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This week: November's Over- Now What? Edited by: Storm Machine  
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“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ~Calvin Coolidge
"Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try." ~Unknown |
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While not everyone participates in NaNoWriMo, enough people do to warrant a general knowledge that November is for writing. Whether you participate or look down your nose at a month-long writing madness, it is a good idea to assess your goals and get yourself on a track. November might be over, but that doesn't mean it's time to quit. Though if you neglected your entire household, it might be time to clean or cook or just emerge from your cocoon for ten minutes a day.
Write - A daily habit for writing can come from NaNo. Did you find that time out of your schedule? Sure, maybe it was a few hours a day that you don't have the rest of the year. Keeping up those writing muscles will make it easier in the future any time you sit down to write. Creativity flourishes under the constant care of a writer writing.
Morning Pages (from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron) are one option where you just allow three pages (about 750 words) of anything that comes to you to flow out. If you haven't finished your November novel, this is a good time to finish at a pace you find able to handle. If you have finished your novel, maybe you want to try writing something short like poetry or essays or a new short story or flash fiction. Even if you're not an every day writer through November, you could cultivate that habit. If you're happier with a different schedule, this might be a time to set one that fits into daily life.
Review - One of those neglected tasks stems from turning off the Inner Editor. You might have decided to not even fix typos last month. You might have just turned spell check back on for your word processor. But this is also a good time to take a moment, read something by someone else, and allow the ideas of how to make it better flow through you. That Inner Editor is a good thing- because if you want to share your words, they're not going to be NaNo-rough words. They're going to be polished until they shine, and one way to know what to do to your own work is to consider someone else's.
Edit - I've read the NaNo site where he talks about editing the novel you just completed. I will admit I've never found myself able to do this. However, I am able to work on a project I'm not so close to a the moment, like last year's novel. Take out something, work on the beginning, the end, or somewhere in the middle. Just start tweaking the lines you wrote. Maybe you start with the typos. Maybe you've progressed to taking out the passive voice or changing the tense or the point of view or just finding the descriptive words to put in the scene.
Read - Writers write, but they also need to read. This is part of feeding that creative machine. Read everything you get your hands on. Read all genres, all lengths, all the pieces you can get your hands on. Turn those books into new ideas, too, as you pick apart what worked well and what didn't work for you at all.
Other Writer Tasks- If you're published (traditional, self, or indie) you have a lot of promotional duties that may have fallen by the wayside. Take a moment and post somewhere (or everywhere) about what you've been doing, what tasks you've been meaning to get to, and give yourself some goals for your peers to pressure you to finish. If you're not published, do you talk about your writing to the people in your life? Do you post it on Facebook or Twitter or a blog? Consider beginning your writer platform and speak out.
Find a Buddy - This might not seem writing-related, but it's easier to stay on track when you're not alone. I have a buddy, we've been getting up for a month to write together even though we live in different states and time zones. We mumble through our fingers a 'morning' kind of statement, then start pounding out keys. We're holding each other to our goals by making that time together. She also encourages me when I falter due to exhaustion or sick kids or anything else. And I'm mentioning something else she might do when she finishes her current task.
What are your current goals? What do you want to achieve? What can you do today, and every day of the year, to get yourself to that dream? Apply yourself and make it happen! |
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For Authors: December 04, 2013 Issue [#6030]
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