Who is doing NaNoWriMo?
I, of course, couldn't get it together in time to start, so I'll just cheer for you all. "Write one for Alicia!" That could be your rallying cry!
We could do cheers. Gimme an N! Give me an O! Give me a V!
Who's on the team? Do you have any strategies or words of advice?
Alicia
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Got Editing Questions?
If you have an editing question you'd like us to address, feel free to send it to rasley at gmail dot com. We like reader questions because they save us from having to think up post topics on our own. ;)
Readers' Choice for Top Ten Blog Posts
- 1. Top Ten Reasons the Editor Doesn't Love What Your Critique Group Loves
- 2. How to Put It Together Into One Neat Tweet
- 3. Marks of the Amateur - Starting a List
- 4. When Unnamed Characters Speak
- 5. Character-Driven/Plot-Driven
- 6. The Words Not Spoken, the Steps Not Taken
- 7. This Was in the Comments, But It's a Great Question, So Let's Discuss--
- 8. Dialogue Tags
- 9. Enjambment in Fiction
- 10. Thoughts on Pacing - Nothing Brilliant
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Alicia
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Theresa
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Both Editors
Ask An Editor
Romance University Now Features Theresa in a Monthly Column! Click the Picture for Details
Our Promise to Authors
Every day we work with writers to shape their manuscripts for publication. We also evaluate submissions, read our friends’ pages, give second opinions to other editors -- in short, we confront a whole lot of manuscript pages for a whole lot of reasons. But here’s what we don’t do. We don’t -- and we never will -- pull examples directly from any of these manuscripts. The editor-author relationship depends on mutual trust and respect, and we won’t ever compromise that. We might get ideas for blog posts in the course of our interaction with writers and manuscripts, but all examples are ours, with the occasional exception of literary sources.
Theresa's Dubious Honor
Useful Sites for Writers
- AAR
- Alicia's Writer's Corner
- Brian's Common Errors Site
- Internet-Resources (Killer Collection of Links for Writers)
- Merriam Webster Online
- Poets & Writers Online
- Purdue's OWL Grammar Handouts
- Schoolhouse Rock Grammar Rock Lyrics
- The Chicago Manual of Style online
- Theresa Stevens, Editor
- U. of Chicago's Excellent Collection of Grammar References
- Vision Index: A Review Site for Books About Writing
Blog Archive
-
▼
2010
(266)
-
▼
November
(33)
- From the Style Guide: Who/Whom
- This Picture's Worth 50,000 Words
- Worldview and subtext
- NaNo Update
- "The human heart in conflict with itself "
- Worldview and story approach
- What's wrong? What's next?
- Shameless-- you know the drill
- Le mot juste
- Verb Agreement with Compound Subjects
- Twain's last words
- Top Five Mistakes Authors Make in Proposals
- Marketing madness
- Brought to You By the Letters R and U
- Opening-- what constitutes?
- I don't have a Kindle, but...
- Possessive Case
- How the Brain Processes Metaphor
- Speaking of cliches-
- More publishing follies
- The Medium Is the Message
- Force the conflict!
- More on backstory
- No, and furthermore
- About the December Workshop
- Writers who love too much
- Prologues in general, let's debate!
