Three books to help you survive NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us. If you’re participating for the first time this year, you may find yourself wondering if there are any books that might make the task of accumulating 50,000 words worth of novel by December a little easier.
Heading to Amazon with that question in mind I quickly discovered that there is indeed a surfeit of books that purport to do just that. Indeed, there are so many books that it’s hard to know where to start. I found not one, not two, but five books titled How to Write a Book in 30 Days. If you can’t quite make it to the finish line in 30 days, never fear, because there’s another book that will tell you How to Write a Book in 33 Days. And there are countless others with similar titles.
Reader, I read them. Well, the free previews of a lot of them, anyway, downloaded from Amazon’s Kindle Store. After several hours of desultory reading, I concluded that most of them weren’t worth the virtual paper they were virtually printed on. I ended up buying several of the cheaper ones, so I could evaluate them more thoroughly and found that they weren’t any better than their less-than-inspiring previews had suggested.
I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that most of these books were written in 30 days or much less; a lot of these books are super short, with one clocking in at only 21 pages. In some cases, it’s not even clear that the authors took the time to read over their own manuscripts even once before uploading them to Amazon, filled with typos and sentences that aren’t sentences. The 21-page How to Write a Book in 30 Days explained its reason for being like this:
The goal of this book is to help young and aspiring authors get a hold of what what to write, why they should write, how they should write, when they should write and most importantly, how they should publish for those that wants to go into self-publishing.
Wait wait what what?
Not all the books and booklets are this slapdash. Some are merely dull; others amateurish, even when they’re written by published (or self-published) authors. While many are cheap to pick up on Kindle, most aren’t even worth their low prices, especially since so many are not only very bad but also very short. (“This food is terrible!” “And such small portions!”) Quite a few are more self-help books than writing guides, obsessed with getting readers into the proper “mindset” rather than offering any help with the writing issues that can hamper those trying to, well, write a book in 30 days.
But happily, I was able to find a few titles in this mess of a micro-genre that stand out as genuinely helpful. Here are THREE BOOKS THAT WILL ACTUALLY HELP TO GET YOU THROUGH NANOWRIMO with a minimum of fuss.
No Plot? No Problem! A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, by Chris Baty.
I suppose it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that one of the best and most entertaining books on doing NaNoWriMo comes from Chris Baty, the guy who invented the whole thing back in 1999. Drawing heavily on his own numerous attempts at speed-drafting, the book is kind of funny, kind of serious, offering up inspiration and encouragement alongside helpful tips on, among other things, how to defeat your Inner Editor, that invidious internal kibitzer that seems hell-bent on destroying your chances of reaching the NaNoWriMo finish line with an endless trickle of niggling questions and complaints. As a NaNoWriMo veteran, Baty writes convincingly on the psychology of it all, helping to prepare the newest crop of speed writers for the slump that may hit them when they get to week two of the four-week process. “Writing a novel in a month is utterly ridiculous,” he admits, “an undertaking for fools and those who don’t know any better. Thankfully we belong to the latter camp … Liberated from the constraints of constructing a pretty and proper novel, we are free to run, naked and whooping, through the valleys of our imaginations.”
Brave the Page: A Young Writer’s Guide to Telling Epic Stories, by Rebecca Stern and Grant Faulkner
This book is the official NaNoWriMo handbook for younger writers making their own somewhat scaled-down attempts at the writing challenge; like Baty’s book, it’s a mixture of how-to and inspiration, much of it good. But like a lot of writing aimed at “young adults,” this can also be profitably read by not-so-young adults. Don’t dismiss this as kid stuff.
Write Your Novel in a Month: How to Complete a First Draft in 30 Days and What to Do Next, by Jeff Gerke
Author and writing instructor Gerke offers a one-stop guide to the fine art of fast drafting. He devotes much of the book to advice on setting up the novel before it is written, imploring would-be authors to sketch out characters and plot points before sitting down at the keyboard. (A “pantser” he is not.) As for the whole speedwriting thing, Gerke provides a chapter’s worth of tips he has gathered from other writers, some of which seem helpful and others not so much. He then wraps up with recommendations on revising for publication. There’s a lot of good stuff here, and the chapters on character and plot will be especially useful for writers who don’t want to pants it. “You can do this,” he reassures his readers. “You can. Lots of people not as smart as you have done it.”
That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.
In any case, best of luck on your NaNoWriMo journey! I hope these books will help.
And if at any point you get stuck–and I mean the kind of stuck that can’t be cured by distracting yourself with a walk in the park–I too would like to help. As a writing coach with a particular interest in writer’s block and other maladies of the writing life, I am offering FREE hour-long coaching sessions throughout November. I’m also available as a sounding board as you work through any novel-related issues, and I can help with any apprehensions you have about the whole project. See more about me and my background here, and feel free to ask any questions of me you want. Again, the session is free and there’s no obligation to sign up for anything that costs money (or your immortal soul).
