Delilah S. Dawson's Blog, page 11

10 Tips for Winning NaNoWriMo

A novel in a month?

You can totally do that.

But here are my caveats: My opinion is not universal. There are many paths to writing and publication. Every writer has a different process, and often, every book has its own process. You don't have to follow these steps to find success.

That being said, I've written quite a few books and novellas, and if I could go back in time and give myself advice, this is what I'd say. I'd bring cake, though, because the truth is somewhat painful. Especially step 10.

1. Publicly commit to it and make yourself accountable.

Goals should be attainable, quantifiable, and public. So let your support system, whether online or in real life, know what your goal is, how you're going to attain it, and how to keep you honest. Keep your word count on your blog or tweet your progress every day. If you're following the NaNoWriMo rules, that means you're going to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30, which works out to 1667 words per day, give or take a letter.

2. Give yourself permission to suck.

Everyone's first drafts suck. Let go of perfection and acknowledge that there is no one way to write, no One Perfect Story. Just try to hammer out your story, scene by scene, goal by goal. Fix it later. Imperfection is the thief of progress.

Don't think of it as a masterpiece. Thing of it as a fun story you're telling yourself. Take risks. When faced with two choices, give your character a reason to choose the most interesting one. Safe choices are boring, and if you're emotionally clenched up and terrified of doing it "wrong", you and your character will only make safe choices.

3. Write a brief synopsis or outline to give yourself a road map.

It's hard to figure out where you're going if you don't know where to start and where you want to end up. Especially if this is your first novel, it can help to give yourself a short, not-too-detailed guide. Here are the basic things you need to know: who is the protagonist, what is the world, what is the instigating factor that kicks off the plot, what happens at the climax, and what happens at the end? You can figure out the rest on the way.

If it's your first book, I recommend having a single main character with a single point of view vs. trying for a GRRM-style sweeping saga that requires a map and language guide.

4. Make sure you know your protagonist and that they are not an everyman or a Mary Sue.

If you're going to stick with someone for 50,000 pages and several revisions, they need to be compelling and real, with strengths and flaws and a realistic backstory. Why are they the way they are? What will they learn in your story that will give them a satisfying character arc? What kinds of friends, lovers, and foes will challenge and compliment them in unique ways? What is the motivation that drives them on every page? What, in short, do they want, and what will they do to get it?

5. Know where you're going to start each day.

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." -E.L. Doctorow

And that means that whenever you sit down to write, you should've been thinking about where you stopped the day before and where you want to get today. One of the worst things a writer can do, in my opinion, is sit down with no earthly idea what to write. It's not going to magically pop into your brain just because you want it to. That's why I think the idea of "the Muse" is BS.

You are driving this car. You have to do the homework of knowing what the next scene is about. Maybe not all the details, but "He's going to wake up and find a dead woman on the porch," is better than, "Uh, well, he went to bed last night, and, um..." 

My trick? I always stop writing at a place where I know what happens next. Then I think about it, really hard and figure out how to make that scene exciting. Next time I sit down, I know exactly where I am and where I'm going to go, one scene at a time.

6. Start writing. Sit down at your keyboard and do not stop until you've hit your goal.

1667 words is about 5.5 pages, if you're using the standard manuscript format. That means 1" margin all around, double spaced, .5 indent before each paragraph. 

While you are sitting at your keyboard, do not browse the internet. Do not tell Twitter about how you're writing and then talk to other people about writing. Do not shop or check email. Just write. Do not get up until you have reached your goal. If you go over your goal, reward yourself.

I'm a big believe in rewarding yourself.

7. If you miss a day, do not berate yourself or feel like crap. Make up for it quickly.

Missing a microgoal just kills, doesn't it? It totally throws off your game and gives you permission to make the same mistake again. But in this case, the missed words will rain down on you like an avalanche if you get too far behind. 1667 words a day is doable. Missing four days and suddenly having a *does math* 6668-word deficit is pretty scary. 

So in order to not set yourself up for defeat, put in the work each day. They may not be the best 1667 words you've ever written, and that's okay. Even pro writers have days when we feel like our writing is crap, but we have faith that we'll be able to fix it in the future. 

Butt in chair. Fingers on keyboard. Write like a mofo.

8. Do not reread what you've already written. Do not look back. Move bravely forward.

Here is how momentum dies: You stop moving forward.