- On NaNo
- Brainstorming Metaphors
- Off the Stage and Off the Page
- Another One on My Team
- Nano
- Top five mistakes
-
▼
November
(33)
When Theresa's not reading manuscripts, she's reading:
Labels
- action (26)
- active prose (12)
- acts (1)
- adjectives (10)
- advanced stuff (1)
- advanced training (1)
- adverbs (10)
- advice (2)
- agents (4)
- agreement (3)
- alliteration (1)
- American vs. British English (2)
- antagonist (3)
- antiheroes (12)
- art (1)
- audiobooks (1)
- author (2)
- author rights (1)
- authorial negation (3)
- authority (2)
- backstory (7)
- body parts (7)
- books (1)
- books we read (37)
- call to action (1)
- causation (4)
- chapters (2)
- character (81)
- characters (3)
- classes (2)
- classics (3)
- clauses (10)
- climax (2)
- coherence (1)
- coincidence (1)
- comedy (8)
- commas (10)
- concrete (1)
- conferences (20)
- conflict (18)
- conjunctions (5)
- contests (33)
- contracts (1)
- copy editing (9)
- Critique (1)
- Critique groups (7)
- danglers (7)
- deep pov (28)
- deep stuff (25)
- denouement (1)
- description (22)
- detail (4)
- details (1)
- deuteragonist (1)
- dialect (4)
- dialogue (38)
- dialogue beats (7)
- dialogue tags (6)
- direct publishing (9)
- double negatives (1)
- ebooks (3)
- editing (24)
- editors (24)
- electronic reading (1)
- ellipses (3)
- emotion (27)
- endings (15)
- epilogues (2)
- ETIQUETTE (1)
- examples (62)
- excerpts (1)
- exercises (23)
- exposition (13)
- eyes (2)
- fairy tale (1)
- feedback (1)
- film (13)
- first person pov (5)
- first sentence (1)
- flashback (4)
- foils (6)
- foreshadowing (1)
- formatting (1)
- frames (1)
- freewriting (2)
- fun stuff (5)
- future of story (2)
- genre (6)
- gerunds (1)
- goals (1)
- grammar (52)
- guest post (5)
- headhopping (2)
- hero (9)
- hooks (1)
- horror (1)
- horror books (1)
- hyphens (3)
- idea (1)
- inciting incident (1)
- innovation (2)
- interior monologue (9)
- internal conflict (1)
- irish (1)
- irony (3)
- Kindle (4)
- life (3)
- line editing (63)
- links (36)
- lists (4)
- log lines (16)
- manuscript (1)
- mark of the amateur (11)
- melodrama (1)
- metafiction (1)
- metaphor (4)
- middle (1)
- modals (1)
- modifiers (14)
- motif (9)
- motivation (7)
- multiple POV (4)
- mystery (4)
- names (4)
- nano (2)
- narration (1)
- narrative (8)
- narrative summary (6)
- new media (1)
- nouns (5)
- omniscient (2)
- openings (60)
- ordinary world (7)
- other (42)
- outline (2)
- pacing (12)
- paragraphs (37)
- participial phrases (23)
- participles (3)
- passive voice (9)
- past participles (3)
- Pen Olympics (18)
- pennames (1)
- perception (1)
- personal (7)
- phrases (1)
- pitching (28)
- plot (64)
- plotting (3)
- poetry (16)
- poetry plotting deep thoughts (1)
- polls (2)
- possessive (1)
- POV (51)
- POV contest (11)
- PR (14)
- predicates (5)
- prepositions (8)
- principles (1)
- productivity (14)
- progressive verbs (1)
- prologue (5)
- promotion (3)
- pronouns (11)
- proofreading (2)
- prose (5)
- protagonist (12)
- publishing (1)
- publishing industry (93)
- punchlines (1)
- punctuation (33)
- query letters (15)
- quotations (1)
- quotes from writers (1)
- read and revise like an editor (2)
- reader expectations (5)
- readers (2)
- redlines (12)
- reinventing (4)
- rejections (4)
- relative clauses (3)
- reversals (6)
- reviews (2)
- revising (8)
- revision (5)
- revision letters (8)
- romance (8)
- rule (1)
- rules (4)
- scene (3)
- scene charts (1)
- scenes (58)
- scenes pov setting emotion character (1)
- secondary characters (4)
- self-publishing (2)
- semicolons (2)
- sense of smell (4)
- sentence combining (5)
- sentence construction (2)
- sentence fragments (10)
- sentence structure (37)
- sentences (89)
- sequels (3)
- sequence (2)
- series - Alicia's sample line edits (45)
- series - Johnny and Drago (8)
- series- ongoing rants on PPPs (9)
- setting (31)
- settings (1)
- short stories (1)
- short stories Plot structure (1)
- show don't tell (5)
- simile (1)
- slang (1)
- smart stuff (2)
- sound (1)
- stephen king (1)
- story (7)
- stream of consciousness (2)
- structure (33)
- style (7)
- subject/verb agreement (2)
- submissions (57)
- subordinate clauses (4)
- subplots (3)
- subtext (10)
- symbolism (1)
- synopsis (11)
- syntax (2)
- teaching (1)
- tech (1)
- technique (1)
- tense (5)
- tension (3)
- terms (1)
- theme (24)
- thought (1)
- thought tags (1)
- three acts (1)
- tone (1)
- topic sentences (1)
- transitions (6)
- tritagonist (1)
- turning points (1)
- TV shows (23)
- typography (5)
- usage (10)
- verbs (27)
- villains (3)
- vocabulary (2)
- voice (50)
- word choice (1)
- words (41)
- workshop (5)
- worldview (2)
- writer control (1)
- writer's block (3)
- writers (3)
- writing advice (1)
- writing process (3)
Posts
12 comments:
I'm doing NaNo for the 7th time. My opening day, I set a personal record for single-day word count: 9321! I was shooting for an even 10k, but ran outta brains late in the evening.
