Writing Help - What A Nerd Girl Says

Hey Writers! How are you doing! I hope great. Its Day #6 of NaNoWriMo, this and writers all over the world are pounding out thousands of words to get those novels done. I’m doing pretty well right now, but we all know there are days when we feel lost, when we need a little words of encouragement to help us out.

One thing that I always make sure to ask every author, when I meet them or interview them, is what sort of advice or tips they have for aspiring authors.

So today, I’m sharing some of the best advice that I have received for you, and sharing some of my own advice, and how helpful it can be to always be involved with other writers, for advice and support and encouragement.

I recently started a Facebook group, called the NaNoWriMo Support Group, and all of you writers are MORE than welcome to join us!

Now to the advice!

“Take risks and be brave. No one will write exactly the way you do. So take some risks and put yourself out there on the page. If you think, ‘I probably shouldn’t write about this…’ or ‘This is too weird/revealing to write about…’ that’s probably the very thing you should put into your story.”

-Libba Bray

With the novel I’m working on now, this really helped me. Sometimes I think, god is this seriously the weirdest story synopsis ever? But maybe that’s a good thing. I let myself write what feels right, even if it doesn’t always seem to be the best. We have to get out of our comfort zones when writing.

“Write the kinds of stories you like to read. If you don’t love what you’re writing, no one else will, either.”

-Meg Cabot

SO true. I could never write a mystery novel, or a crime novel. Those aren’t my cup of teas, so I write what I’m passionate about. I really hope to get back to my baseball idea because I love baseball so much.

“Never let anyone make you ashamed of what you love to read and write. Always pursue your passion, and write/read relentlessly and shamelessly.”

-Rae Carson

Passion. Passion. Passion. If you’re passionate about what you’re going to do and it’ll show. Its the same way I operate with my blog. Its all about what I’m passionate about, and somehow, you guys keep showing up! And that’s awesome. I hope it works for my novels too!

“Don’t be afraid to write badly. All writers have awful first drafts. That’s why they’re called first drafts. Sometimes you have to just get through the story before you can make it pretty. I think a lot of new authors quit halfway through the book because they’re afraid that it’s not good. The first draft won’t be good. Just finish it and fix it later. The hardest part about writing a book is getting to that last page. and remember, it’s okay to write crap. Crap makes really good fertilizers.”

-Jessica Brody

This was HUGE for me. HUGE. I think sometimes I get so focused on writing well, that I don’t just write. Being able to worry less on whether its good and just getting it on the page has helped a lot. Marlene Perez quoted Nora Roberts when I met her, something about not being able to fix a blank page. That has really stuck with me the last few months. Sometimes you just need to write, and you can go back and clean it up and make it better later.

“Just tell the truth and make it cool” and “Learn the rules so that you can break them.”

-Lex Thomas

This just makes me laugh every time I see it because it reminds me that while this is something that I want to make my career, it is also something that I really enjoy, and its fun and makes me incredibly happy!

“It’s okay to write a shitty first draft.”

-Gretchen McNeil

Ditto. Keep writing, no matter how crappy it seems. We can always go back and fix it!

“There is no such thing as an aspiring writer. If you write, you’re a writer, and I can’t wait to see what you do.”

-Stephen Chbosky

This makes me so incredibly. He wrote this on my “writing advice” poster, and I love it. For one thing, the idea of Stephen freakin’ Chbosky reading MY novel makes me start fangirling and I haven’t even published said novel yet. But its so uplifting and encouraging. I AM a writer. I write. I can do it.

“Get rid of boring friends!”

-Eoin Colfer

It seems funny, and silly but its true! Make your life exciting, fill your life with exciting and fun people. This will be inspiration for your books. The excitement of your own life will bleed into your novel. Be exciting, be your own inspiration!

“Remember, its never too early to treat writing like its your career!”

-Shannon Messenger

I love this piece of advice. By making writing a priority and a responsibility, it makes you accountable. I may not be intending to write an entire novel in the month of November BUT setting a goal, and holding myself accountable for keeping that goal. Treat like its something that HAS to be done and it’ll get done!

“Make sure you have something worth selling before you take it to market. It’s all about the books. Focus on craft first. Too many writers take their work to market before it’s really ready, getting distracted by a focus on query letters, agents and publishers. Marketing a bad book is like trying to push a boulder up hill.”