Revising is a thing that happens later, when you've got a completed book and you know how it all ends. That's when you take another look at your first chapter or that scene you futzed up. If you keep messing around in what you've already done, you're wasting time that could be used to up your game and get more words on the page. 

Yes, some famous authors revise as they go. You are not (yet) a famous author. You are not that good. *I* am not that good. We mere mortals will benefit more from finishing one crappy book that we can fix later than from massaging a scene for days, seeking some ultimate perfection we'll never reach.

So keep typing. Don't look back. Pretend you're being chased by werewolves.

9. Final wordcount. Did you hit it?

YES, but I'm not done = GREAT! YOU WON! Keep going. Finish the book!

NO = THAT'S OK. Keep going. Finish the book!

The thing is, most YA and Adult books are around 70k to 100k words long, depending on the genre and how many words you need to tell the story. 50k isn't generally a complete book, but it's a great starting point. You will most likely know where you need to add scenes or bulk up words once you've got a complete story and are in revisions. 

The point of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in a month. This novel is not expected to be complete or perfect. That's what revisions are for. Which brings me to...

10. Remember: December is NANOFIXMO.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm teaching a NANOFIXMO class for LitReactor.

The sad truth is that THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO is finish a NaNoWriMo book and immediately start querying agents. They will not be impressed with a December 1 query letter that starts with, "I have just completed my first novel for NaNoWriMo and am querying you so that we can both make a million dollars." They will shudder and send a form rejection because rewriting is the biggest part of writing. And rewriting is not doing a quick read-through for typos and sitting around smugly, waiting for the full requests to roll in.

Rewriting is looking at theme, story arc, plot, tension, stakes, subplots, realistic characters, tone, voice, representation, grammar, and punctuation and making sure that your book is as tight as a narwhal's butt. Rewriting is putting your book away for a few weeks so you can look at it with new, more unbiased eyes. Rewriting is hunting for adverbs and purple prose and infodumps and darlings and DESTROYING THEM. Rewriting is showing agents, when you do query, that you are capable of the hardest, most humbling, most time-consuming part of the writer's life. Rewriting is a challenge, but it's necessary, and if you've taken the time to win NaNo, you should take the time to finish the job right.

I hope that helps, and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments or on Twitter, @DelilahSDawson.

Above all, remember this: I believe in you! YOU CAN DO EET!

And that's from the girl who wrote her first book at 32 while hallucinating from lack of sleep with a new baby. :)

***

Need more tips? Scroll through this blog for hints on developing ideas, editing, writing interesting characters, and more. Or hit that Resources for Writers tab at the top for all the links I used to get an agent and a traditional publishing deal within 2 years of writing my first book. I was found in the slush, and so can you!

 

IT WASN'T ME.

Look, I don't care what Kendare Blake said... unless she's blurbing me, in which case I DO. But who I murder and what I do with my arrows is my business. It's hunting season in Georgia, and there's absolutely no reason I can't go out into the beautiful forest and kill stuff. Within the legal limits!

And I mean deer, of course. Last I checked, the YA Scream Queens aren't on the menu.

Of course, I recently read TEN by Gretchen McNeil, which is all about a serial killer taking down partying teens one by one on a remote island. Which means Gretchen has experience in killing groups of people. I would definitely head over to her blog and see if she's been to any islands lately.

As for me and this and us, do you really want to keep questioning me? My compound bow is pretty heavy, and I'm getting rather grouchy, and curiosity killed the cat.

Oh, you're still curious? Fine. You should totally read this book for some YA Southern Gothic Horror.

No cats or demon Basset hounds were killed in Servants of the Storm. 

Uh, come back tomorrow.

I'm busy right now. Innocent, but busy.

#YAScreamQueenMurders #whichItotallydidntdo

#IblameKendareBlake

Want a good laugh? Check out #badscarystories.

On Ideas. Where to Find Them and How to Cultivate Them.

How to Punch the Muse in the Face and Knock Down That Writer's Block.

SERVANTS OF THE TURTLE (a Mad Lib)

When my dear friend Alethea Kontis invited me to be a performer in Princess Alethea's Traveling Sideshow at Dragoncon, I accepted immediately and with much SQUEE. And then I realized that... I'm not much of a performer. Give me a flying trapeze or some roller skates, and I can hold my own. But standing up in front of 50 people? SQUAWK. I have not these skills.

