NaNoWriMo: The Cliffs of INSANITY!!!

This is where you are right now. Like Westley, you have been tenacious in your quest. You have not given up on the thought of holding your own complete novel in your hands at the end of the month. You have sailed across eel-infested waters to claim it, and now you find one more hurdle ahead of you. However, you shall not be daunted, and thanks to all the typing you’ve been doing, you definitely have strong arms.

If you are Westley in this scenario, then Week Three is the Cliffs of Insanity. It is bracketed by the two most important word counts with the exception of 50,000: 25,000 and 35,000. That 10K climb is one of the most important in your entire NaNo experience. 25,000 is obviously the halfway mark. There’s something really cool about being able to say you’re halfway to the finish line. This milestone should come for everyone at some point this week.

The second is even more important. Westley couldn’t just grab hold of the rope at the bottom of the cliff and say, “All right, I’m done now. Toss Buttercup down to me and we’ll be on our way.” No! He had to take the rope in hand and start climbing the cliff. When Vizzini cut the rope, he had to cling to the sheer rock face with his bare hands and continue to pull himself up.

Even though 25K is halfway, 35K is the top of the cliff. That’s where you start to feel like you’re on the downward slide toward home. Taking Westley as our inspiration, once he was at the top of the cliff, everything else was pretty easy. He had to fight a duel, but he won handily. Vizzini? Simple! Iocane power will take care of him!! And then he had Buttercup and all that work was worth it.

If your week is comparable to the Cliffs of Insanity, your story’s week is like the Fire Swamp. “Unless I’m wrong, and I’m never wrong, they’re headed dead into the Fire Swamp.”

Your Inner Fred Savage is probably moaning a little at the thought. The Fire Swamp? We’ll never survive!! Smack it down with Westley’s chipper quote: “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”

Week Three is one of the most awesome weeks for your story. This is when things start to happen. The characters you thought were pointless will suddenly step on a flame spurt, fall into the lightning sand, and be attacked by ROUSes. In other words, your story will start to develop… a PLOT! PLOT, you say? I don’t believe they exist. Oh, but you will my friend—you will. Just wait to see what week three brings to you. There’s a lot of craziness, and I’m not saying you’ll want to build a summer home there, but the trees are actually quite lovely.

So prepare yourself gang—Week Three is here.

Next week: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya…

Writing Updates! Mr. Darcy! Col. Fitzwilliam!

Today is the 1/3 mark of NaNoWriMo. I've been hard at work on my Col. Fitzwilliam story, and I am having an absolute blast. It was rough going at the start, partly because I was so dead tired on the first that I didn't write a single word. I'm on a roll now though--I've written a little bit of almost every chapter, and I'm going back through and fleshing things  out.

Are you doing NaNo? How is it going for you? Have your characters made any surprise announcements? I learned some interesting things about my villain on the second or third day of writing, and that's what really kicked the story into high gear.

As for Darcy, I am almost through with him. I'm sending digital ARCs out to reviewers right now, and then next week I'll order proof copies of the paperback from CreateSpace. Once I've got everything to my liking, I'll be hitting the big, red button marked SALE. (Okay, so there's not really a button, but I've always wanted to push one of those big, red buttons that say, "DO NOT PUSH," and this is as close as I'm likely to get.)

Unless something goes drastically wrong, I'll be hitting that button next Thursday or Friday--ONE WEEK LEFT!! I am truly in shock--I can't believe that in just a week, my book will be published. I've been doing the boring things this week, like attaching the book information to the ISBN numbers, but... really, I'm done. It's ready to go.

One week!!

His Good Opinion can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon FR. 

Giveaway winner!

There were 47 entries into the giveaway for the copy of the Pride and Prejudice. I stuck that number in the handy-dandy random number generator, and our lucky number is 23.

Counting down to number 23, the winning comment is:

Farida Mestek said...

I also retweeted at: https://twitter.com/#!/Nancy_Kelley/status/132552761127600128

Congratulations, Farida! Email me your address to nkelley.writes AT gmail DOT com, and I'll get your DVD in the mail by the weekend. Enjoy!

Thank you everyone for entering. I loved reading over your favorite moments of Pride and Prejudice.

NaNoWriMo: Murdered By Pirates Is Good

During Week One, everything in your novel seemed perfect, almost idyllic. Your novel, and to a broader degree the act of novelling, became your “true love.” Perhaps a part of you wondered, as Buttercup does, if this fragile new relationship can withstand what life throws at it. The only answer you received was, “This is true love—do you think this happens every day?”

