NaNoWriMo Winners who Became Successful Pt. 2

Advice from Stephanie Perkins:

• Start your project without a lot of preconceived ideas and notions.
• Start your project without a lot of preconceived ideas and notions.
•  Remember: Your novel is supposed to suck right now. The only way you can mess this up? That’s if you stop writing. So keep going! Keep sucking! You’re doing great. I’m proud of you.

Advice from Lydia Netzer:

•  Silence your inner editor. Don’t worry; just write. Go, go, go.
• A lot of people frown on NaNoWriMo, believing it produces reams of garbage, and that writing quickly can only lead to writing poorly. We’ve all run into this attitude. Maybe we’ve had someone say “Why would you waste your time writing something you know will be bad?” I respectfully disagree with these people, as I have found that during this mad dash, I find different layers of my projects that I would not have been pushed to uncover at a steady, reasonable pace.

Advice from Rainbow Powell:

• That’s not writing, I thought, that’s just piling up words. But then I thought about how wonderful it would be to have a pile of 50,000 words…
• I set three goals:

1. To write every day.
2. To write at least 2,000 words every day.
3. And—this was crucial for me—to keep moving forward.

For more advice from National Novel Writing Month winners, check out NaNoWriMo's Pep Talk Page.

NaNoWriMo Winners who Became Successful Pt. 1

Advice from Sara Gruen:

• I think the hardest part is getting a draft finished. It’s important to stop thinking about writing and just write. It’s something I grapple with every day—stop thinking, start writing.

• However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in the same boat, and look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn’t work, set someone on fire. In your book, of course.

Advice from Marissa Meyer:

• Never fear. Anyone who has ever written “The End” on a manuscript knows that, sometimes, inspiration eludes us. No one looks forward to those lulls in the writing process, but they are natural, and they can be overcome. These are the times when we must proceed on willpower and caffeine and the unflappable confidence that each word we write is one word closer to a finished novel. I can promise that, tough as those times may be, they often lead to some of our most proud and beautiful writing moments.
• Maybe you’re being called toward eye patch-sporting pirates and buried treasure. Maybe you’re dying to write about a hitchhiker with aspirations of being the world’s greatest baseball player. Maybe your dystopic, plague-ridden society is bringing you down and you’d love to send your characters on a romp through a whimsical wonderland.Make your list, choose what’s calling to you most, and drop it into the next chapter just as if you’d been planning it all along. Watch as your plot and characters scramble to make it work, and the words once more begin to pile up.
• For more advice from her check out her pep talk on NaNoWriMo's Site.

Advice from Erin Morgenstern:

• Never delete anything. If you can’t stand to look at it, change the font to white and keep going.

• If possible, get a running start. It gives you flexibility for later in the month when you desperately need to do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while.

• Do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while. Take a walk, go to a museum, do yoga, paint your toenails, spin around in circles. Shake your brain up so the ideas can move around.

• Backup. Frequently. Flash drives are your friends. Also, I hear you can store things on clouds now but I’m not sure how that works. It sounds very whimsical, though, and I am a fan of whimsy.

• Take risks. (Microsoft Word wanted to autocorrect that to “Take care.” Clearly, Word does not understand NaNoWriMo. Also, this is why I normally write in Scrivener. Scrivener would never suggest such a thing.)

• When in doubt, just add ninjas. (Ninjas do not need to be actual ninjas.) (But they can be.)

• Let yourself be surprised.

I hope these winners and their advice help you write your novel! Tomorrow I will post more advice from successful National Novel Writing Month winners.

Tips from my Queen, J.K. Rowling!

1. Write About What You Love!

“What you write becomes who you are… So make sure you love what you write!” I love this quote from Rowling. It is very true and maybe that is why academic writing kills me slowly unless I happen to care about the subject! Rowling definitely follows this, whenever I read any book she has written, whether it's Harry Potter or one of her stories written under her pen name, I feel her love for the story and its characters.

2. Write Whenever and Wherever and However!

J.K. Rowling had to work and had to take care of her young child while she was writing Harry Potter. She was even pregnant during the crafting of The Order of the Phoenix. She sadly couldn't just write whenever she wanted to. “Sometimes you have to get your writing done in spare moments here and there," she said, and she is one hundred percent right!! I personally keep a notebook with me at all times, you never know when inspiration and timing will work together.

3. You Must Plot and Pace.

My Queen plotted a series of seven books with little to no plot holes. That takes some series thinking and crafting ability. I mean, it would have been impossible to write had she not done the necessary planning. Also, planning ahead will lessen the chance of spoiling the story for your readers.

4. You Must Have a Plan!

J.K. Rowling got the inspiration for Harry Potter on a train, but she didn't just start writing paragraph one, she outlined and created Harry's world. She wrote new words and gave them meaning. She scribbled down every minute detail that would be essential to the story and every detail that wasn't. She also outlined all of the events that would take place throughout the series. She didn't officially begin writing the series for almost five years while she was working on the details.

5. Criticism and Rewrites.

Queen Rowling rewrote the opening chapter of The Sorcerers Stone fifteen times before being happy with it. You should never expect your first draft to be perfect, it won't be and that is fine. Also, don't fear rejections. Harry Potter only became what it is because Rowling wouldn't stand for rejection. "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not lived at all--in which case, you fail by default."

NaNoWriMo Winners Who Have Made It

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called "Le Cirque des Reves," and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway--a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love - a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per-formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. (Summary from GoodReads)

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (Author ofEleanor & Park, currently being adapted into a movie)

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind? (GoodReads)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Also, a major motion picture)

Orphaned, penniless, Jacob Jankowski jumps a freight train in the dark, and in that instant, transforms his future. 

By morning, he's landed a job with the Flying Squadron of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. By nightfall, he's in love.

In an America made colourless by prohibition and the Depression, the circus is a refuge of sequins and sensuality. But behind the glamour lies a darker world, where both animals and men are dispensable. Where falling in love is the most dangerous act of all...(GoodReads)

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss? (GoodReads)

The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura.

Skyler Luiken has a rare immunity to the plague. Backed by an international crew of fellow “immunes,” he leads missions into the dangerous wasteland beyond the aura’s edge to find the resources Darwin needs to stave off collapse. But when the Elevator starts to malfunction, Skyler is tapped—along with the brilliant scientist, Dr. Tania Sharma—to solve the mystery of the failing alien technology and save the ragged remnants of humanity. (GoodReads)

Persistence of Memory by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (Author of the Den of Shadows Series, The Kiesha'ra Series, and many more)

Sixteen-year-old Erin Misrahe just wants to be like everyone else in her new school. But Erin has more to worry about than passing AP Chemistry or making friends. In times of stress, she has always been overcome by her alter ego, Shevaun, whose violent behavior wreaks havoc on those around her. Erin can never remember anything about these episodes, and she’s grateful to have been spared them for a while.

But when a protective friend comes back into Erin’s life, he insists that Shevaun is a vampire who actually exists apart from Erin. Shevaun has dangerous allies, like the handsome witch Adjila—and they’re determined to sever Shevaun’s connection to Erin once and for all. (GoodReads)

My next post will have more motivation for writing, not just for National Novel Writing Month, but for yourself.