So I turned the first bit of SERVANTS OF THE STORM into a Mad Lib and invited the audience to supply the requisite nouns, verbs, and adjectives-- NO ADVERBS! And they wrote a brilliant piece of literature. And now you can read it for yourself.

SERVANTS OF THE TURTLE

Hurricane Sven is almost here.

The flogging is coming faster than they said it would, and Carly and I are excruciating. The rain is so heavy, so beautiful, that we don't even hear it anymore, and the penguin has been dead for hours. My toilets are grounded at Uncle Charlie's house in Atlanta with no way to get home until after the storm has blown over. Carly's mom is trapped downtown at the dentist where she works. It's lethargic, listening to Carly talk to her. They're both yelling to hear over the storm, and the electricity is out, and I'm pretty sure the Cthulhu is out of juice.

"We'll be exquisite, Mama," Carly says, her voice firm and pungent.

"But baby. The storm." Her mom's voice through the platypus is the opposite, moist and furry. "When I think of you and Dovey alone..."

"Don't worry, Miz Ray--" I start, but Carly holds up one furious pizza to gurgle me.

"We're 27, Mama. We've lived in Savannah all our lives. We know how to dance  a storm. Besides, they said it's coming too fast, and tributes are all over the road. You're megalomaniacal where you are." Carly looks at me, rolling her elbows at how curly parents can be. Thunder booms, rocking the small house, and I pontificate. She shakes her head harder, warning me not to hop her mama.

The sound cuts off, and Carly stares at the dead phone like she wants to cosplay it in her fist. A flash of drag queens illuminates the shabby living room. Suddenly, everything seems very still. The dwarf goes silent. Our eyes meet in the dim light. We both know, deep down in our boobs, that the storm is at its most sparkly right when things get quiet.

(Note: I did the same Mad Lib at my reading on Sunday, so this Mad Lib merges the most hilarious add-ins from both sessions. I know, deep down in my boobs, that it's pretty hilarious.)

Have kids who read.

Have kids who read.

Instead of hopscotch, have the Black Rabbit of Inle chalked on your sidewalk. Have piles of books by every bed. Have younger kids who can't read but carry books against their chests like talismans, kids who memorize the lines you read them and look at pictures and identify the letter X. Have kids who know what "picturesque" means but not how to pronounce it. Yet.

Buy reading lights for your older kids and tell them bedtime is 8 and then find them reading under their covers at 9 and smile. Have kids whose backpacks are heavy with books, because they need one for the bus there and one for the bus home and one to show a favorite teacher and one to show a friend. When they lend a book and it doesn't come back, dry their tears and tell them it's important to share stories, and you can always buy more books but you can't buy friends.

Have kids who are known at your local indie bookstore. Have kids who start a Little Library and use the hell out of it. Have kids who squeal when you go to the library, kids who disappear between the shelves with a silent reverence to select their next adventure. Take them on real adventures, too, so they can write their own stories, one day. Have kids who know imagination is boundless, bigger than Narnia and more magical than Hogwarts.

Have kids who tell each other stories at night, kids who know that writers are just people who write every day and not magical beings who got permission. Take them to the thrift store and introduce them to books that cost less than a dollar and smell like mothballs, books that you can take a chance on and donate, after. If they pick up an anatomy textbook or a copy of Dubliners, don't tell them it's too advanced; buy it for them and let them muck around in the old pages and put it away to find later on a rainy day when they're older. Have kids who see every book as a possibility and not a punishment.

Have kids who see you read every day, whether in the carpool line or on the front porch when you should be cleaning. Let them see you cry through The Fault in Our Stars or throw a bad book against the wall when it breaks your heart. Let them hold your signed first editions and craft their own messages to tweet at their favorite authors on Twitter. Show them proudly when the authors tweet back. Have kids who dogear their favorite parts and write their name on the title page in wobbling cursive with a pink Magic Marker. Let them know books are friends, not China teacups.

Have kids who who can't live without books, who can't breathe without stories, who can't pass a bookstore without gasping and sniffing the air. They will grow up knowing that they are not alone, that joy and tragedy and adventure are very real. They will read about pain they've never known and strength they haven't yet found. They will know that when times get hard, they will have a secret world to escape into, that a cracked spine is often the best medicine. They will see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity on the internet and the news, but they will see the small stories, the real people fighting and overcoming hardship between the pages of their books, step by step, uphill, throughout history. Teach them that books can be rebellion, social commentary, and healing, thats stories are immortal.

Teach them to write their own stories.

