Next month is NaNoWriMo: the National Novel Writing Month. It’s a time when writers around the world hunker down to write 50 thousand words on a novel in a single month. It’s not a small endeavor. So why do it?
Here are my top seven benefits to you from choosing to join NaNoWriMo:
There are no rules.
Just kidding. Of course there are rules. There are rules of grammar, plot, structure, etiquette and all manner of other aspects of writing and publishing. The problem is there isn’t one, single set of rules. There are many.
In this series on rejection, we’ve looked at how to handle the disappointment and reason behind rejections. Now let’s get a little bit of perspective.
Every writer gets rejected. Every one. Even the best.
In the first blog of this series, we talked about how to handle rejection. Now let’s look at why rejections happen…and they are going to happen.
Rejection is part of a writer’s life no matter if you are writing books, scripts, speeches or blogs. Every writer has been rejected at some point in letters, emails, texts, phone calls and in person. And it never gets easier.
It doesn’t matter if we’re always at home now or not, it’s always hard to find time to write. There are too many distractions: paying work, family, home improvement projects, laundry, dishes, dinner, Netflix, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, piles of books. So many lovely excuses keeping you from the page. Heck, that blank page is often enough to prompt bouts of irrational cleaning. Anything instead of doing the work.
It’s not always about finding the time. It’s about creating the right mindset so you want to write and then carving out time to do just that.
Writing breaks are healthy for every writer. That’s why Figments & Fables is on a two-week break. We will be back next week with new content. Until we return, we invite you to revisit some older blogs:
Coming up with ideas, researching them and then writing useful blogs takes time and energy. For the past few years, I have poured myself into this task without taking any breaks. But the time has come. Figments & Fables will be on break for the next two weeks. While we are away, check out some of our blog series (I will post the first link in each series):
When is good writing good writing? Is it a sentence or paragraph that hooks the reader? It is laud the ability to craft a gorgeous sentence no matter what? Or does noticing that great passage distract from the reading experience?
I think we can all agree there are books that amaze us with their prose and those that challenge us with their awkward phrasing and clunky pacing. It’s a question of quality. We know what works and what doesn’t on a visceral level. But how do we define it? And, more importantly, how do we make sure we’re on the right side of that line with our writing?
In the first two blogs of this three-part series, we talked about what to prepare to do a marketing push and how to find new clients. Now we’re going to look at what to do during the in-between bits—between your preparation and your initial pitches.
Not Landing Jobs
In the first part of this blog series on finding freelance work, we talked about things you should do before you begin your marketing and sales pitches. Now we’ll look at concrete actions you can take to find work.
Writers find work in a variety of ways, dictated mostly by experience level and type of writing. In the nonfiction world, this may mean publications, blogs, websites, corporations, nonprofits, agencies, production houses, and more. This makes it more difficult to answer the question: how do I find work, especially during a pandemic when so many are out of work or are operating at lower capacity? Even given these challenges, there are ways to boost your chances, no matter your skill set or level.