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:
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):
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.
A continuation of the first part. Five more bits of advice for aspiring writers.
1. Write, It’s As Easy As That
This will end your “aspirations” and make you an actual writer. The fact is you are either writing or you are not writing. There is no in-between.
Being a freelance writer is a tough gig. Not because of the writing, though that has its own difficulties, but because of the business side of things. Through the many years I’ve been doing this, I have learned some tough lessons. Here are my top 12:
Never before has the Internet been so important. Heaven help us if wifi goes down. We might not make it.
Sequestered in our homes, it’s books, movies, and streaming content that keeps us going. That is, when we’re not working out, cooking or obsessing about flour, yeast or paper products. But even YouTube can let us down now and then. Our feeds get gunked up with cat videos and before we know it, we’re down the rabbit hole never to be seen again.
Well, here are some links to help you stay on track, even if you are still sitting on the couch:
Across the country, we are hunkering in our houses, apartments, condos, and yurts hiding from an invisible pathogen intent on causing harm. We’re closed off from others, forced into an isolated existence. The kids are home. Shops closed. Parks cordoned off. It feels like a different world than it did a month ago and it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
As writers, it is up to us to capture this time in words. It’s time to keep a journal. Take a moment each day to write down what is happening and how it makes you feel. Take the shock, worry, anxiety, anger, fear, compassion, sadness and grief we all feel and commit them to the page. Describe what is happening—all of it. The boredom, the loneliness, and the obsession for toilet paper. These are the parts of the pandemic that are human. They are the emotions that define this time. It is also where you will find story and character.