrey Writers' Conference, one of the most useful things I took home was a simple formula of how to write a logline, courtesy of Luke Ryan from Disruption Entertainment.

During his workshop, he had the ability to make so much of the screenwriting and targeting your audience processes seem so easy. I don't have much time to blog today, so thought I'd pass along his formula.

Fill in the blanks from your work in progress (and if you can't easily fill in the blanks, perhaps that will point you to a potential problem or an area of your manuscript you can make stronger).

I'm interested to hear if you think this is as useful as I do!

Luke's Logline Formula:
____________________ (Main Character) sets out to ___________________________________________________(achieve a goal) but runs into ___________________________________________________(unexpected or sometimes ironic obstacle) and must
__________________________________________________(grow in a way to triumph or face certain doom.)

Thankful Thursday: Book Bloggers, Teachers, Librarians, and Booksellers

I was going to add this to yesterday's post, but thought that post would get far too long. Because I have plenty of thankfulness when it comes to bloggers, teachers, librarians, and booksellers. In fact, you're even in my acknowledgements for NEVER ENOUGH (I wanted to put you in big flashing neon lights, but that was vetoed at higher levels because of cost). I'm now moving into publishing my second novel. I'm not Sarah Dessen or JK Rowling. And yet, I'm seeing support already, all over the place, for NEVER ENOUGH. My gratitude is huge.

Let me start with Book Bloggers, because you hold a very special place in my heart. You gave my debut book a chance before it was even released, before you had even heard of me, and not only that, but you plastered it all over the Internet, telling others they should read it too. Whenever anyone questions the value of book bloggers, I want to punch them in the nose.

Teachers: I feel for you. You get a bad rap a lot of the time, and I feel worse, because I gave you a bad rap for many years. It's the same kind of regret I feel for not noticing how great my parents were when I was at that age where everybody sucked. You deal with that age--that suck rep--every day. You shape the next generation, and open their eyes to so many great things (like books they might not pick up otherwise). You deserve a medal for putting up with ungrateful kids like I was.

Librarians: Let me just say, that as a profession in general, you are some of my favorite people in the world. There is nothing more refreshing to me than to walk into a building (a library) where I *know* I will end up running into someone passionate about books. I could hang with you people all day long.

Booksellers: Of anybody on this list, I feel a kinship with you. You have to mesh what you love with what sells every day. And sometimes you don't get to sell what you love. But when you do, you make sure everybody knows about it. I'm so incredible thankful for the many bookstores that carried my first novel--that took a chance on me--and even put extra care into displaying my book and hand-selling it to your customers.

This is why, when I received an extra galley of NEVER ENOUGH this week, all of you were first on my thoughts. I wanted so badly to get my next book into your hands. If you fit into the list above, or even if you don't, but you really want to read and help spread the word about NEVER ENOUGH, make sure to sign up and get on the ARC Tour. I hope everyone who wants to gets a chance to read it and I hope you love it!

Thank you again, all of you, for everything you do!

Bloggers! Teachers! Librarians! Want to Read NEVER ENOUGH?!

Eeeeeeee, look what I got in the mail this week:

Even the spine is so pretty!! For those of you who don't know anything about this book yet, it is my second YA Contemporary novel and will be releasing from Simon Pulse / Simon & Schuster in July 2012.

Here's the little back of book synopsis:

Never Enough

Loann's always wanted to be popular and pretty like
her sister, Claire. So when Claire's ex-boyfriend starts
flirting with her, Loann is willing to do whatever it
takes to feel special…even if that means
betraying her sister.

But as Loann slips inside Claire's world, she discovers
that everything is not as it seems. Claire's quest for
perfection is all-consuming, and comes at a
dangerous price. As Claire increasingly withdraws
from friends and family, Loann struggles to
understand her and make amends. Can she heal their
relationship—and her sister—before it's too late?
I already put one call out for bloggers, teachers, and librarians who want to read this, and I did receive a number of emails from people, but I thought it would be easier to keep track of to add a form here, then I can make sure I get the same info from everybody. Also, at this point I can only open this up to people with a Canadian or US mailing address. I'm still hoping NEVER ENOUGH will be available some other ways for overseas bloggers. I'll let you know when I have details.

But before I get to the form, I want to ask a few favors from you.

First, this is really EARLY to have an advance copy, but since I only have TWO copies (with one of them I will look like Gollum and his Precious, so don't be thinking you'll pry that one out of my greedy little hands ;) But I'd like to make sure my one "spare" galley makes it through to as many people who want to read it as possible. So I'd like to start it on it's tour right away!

I'd love to ask if you read it, if you'd save any reviews you might post until at least April 2012.

I'd also ask that you be gentle on the book, so it can hopefully hold together for as many people on the list as possible.

Please read and pass on to the next person as quickly as possible, hopefully within two weeks (if you know you won't be able to do this, make a note and I'll try to put you closer to the end of the list).

I think that's it! Please full out the form below thoroughly if you're interested in reading an early copy of NEVER ENOUGH!!


<p>Loading...</p>