Chris Baty's Blog, page 18

Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: How to Form Writing Habits

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, our NaNo Coaches are here to help guide you through November! Today, author Isabel Cañas is here to share her advice on how to set yourself up for noveling success:

Dear writers, 

For many of you, this is the first time you’re having a whack at writing something as long as 50,000 words. For others, this is your third, or fifth, or tenth NaNo, and you know as well as I that it never really gets easier. 

One of the best ways you can set yourself up for success is to create habits early in the month and stick to them as best you can. 

1. Schedule your writing time in advance. 

When I was doing my PhD, I woke up early to squeeze in an hour or two of writing before I headed to campus because I am at my most productive early in the morning. You might be like me, or you might feel your sharpest in the afternoons or in the middle of the night. There is no right answer except this: whenever your time is, remember that it is yours, and it is sacred. Cordon it off and guard it jealousy.

2. Close the door. 

I mean this both literally (if you can) and metaphorically: close the door on the outside world. Turn off the wifi. Turn on Do Not Disturb. Years ago, my sisters and I created the trick of sticking our phones in “phone jail” as we worked, an ornamental bird cage in my mom’s living room. Out of sight, out of mind. If music helps you get in the zone, then use it, whether it’s lo-fi beats or Taylor Swift or movie soundtracks.  

3. Have a plan. 

I am a plotter to the core. Staring at a blank page leaves me paralyzed. I always outline before writing, even if it’s just a line or two about what I want to happen in a scene. I encourage even the pantsers and gardeners among you (what wild, wicked, brilliant creatures you are!) to try writing a sentence summarizing what you want your scene or chapter to accomplish at the top of the page. Let this reminder guide you if you ever lose steam or wander off the path.

4. Sprint. 

A sprint is a set period of time during which you try to write as much as you possibly can. How many words can you write in 25 minutes? Is it 500? 750? 1200? Can you beat that in your next sprint? I dare you to. 

The only hard and fast rule is that you must start and end with the timer. You decide how long that timer runs and how short your breaks are. Try the Pomodoro method. Try 15-minute bursts. I thrive with 40 minutes of writing, 20 minutes of rest. During your breaks, be sure to stand up and stretch, but resist the siren call of your phone!

One of the most difficult things about these early days of NaNoWriMo is acclimatizing your brain to deep creative work. Just like any muscle, working your brain in new ways might leave it feeling a bit sore. I promise that it gets easier with practice!

May the words be ever in your favor,

Isabel 

Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, and Turkey, among other places, she has settled (for now) in New York City. She holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage. To find out more, visit www.isabelcanas.com.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 7

Wow, what a week, here’s to another great one! For day seven, we’re taking a trip to Scotland with Women’s Fiction novel Outlandish by Elizabeth Caulfield Felt! This cover was designed by returning designer, Kelley Kempel!

Outlandish

On vacation in Scotland with her husband (who wants to murder her), librarian and wannabe writer Lori suffers a concussion. She wakes up believing she is the character in a novel she is writing, and begins the romantic journey her character would have taken. Outlandish is the perfect silly, sexy, summer read.

About the Author

Elizabeth Caulfield Feltteaches English at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Her novels WildeWagers, historical farce; Syncopation: A Memoir of Adele Hugo, historical,not a farce; and The Stolen Goldin Violin, middle grade, contemporarymystery, are published and available. Outlandish, cover and description above,is her current NaNo project. Elizabeth is a total NaNo cheater with half thestory written before November 1. Her steampunk fairy tale trilogy: The SteppeSisters, A Mobius Tale, and The Little MERmaid are WIPs. Discover more at elizabethcaulfieldfelt.com.

About the Designer

Kelley Kempel owns Hidden Path Creative, a graphic design studio supporting product-based businesses with packaging designs that genuinely represent their brand identity. 

After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a BFA in Graphic Design, Kelley went on to work as a packaging designer at Dick’s Sporting Goods. From there she moved to Kohl’s to lead the brand packaging team. Over her 20 years in retail Kelley created branding and packaging designs for iconic brands like Food Network, Maxfli, Slazenger, Nine West, Lauren Conrad, and Vera Wang. 

Kelley uses her background to provide clients with strategic, research-backed designs that stand out on-shelf and on-screen to grow sales.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 6

Can you believe it’s day six already? And here’s something even more unbelievable: turning into a werewolf! The Mainstream novel Werewolves of Austin by Raven Russo is taking us out for a wild time! This cover was designed by returning designer, Christine Mau.

Werewolves of Austin

Alex thought her life couldn’t get any worse than failing her college courses at UT - Austin (some for the third time) and feeling directionless in life while she made minimum wage at the local veterinary office.

Then she almost got arrested for underage drinking when the cops busted up the party at Lake Travis.