My strategy tip is to get ahead early, because if you do that, YOU WILL SUCCEED. Simple. :)
Good luck, everyone!
I'm in. I'm not as fast as Ian, though! I'll be thrilled each day I can produce more than the minimum.
My words of advice: Have fun!
I'm in! I finished yesterday just short of 4,000, which is pretty darn good for a weekday for me.
Me too, but I'm closer to Deb. Struggling through the beginning this year -- so much I should be writing it right now. -- Alright. Going to do that.
Heehee. Word verification is oillyboo! Oillyboo! If that's really a word, I must look it up and perhaps use it somewhere. Or everywhere. Or say it a lot for the fun of it.
OK, now I'm really going to write.
Good work, everyone. Sort of amazing how you guys hit the ground running while I was writing "toothpaste" on my shopping list.
Gee, only 49999 words to go!
Alicia
LOL I finally got a breakthrough on paranormal I've been working on since last Nano!
I'm a little slow out of the starting gates because this book has had me stumped for so long so only managed 2400 yesterday. (not as awesome as it sounds as I did first 1800 in 45 min!)
Today, I wrote like 30 words and was stumped again, so I'm doing the secret handshake with Theresa and doing things backwards...
Also, for those doing Nano, I have blog post on 30th of september with some neat tricks and the second list of ten will be published on another blog as a guest post during Nano. *preens* Anyways, have fun and see you as we whip past the finish line...
I'm doing it this year but I'm more excited because one of my boys is doing it, too, through the young writers Nano program. My 7-yr-old just loves to make up stories, write them down and then draw the pictures. He is very excited and is off to a great start on his action/adventure/mystery story. Seeing him so excited really inspired me to give it another go! We are planning to go to a couple of the local write-ins here in Nashville.
This is my first time. I'm near Seattle so the pressure is on. the Seattle area has had the total word count title for five years now. I guess it's the rain and all the free flowing coffee. I have written over 6,550 words so far, we'll see how the rest of the month goes. It is a good way to focus.
I am in too and thanks to you and Theresa's classes I am actually think about my structure and characters.
I'm doing nano with both my kids again this year - I do the 50K adult Nano and they each do a mini-novel of their own. The YWP workbook is a gem of a tool for kids, and can help you get a better handle on your story too as it simplifies things down to the core.
Because my kids are young, last year we worked through the workbook each weekend in November and then the last weekend, they dictated their story to me (they each wound up with three typed pages!). This year, we did the workbook in October and they are writing on their own for the first time. Should be some interesting spelling choices in there LOL!
Alicia, thanks to your voice class I'm also crazy enough to be doing a major revision on my just-completed novel this month too. Because apparently I don't have enough to do. ;)
Andrea
I'm a rebel - I am working on my WIP, and I aim to write good words, not necessarily a lot of them. So far, I've written ca. 3K - am a bit stuck on the current scene, but that's the kind of book this is.
My tip: unless you care about 'winning' write what's right for your book. Ride the wave, enjoy the energy and how many people are excited! about writing this month - but don't do badly by the book just to meet an arbitrary target.
Hey, just noticed you asked. And yeah, I'm doing nanowrimo. Actually using it to keep me motivated and on track to finish VLC. So far, so good. This weekend isi huge!
Post a Comment