This Bulldog Wants You to Write a Novel in a Month
It’s November! Once again I am taken by surprise by the arrival of a new month. They keep sneaking up on me while I’m busy writing (or, lately, sleeping)! But on the plus side, guess what that means?
Book Four of Pet Trouble is available now! WOO HOO! Finally the adventures of Eric and Meatball are on bookshelves everywhere…if you liked the first three, I hope you’ll like this one, too! I’m not sure my household could handle the size and snoring of a bulldog, but OMG I met a bulldog puppy last summer who was THE CUTEST THING in the world. What’s not to love about their sweet, snorty faces and roly-poly ridiculousness? Although it takes Eric a little while to warm up to goofy, stubborn Meatball…and of course major embarrassment has to ensue first…mwa ha ha…
The other cool thing about November is that it’s NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. Yup, the idea is to write a whole novel in one month! Whee! You can do it — I certainly have! (Not that I’m telling which ones!) 😉
The important thing is to remember that this is a first draft, so don’t worry about making it perfect. Just keep going all the way to the end, then go back and fix it up in December!
There is an awesome, totally fun website devoted to NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, which I highly recommend. I and the other Erin Hunters (Cherith, Kate, and Vicky) are some of the featured Pep Talkers this year (yay!), so if you’re interested in getting writing advice straight from us, check it out!
Of course, you can always just write a novel on your own, but think about how much more fun it’ll be with a community and resources and authors giving you tips all the way through. :-) I wish I’d had something like this when I was a younger writer…maybe I would actually have finished some of those stories I started in junior high! (So now I’d know how they were supposed to end!)
My first set of Writing Tips has actually already been posted in "The Writer’s Block" — entitled "Finding a 25th Hour in the Day", it’s all about how to squeeze extra time out of your day so you can spend it writing. I’m lucky to be a full-time writer now, but I VERY well remember what it was like coming home from work at 6pm and wanting to just watch TV, eat dinner, and go to bed. I seriously have no idea how my first few books got written, but I think some of these tips were part of it, so I hope they help you guys!
And speaking of organizing my schedule for maximum efficiency, I am officially moving this blog to Thursdays instead of Wednesdays. I know, what a VERY dramatic decision, but hopefully it won’t totally decimate your regular weekly blog-reading plans. 😉
The good news for those of you who don’t watch So You Think You Can Dance (Mom) is that this means I probably won’t go on and on about it as much, since it’s usually on Tuesday night that I’m most excited about the new episode. Like this week — so much awesome dancing! Already! I kind of love way too many of these dancers! I have such a girl crush on Karen! (Girls who can hip-hop = AWESOME.) And I’m totally on board with Adam Shankman as a permanent judge (lurve him!), plus more new choreographers (and MORE WADE! He’s so WEIRD! I loved his whole Van Gogh-Starry Night idea this week…WHAT? You certainly cannot call that man predictable.).
My grand master plan, by the way, is to put this baby of ours into dance classes stat, make sure he’s an awesome tiny hip-hopper by the age of four, and have him try out for Season 25 of SYTYCD as soon as he’s 18, so that when he wins, I can finally meet Cat Deeley (who will probably still be the most gorgeous and lovely person in the universe). This seems like an eminently practical plan to me. Don’t you agree? :-)
Of course, it’ll help if the baby gets Adam’s musical ability instead of mine…plus my natural, uh, grace and, er…OK, well, maybe talent will skip a generation and he’ll get the dancing skillz of his grandpas and great-grandmas (check out Adam’s super-cool grandma tapping! so amazing! we love you, Marge!). See? There are talented dancers in our family! It’s not entirely implausible! ;-)
I will say that now that we have The Amazing Race and SYTYCD at the same time, I’m realizing that if I had to pick one, it would be Amazing Race. (Well, to be on, obviously, but I mean to watch.) This season is too hilarious, mainly because of the Globetrotter team (HEE!), and I love how it’s such a fast-paced, madcap, surprising, and funny show. I vote that it gets to keep all its Emmys. 🙂
But don’t let all this thrilling new TV distract you from writing your novel this month! I’ll be participating, too, since I’ve got a deadline looming alarmingly soon. And if I can resist the lure of the DVR, then anyone can! ;-)
Happy writing!
Quote of the Day: "I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. " — Joss Whedon