Wednesday, September 16, 2015

NaNoWriMo looms...

Hi everybody!

I've been doing some pre-holiday tidying up on my writing projects and there are a few things to pass on to everyone...

First off, National Novel Writer Month (NaNoWriMo) is revving up for the November challenge. The long and short for NaNoWriMo is this: Write 50,000 words in the month of November. It's a free site, you create a log in and a writer-oriented profile, then track your work in November. There are forums and an in-site email where words of wisdom / encouragement abound. There is also a NaNo store to buy swag or to make donations. I've done it for three years and have had 2 successes and 1 failure.

Here is the link: https://nanowrimo.org/sign_in

Second, we had some good discussions about the heart of the story (Act II), but I found my mind wandering into how to make a killer intro. Especially after reading Rose's intro of a phone conversation. Coincidence being what it is resulted in this dropping into my email box from David Farland's site on Tuesday:

Your story begins when you have a character (likeable or not), in a setting (interesting or not), with a problem (and it darned well ought to be a doozy). My mentor Algis Budrys said that as a rule of thumb, if a writer doesn’t have that by page two, then the story most likely isn’t sellable. He’s right.

Farland's site link is this: https://mystorydoctor.com/powerful-openings/

Lastly; from the realm of self-publishing, below is a link to what appears to be a self-publishing site that is growing in popularity...

https://www.wattpad.com/writers/how.html

It is called Wattpad. The idea is that you can write anyplace / anytime on any device and upload it for the vox populace to read. What makes this different from other sites is that it appears to be the 'new hottness' for aspiring authors to gain a following prior to dropping a physical book. What I was thinking about doing was to create some short stories based upon stuff I'm working on right now. I'm going to drop the short stories out on Wattpad to serve as teasers to the (future) physical book.

That's all I've got for now!

Write on.
-Dave

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