Then she got bit by a werewolf while trying to avoid the cops.

Total. Trainwreck.

Can’t get any worse, you say? Wrong! The guy she starts dating turns out to be a werewolf hunter, her best friend is actually Fae, and her boss is also a trained medicine man. When the Dallas Pack starts trying to expand into the Austin area and she starts embracing her new lifestyle, Alex wonders if she’s finally found a path that “fits,” until the pack Alpha wants her to join at a cost she’s not willing to pay. Can Alex get her stuff together in time to save her friends, when she can’t pass Introductory Physics? Sometimes finding your way involves getting lost in the woods on the night of a full moon.

About the Author

Raven Russo is a pen name for some weird person with feathery bird children who writes stories in her spare time.  Once upon a time, she got her BA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University.  Now she aimlessly wanders the back roads of Midwest USA, reads like it’s going out of style, writes when she’s not at her day job, and will never say no to an offering of coffee.

About the Designer

Christine Mau leads the brand and creative teams at Medline, a global medical device and solutions provider. She began her career as an illustrator, working on children’s books and consumer products like Kleenex® brand tissue boxes. You can find her most weekends creating artwork and cards for family and friends.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 5

It’s day five of 30 Covers, 30 Days! It’s almost the end of the week, why not take a break and go by the beach? Children’s Fiction novel Shark Skin and Swedish Fish by Tori-Lynn Bell is here to take you on a fun summer adventure! This cover was designed by returning designer, Holly Aguilar.

Shark Skin and Swedish Fish

Sometimes life is a series of learning how to make the best of things… but how are you supposed to do that when everything is going wrong?

It’s the summer before seventh grade, and twelve-year-old Mack is still learning what life is like without one of her dads. Things have been hard ever since he passed away, and then she’s told she has to spend the entire summer with grandparents she’s never met before. She should be excited to spend a summer in a house on the beach, but she doesn’t know anyone in Bellevue, and her stomach twists just thinking about all the unknowns living in a new place will mean.

Turns out, there are plenty of kids in Bellevue just like her. And when sharks start disappearing from the coast, Mack and her new friends have a pretty good idea who’s behind it…

About the Author

Tori-Lynn Bell is a queer, neurodivergent middle grade writer who writes about the hard parts of being a kid, like losing someone you love, or feeling like an alien. They have an MFA from Southern New Hampshire University and work as an inventory coordinator and children’s book buyer at House of Books in Kent, Connecticut. Visit them on their website to see what they’re writing next!

About the Designer

Holly Aguilar is an award-winning designer and illustrator, so if anyone does judge your book by its cover, she’s got you…covered. By day, Holly is a Design Director at Balcom Agency, the largest marketing firm in Fort Worth, Texas. Learn more about her at her company’s website!

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 4

Day four of 30 Covers, 30 Days takes us on a magical adventure! Get your cameras out for C@melot by Claire Rose, a Young Adult twist to Arthurian tales! Today, the novel cover was designed by returning designer, Cookie Redding.

C@melot

In a world where technology and magic are intertwined, and magical influencers rule social media, an unlucky boy is drawn into a reality TV competition for these celebrity witches, all taking place in a sprawling fairy-tale theme park. But things soon start taking a twisted turn, with cliques and alliances, mysterious accidents and an even darker conspiracy at the heart of the competition, just waiting to be uncovered.

About the Author

Rose is coming back to NaNoWriMo after a few years, squeezing in writing time between podcasts and audiobooks on the commute to work and in the evenings. As well as writing, she is a keen amateur actor and home cook!

About the Designer

Cookie Redding is an artist, designer and lecturer with the School of Visual Arts at the Pennsylvania State University and teaches courses in the Digital Art and DMD Programs. Her work encompasses the art and design world, with a focus on multiple media forms of expression. Redding’s influences are from a diverse array of disciplines spawning from the classics and antiquities, to history and tech. Her explorations integrate these elements into a study of symbols. The imagery she deals with within her work is a study from the beauty of words and by being within nature. Her explorations show how the literary world meets the natural work with color and texture.

Getting Published: 5 Tips To Get Your NaNoWriMo Draft Published!

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Inkitt, a 2022 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a reader-powered publisher. Today, they’re here to share some tips on how to turn your NaNoWriMo draft into a published story. Don’t forget to check out Inkitt’s offer to NaNoWriMo writers to enter their fiction writing contest this month!

1. Proofread Your Work!

This one might be obvious but we really can’t emphasize it enough. A few typos won’t derail your career, but any more may make it hard for readers to follow and engage with your novel and could put off a potential publisher. Luckily, there are so many great spelling and grammar checkers out there, like Grammarly or Wordtune.