On Memories, Flashbacks, and Dreams in Your Writing

Pre-order SERVANTS OF THE STORM... or the demons win.

Here are some great reasons to pre-order SERVANTS OF THE STORM, my Southern Gothic YA Horror, in the next week:

1. Because FREE BOOKPLATES AND SWAG.

If you pre-order SERVANTS OF THE STORM from any retailer in any form and email your address to whimsydark (at) gmail (dot) com, I'll send you a signed bookplate, bookmarks, and a temporary tattoo.

2. Because Kirkus said: 

"A hurricane ushers in a flood of evil in Savannah, Georgia, and the only girl capable of seeing the truth fights to save the souls of her loved ones.

After losing her best friend, Carly, during Hurricane Josephine a year ago, Dovey lives in a haze of antipsychotic medication—until the day she spots Carly in their favorite coffee shop, very much alive. Spurred by the sighting, Dovey ditches her meds, and it isn’t long before she’s seeing things no one else can: people with black, dead eyes and an unearthly-looking girl with fox ears. She follows one such creature to a run-down bar where she meets Isaac, a handsome stranger who lights her way down the rabbit hole of horror pulsing through Savannah: Demons are real, and Carly’s soul has been made a servant of one. Racing through a landscape thick with growing evil, Dovey sets off to save both her best friend’s soul and Savannah itself. Dawson draws an immersive, eerie setting and expertly unravels Savannah’s many dark secrets. Each skin-crawling demonic encounter couples with Dovey’s fighting spirit to propel the gruesome tale into an engaging page-turner. However, the swift ending provides little closure and will leave readers scratching their heads, wanting more.

A standout, atmospheric horror tale derailed by its abrupt ending. (Horror. 14-18)"

3. Because Publishers Weekly said:

"One year ago, Hurricane Josephine killed 16-year-old Dovey’s best friend Carly. But after spotting Carly at Savannah’s Paper Moon Coffee Shop, Dovey sets out on a quixotic quest to find her, eventually catching a glimpse of her friend being forced to operate a roller coaster in an abandoned amusement park where demons feed off drugged teenagers’ fear. Strong-willed Dovey refuses to be scared off by warnings from the attractive but morally compromised Isaac, even after a demon bites off the tip of her pinky, which will allow it to control her when she dies. Along with Isaac and her loyal friend Baker, biracial Dovey must free Carly from an afterlife of servitude without becoming enslaved herself. This genuinely frightening horror novel is also a character-driven paean to friendship, as Dovey and Baker’s devotion to Carly inspires them to courage and sacrifice. Featuring a heroine equally at home onstage as Ariel in The Tempest and shooting demons with her father’s .38 pistol, adult author Dawson’s (the Blud series) strong YA debut leaves room for future terrors."

4. Because New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Roux said:

"Dawson's Savannah is beautiful and haunting. . . . Right away, Dawson serves up atmosphere, humor and scares, balancing it all deftly. Turning the page felt like peeking around a corner; I wanted to know more but I was afraid of what might come next. It's gorgeous Southern Gothic with a swift kick." 

5. Because New York Times bestselling author Cherie Priest said:

""Servants of the Storm is a rich, strange, lyrical thing - a riveting read that sneaks back and forth between touching and terrifying, spooky and bright."

6. Because New York Times bestselling author Kevin Hearne said:

"I opened this book to read a little bit and DAMN, NO SLEEP FOR ME. I read most of it in the air and finished it when I got home before I hit the hay. Yeah. It grabbed me.

This is creeptastic Southern Gothic YA, definitely a juicy horror pie. I mean, LOOKIT THE COVER.

I like what Delilah did here. I mean she did a lot of stuff, but here’s one bit I especially appreciated: The heroine, Dovey, has to deal with some grief early on and she retreats from the world for a while, and when she comes back it’s a horror show out there. Kind of like life is sometimes. But the thing is, living in a haze isn’t life; ignoring or avoiding pain instead of dealing with it just keeps you saddled with baggage and you can’t grow that way. You have to fight through it and I admire Dovey for it."

7. Because the ending will leave you wanting to know what happens next, and the sequel hasn't been sold. 

Pre-orders tell bookstores and publishers that an author and book are worth investing in. If you'd like to see more books from me, especially book 2 in this series, a pre-order is your most straightforward way to say so.

Thanks for reading! You'll find an excerpt and all buy links for Servants of the Storm right here.