While plenty of writers are deep into writing a first draft of a novel for NaNoWriMo, I'm tentatively re-exploring last year's NaNo project, both by re-reading it myself and getting feedback from a reader. This is both exciting ("Yay! It's no longer just sitting gathering electronic dust on my hard drive!") and a bit daunting ("Ugh! It's kind of a mess with little bits and pieces hanging off here and there which need either fully integrated or lopped off."). I think the only way it's going to turn into something truly readable is for me to re-outline it. Large chunks will end up getting completely rewritten, I'm sure. On the bright side, as I was reading it there were moments here and there where I thought to myself: "Hey, that works rather well!" So, even though it was written by someone newly back to writing who had never written a novel before, there's that, I suppose.
If you're doing NaNo this year, I hope that you're enjoying yourself. I'm glad I'm not doing it again this year, but I think I may plan on having a novel-length project ready to tackle during November 2013.
For now, here are this week's writing-related links as well as a link to my own blog post from this week:
"Series vs. Stand-Alone: What Should We Work on Next?" (Jami Gold) - Thinking again about novels, Jami talks about pros and cons of taking various approaches to working on a second novel. In my case, "Adrift" (the working title of last year's NaNo project) is very much designed as a stand-alone story. But if you've left things more open-ended, there can be benefits to series.
"What I Learned Writing Dreamlander: Why Non-Writers Give the Best Critiques" (K. M. Weiland at Wordplay) - Most of the story critiquing I've received has been from other writers. To a certain extent, this makes sense -- asking someone to do a critique for you requires an outlay of their time and energy and if you are working with another writer then there is an obvious way that you can repay that by trading critiques of similar-length works. But K. M. makes some good points about the potential value of getting critiques from non-writing readers as well. They are likely to be more representative of a general audience and so might approach your story differently from how another writer might.
"How to Hustle Your Readers" (Elle Carter Neal at Hear Write Now) - Elle's post talks about writing lessons learned from watching the British television show Hustle. The early seasons of this show, about con artists, were enjoyed quite a bit by my wife and me. Additionally, one of the story ideas I'm working with at the moment deals with con artists in a fantasy world. So when I came across this post, I couldn't help but include it in this week's links!
"What I Learned Writing Dreamlander: Why Non-Writers Give the Best Critiques" (K. M. Weiland at Wordplay) - Most of the story critiquing I've received has been from other writers. To a certain extent, this makes sense -- asking someone to do a critique for you requires an outlay of their time and energy and if you are working with another writer then there is an obvious way that you can repay that by trading critiques of similar-length works. But K. M. makes some good points about the potential value of getting critiques from non-writing readers as well. They are likely to be more representative of a general audience and so might approach your story differently from how another writer might.
"How to Hustle Your Readers" (Elle Carter Neal at Hear Write Now) - Elle's post talks about writing lessons learned from watching the British television show Hustle. The early seasons of this show, about con artists, were enjoyed quite a bit by my wife and me. Additionally, one of the story ideas I'm working with at the moment deals with con artists in a fantasy world. So when I came across this post, I couldn't help but include it in this week's links!
Along with those links, here are the items I posted on my blog this week:
"Philcon Trip Report" - Thursday I posted thoughts on my trip to Philadelphia for the science-fiction convention Philcon. I also included about a half-dozen photographs from the convention. [Somewhat related to this, a bonus link: Amy Sundberg blogged this week about "Why I Attend Conventions" and I thought this was worth reading, especially for newer writers on the fence about whether or not they were going to try to start going to conventions.]
"Philcon Trip Report" - Thursday I posted thoughts on my trip to Philadelphia for the science-fiction convention Philcon. I also included about a half-dozen photographs from the convention. [Somewhat related to this, a bonus link: Amy Sundberg blogged this week about "Why I Attend Conventions" and I thought this was worth reading, especially for newer writers on the fence about whether or not they were going to try to start going to conventions.]
If you're traveling this week for Thanksgiving or for any other reason, have safe and enjoyable travels. As always, happy writing!
You always seem so busy with writing! (Was that a silly observation?)
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