2. Ask For Feedback!

Having a community of readers and fellow authors can be incredibly helpful when writing your novel. Beta readers can be a great way to get real-time feedback. On Inkitt there are beta-reading groups that you can join and we’ve recently launched a Discord server with a channel dedicated to that as well! We love to support our fellow authors! Readers can also leave comments and constructive reviews to let you know what they think about your story.

3. Social Media Presence

Your social media is one of the first things an editor will look at when they consider picking up your novel. It’s a marvelous tool that can expand your audience and boost marketing strategies, too. Be sure to make use of social media to engage with niche communities, build your brand, and increase your fanbase. The most important thing about social media is to have fun. Don’t take it too seriously! These platforms can be a great place to build community and create networks with which to promote your work.

4. Engage With Your Audience

Speaking of increasing your fanbase, believe it or not, loyal readers do an awful lot of free promotion and gain you plenty of new readers. Invested readers will fall in love with your characters, get mad when they make mistakes, and most importantly, they will tell all their friends to read your book. Word of mouth goes a long way! On Inkitt it is easy to engage with your readers and build a loyal following using wall posts, comments, reviews, and community groups. Engaged readers will comment on your chapters, leave a review and even promote you on their social media accounts.

5. Publish Your Draft On Inkitt!

At Inkitt it is our mission to democratize publishing, giving all authors a chance to succeed. We’ve developed a fair way of discovering writers by giving them a platform to showcase their books to the world. Here at Inkitt, the power of reader feedback drives all of our publishing opportunities. Once you create your Inkitt account and upload your book, you start the process of getting selected for a publishing deal! The process is simple; we analyze reader patterns and engagement with your book to determine if it has bestseller potential on GALATEA, Inkitt’s fiction publishing app. When we find a potential bestseller, our publishing team reaches out to you about getting signed! No gatekeeping. No biases. It’s publishing made fair.

Want to have some fun and also have the chance to win cash prizes? Join Inkitt as we climb writer’s Everest, and write 50,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo. Romance, Thriller, Adventure… any genre welcome!  Submit your fiction novel for the chance to win cash prizes, social media spotlights, and more! (Plus, there will be a special contest just for NaNoWriMo winners after November.)

Top photo by Hatice Yardım on Unsplash.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 3

It’s the third day of 30 Covers, 30 Days! Today, we have a Young Adult take on Greek mythology with Stains of Blood and Guilt by YWP participant, Colleen Leonard! This amazing cover was designed by Leonardo De La Rocha, who generously designed an inner cover as well.

Stains of Blood and Guilt

Kilída Vissiní’s hair wasn’t always red, nor was she always human. Now, she’s a nymph cursed to a form not her own, and scarred for life with blood-red hair.

A member of the Alikos Corps, she’s among the most honoured people in the country. The Corps are an elite force of soldiers who protect the country of Hellenica from dangerous criminals. But in a world where guilt shows through blood-stained hair, Kilída’s crimson locks prove otherwise. The Corps don’t just protect Hellenica from dangerous criminals. They’re criminals themselves. And she’s the only one who knows it.

Then Kilída learns the Corps aren’t as bad as she thought. They’re worse. Stripped of everything she loves, she rebels against them. But she’s just one person, and they’re a whole network of corrupted assassins.

With killers, and the guilt of her past haunting her, she begins questioning if her fight is really just.

About the Author

When she’s not writing or procrastinating, Colleen Leonard can be found reading, listening to trailer music, singing and dancing, and trying to avoid baking and gardening at all costs. She hopes to soon overcome her procrastination and insubordinate characters who don’t follow the plots she writes, and finish the bookshelf-full of novels wandering in her head.

About the Designer

Leonardo is a developer turned designer turned design exec, currently serving as Global Head of Design for Spotify Advertising. Formerly at Intuit, Facebook, and Yahoo, his expertise orbit around commercializing enterprise products and instituting systems for building at scale.

Working from his home in sunny San Jose, California, Leonardo spends his free time illustrating, fidgeting with type, advocating for respectable cocktails, and assisting his partner in raising two beautiful children towards beautiful adults, through and through.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 2

Welcome to day two of 30 Covers, 30 Days! Let’s go back to the 1700′s and meet Clara the rhinoceros in the Historical novel of R. Unicornis by Jillian Forsberg! This great cover was designed by returning designer, Joe Schwartz.

R. Unicornis

Based on true events. A Dutch sea captain decides to abandon his life with the VOC and takes his most precious cargo yet back to Europe: an Indian rhinoceros. His wondrous adventures traipse through Europe in the mid 18th century, and Clara the rhino inspires art, royalty, and science leaving a legacy of the rhinoceros unicornis unlike any other animal.