-Cinda Williams Chima

This is awesome. Because once you’ve gotten over that crappy first draft, you gotta work very hard to clean it up and make it the best it can be. Write multiple drafts, and make it the best it can so that anyone you try to sell it to you would be insane to pass it up.

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I hope you enjoyed the different writing advice, from some SERIOUSLY awesome authors :)

What is some of the best advice that YOU have received before? Share it below in the comments!

So I’ve learned fairly recently that November is National Novel Writing Month, physician also known as NaNoWriMo.

And I thought, discount wow, symptoms that’s REALLY cool. A whole month dedicated to the writing of a novel.

There’s a whole website for it too, which you can check out here.

However, the more I checked it out, the more that I realized…its just not for me. I don’t really agree with it.

See, the idea of it is to write any entire 50,000 page novel in the span of one month. And I just really understand that. For one thing, I’m a busy girl. It will never take me only a couple months to write a novel. Ever. It just won’t. I have this blog to run, I have friends and my boyfriend. I love going to various events like book signings and movie premieres, and I like watching my television shows. Plus, I’m a full time student and November is a big month, with finals just right around the corner. I can’t risk that kind of crazy haha.

But I also just think the idea of writing a novel in one month is silly. Now maybe you don’t agree with me, and you’re taking part in the official NaNoWriMo and that’s okay! More power to you. But its just not me. I don’t agree with the idea of rushing a novel, and a short one at that.

And okay, I can see you all getting snippy at me. I know that the sort of novel you’re writing can determine the word count that you typically would write. If you’re writing a middle grade, 50,000 probably tends to be on the higher end. If you’re writing a YA, it *could* be okay, but its on the low end, definitely. If its an adult novel, its definitely too short.

Plus…like I said, it just feels WAY too rushed to me. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually writing a GOOD novel, more just writing to reach the finish line of 50K words. You get a nice little certificate and all of that. But you could literally just write the same paragraph, hell, even the same word, over and over again and that could be counted. There’s no judging. There’s no learning or growing or anything. Its more…who can writing 50K words that show some resemblance to an actual story in a month long period. It just doesn’t seem to be…productive or efficient or really helpful in any way.

Now I’m not insulting it, so I hope the people of NaNoWriMo don’t come after me, but I just don’t really like the idea of it. Its not me, and its not a lot of writers.

But I decided that as an aspiring novelist, as a writer, I couldn’t just ignore the idea. Even though its an internet based thing, I think its a great idea. Even though writers should write, write, write, all the time, any day and any month of the year, a month to refocus and regroup on a novel, and set those goals and meet some goals is a great idea.

So I’ve kind of created my own NaNoWriMo. My goal for November as a novel writing month is to focus on my novel, to set a goal of a certain amount of words that I want to reach and then focus on different parts of writing a novel. I want to test my characters, I want to develop strategies for writing and overcoming writer’s block. I want you guys to get to know my story, and in turn, I’ll become more confident in my own story.

So basically I’m going to spend this month, honing in on my focus on my novel, and getting better at it, and hopefully helping you guys to get better too!

My goal is to be at 20K words by the end of the month, and to have developed most of the story, in my head, or in a plot outline, so that I’ll have direction for the rest of it. I’m aiming on about 80K words, so I definitely think I can do this, and I already have about 5,000 written so let’s see if we can do this.

Throughout the month, I’ll be posting updates on my own novel writing, here and on Facebook and Twitter (so follow me on both!) and I’ll be exploring different strategies, advices and ideas to help get over some of the bumps in the road in writing a novel.

I hope you can join me on this journey! Feel free to write along with me, as I spend the month of November working on my novel and becoming a better writer :)

My Posts for NaNoWriMo

November 1st: Where I Write

November 4th: Meeting the Main Characters of my Novel: Katy, Ash, Madison, Frank, Jennifer, and Razi

November 6th: Best Writing Advice I’ve Been Given

November 8th: Having a Book Bible

November 11th: Character Interviews

November 13th: How to Deal with Writer’s Block

November 15th: Its the Halfway Point! Update, Struggles/Successes!

November 18th: Writing Inspirations

November 20th: Character Playlists

November 22nd: Free Write: My Characters Celebrate Thanksgiving

November 25th: Meeting my Characters in Artwork

November 27th: Setting up and Meeting Goals

November 29th: My Experience with NaNoWriMo

November 30th: Excerpt from my Novel…So Far