About the Author

Jillian Forsberg holds a masters in Public History from Wichita State University. Her passions include vintage dresses, empty museums, hand-written letters, gardening, and obscure histories waiting to be told. She lives in Wichita with her husband, daughter, and hairless cats. This is her first novel.

About the Designer

Joe Schwartz is honored to have been invited back to design a cover for NaNoWriMo -  his fifth one! Joe is happiest when he’s flexing his “design muscles” but when he’s not creating, he is a design teacher at Spotswood High School and an adjunct professor of design history at KeanUniversity’s Michael Graves College, both in New Jersey.  He is also the co-founder of DESIGN-ED, an education nonprofit that helps teachers and students use design as a tool for teaching and learning.

A small portfolio of Joe’s work (including past NaNoWriMo covers) can be found here.

The Unfunny Person’s Guide to Writing Humor

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. First Draft Pro, a 2022 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a collaborative writing app built for story-nerds. Today, they’ve partnered with novelist and screenwriter Sam Beckbessinger to share some tips on writing humor. Don’t forget to check out the offer to NaNoWriMo writers to try out First Draft Pro for free this month!

Here’s the problem: you love a joke. You’re perfectly able to get into a good banter with your buddies. You’re hilarious in a DnD game. You’re the comedian of your group chats. But put you in front of a blank page and suddenly you’re about as funny as a statistics textbook*. Your manuscripts are full of notes like << INSERT JOKE HERE??? >>. You wouldn’t actually want to sit next to any of your characters at a dinner party.

* There is a marginal likelihood that a funny statistics textbook exists somewhere, but it would be a real outlier.

Well, I have good news for you! Writing humor is a skill that can be learned like any other.

How comedy works

If you’re going to try to write humor, it helps to understand how comedy works. It’s very simple: the logic of humor is surprise.

Fundamentally, here’s how most jokes work: you create an expectation, and then you do something wildly unexpected. Take standup comedian Mitch Hedberg: “This shirt is dry-clean only, which means it’s dirty.” The first sentence by itself isn’t funny; it becomes funny when the second sentence subverts it. A joke is a story, and a punchline is a mini plot-twist.

You’ve got to build up to the subversion. Humor has a specific rhythm to it. You start off slower and more detailed, establishing the pattern, painting the picture, ratcheting up the tension… then BAM, you come in with the twist. Take this exchange from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”

“Why, what did she tell you?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

Notice the rhythm of this exchange. The first paragraph is slow, with long sentences and dry multisyllabic words, then the writing speeds up to deliver the punchline. You build the tension, then you break the tension. A lot of humour is in the timing.

So if you’re trying to be funny, the trick is to pull off this little tension > surprise dance on every level of granularity in your prose. There are funny words, funny individual sentences, funny situations, and entire characters who are hilarious (usually, the ones who take themselves very very seriously).

And there are specific tricks to help you do this, like:

The rule of threeDouble meaningsExaggeration & absurd comparisonsCallbacks

Come join us over on the First Draft Pro blog, where I’ll show you how they work!

Sam Beckbessinger writes weird horror stories and kids tv shows, and helps people learn to adult better (she’s still figuring it out herself).

NaNoWriMo is Here!

Happy November 1, everyone!!! 🙌

We’re so excited to write with you and are freshly fueled by leftover/stolen Halloween candy. Our challenge for you today: don’t let the day pass without a few words. The first few days are critical for your creative momentum. (If you’re really feeling daunted, cut yourself a break and give yourself permission to just write one sentence.) You’ve got this, Wrimo. We’ve got you.

Ways to Find Community During NaNoWriMo This Year

⏱️ Check out @NaNoWordSprints for word sprints all day long! (Don’t forget to create your 2022 NaNoWriMo goal first so you can update your word count!)

🗺️ Join a Region (or several!) — Find and join your local region on the NaNoWriMo website to connect with other writers in your area. If you travel between different places (i.e., if you’ve gone away for school but still visit your hometown, or you live and work in different cities), you can join multiple regions and choose which one to set as your home region.

👋 Create or Join a Writing Group — You can also create a private writing group of up to 20 people on the NaNoWriMo website to share encouragement, feedback, and accountability—or just to hang out with other writers. We’ve shared some tips on what makes a good writing group!

🗓️ Join an Event with NaNo HQ — Take a look at our calendar to find official events led by the NaNoWriMo staff, including Zoom Hangouts, Virtual Write-Ins, webcasts, and more.

💬 Chat on the Forums — On the NaNoWriMo forums, you can chat with other writers from around the world about everything from what to do when you have writer’s block to your favorite kind of bookmark.

✏️ Back to School with YWP — Our Young Writers Program is for kids (18 and under) who want to write, educators teaching creative writing, and families looking for learning resources.