But one morning this week, you will wake up and find that your perfect novelling world is gone, your excitement killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts of Week Two. Your main character hates you… your plot is non-existent… that sub-plot you thought would wrap up everything neatly in chapter six creates more problems than it solves… and so on and so forth.

You’re also starting to realize the time commitment it takes to write a novel. There are stacks of dirty dishes in your kitchen and piles of laundry in your room. Your family has forgotten what you look like when your eyes aren’t glued to the monitor.

At this point, it would be tempting to echo Buttercup and say, “I will never write again.” Just as she wanted to close herself off from feeling this kind of pain ever again, you would like to avoid this deep feeling that you have let yourself down or lost one of your lifelong dreams. Here’s this week’s secret: Every single Wrimo I know has felt this way. It is normal and natural. The only question is what you will do with this feeling.

Because she vowed to never love again, Buttercup allowed herself to be betrothed to the Prince, betraying her true love. The first question Westley asked Buttercup when he revealed himself to her was, “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“Well… I thought you were dead.”

His answer was simple: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

You and your novel have true love. Will you give that up, simply because your enthusiasm has been murdered by pirates?

Next week: The Cliffs of Insanity and The Fire Swamp

I Have Seen the Enemy, and He Is .Mobi

Like Captain Ahab, I spent last weekend in search of Mobi. No, that's not a misspelling. (I work at a library, I can spell Moby Dick.) Mobi with an I is one of the e-book formats for Kindle.

First, can I get a cheer that I'm actually to the formatting stage? Thank you.

Now for the saga. I started Saturday with a pretty easy to follow set of instructions. I breezed through the first few steps, and then I hit a problem: The program recommended to create the mobi book is PC only. I switched to Mac at the beginning of the month.

No problem! I work at a library, I can do research! I searched for "formatting a Kindle book on a Mac." The top recommendation was for a program called Kindle Gen... and that's where I hit the second road block. I will spare you my deep and abiding hatred of this program and only say that it Is. Not. Easy.

Not easy, as in I spent hours wrestling with it.

Now, I had a really nice program on my PC called Calibre that is all about converting e-books to different formats. I did some searching and yes! Calibre works on a Mac!

So... first I saved the file as a PDF and uploaded it to Calibre, and then I converted the format. Eh, a few formatting errors, and I'm paying my Oops Detector $1/oops.

And this is where I made my fatal error. Instead of just trying again through Calibre, I went back to The Evil of Kindle Gen. More tears follow, more wailing and gnashing of teeth. I swore I would never format another one of my books, ever.

Finally, around 11:00, I decided to give Calibre one more shot. This time, I saved the file as an .RTF first and then converted. Beautiful! Perfect! As far as I can tell, anyway...

I'm calling this a victory. If it comes back from the Oops Detector with no formatting errors, I will write a step-by-step instruction sheet for Mac owners. There's really not a good one out there. (By which I mean, there's not one that doesn't include Kindle Gen.)

His Good Opinion can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon FR. 

Giveaway! BBC Pride and Prejudice DVD

As you know, friends, I am very nearly ready to publish His Good Opinion. This seems like a good enough reason to celebrate with a giveaway, and as my book is from Darcy's point of view, what better item to offer than a copy of the BBC Pride and Prejudice?

This is the production that gave us Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. I hope I'm not giving away too much when I say that I tested my dialogue by imagining Colin saying it.

I have one copy of the Restored Edition. As someone who owned the previous Special Edition, I can verify that the color, the texture, everything about the Restored Edition is absolutely incredible. Did you know the curtains in Mr. Darcy's room are red, or that the many of the dresses were made of patterned fabrics? Both of those facts had escaped me, due to the poor transfer quality of earlier versions.

Now, for the nitty gritty. This giveaway is open internationally. To enter, reply to this post with your favorite moment from Pride and Prejudice. For extra entries, you may:

Follow me via Google Friend Connect.

Follow me on Twitter: @nancy_kelley

Tweet about the giveaway. Here's a sample tweet: Hey #JaneAusten fans, want to #win a copy of the BBC Pride and Prejudice? Enter @nancy_kelley's #giveaway! http://bit.ly/sLRTYU

Please come back and comment for each additional entry. You can tweet about the giveaway once a day for more entries.

The giveaway closes on November 8 at 11:59 pm PST.

NaNoWriMo Starts Today!

On Tuesdays in November, I'll be running  series of NaNoWriMo pep talks.

I was re-watching one of my favorite movies a while back, and suddenly I realized that NaNoWriMo is like The Princess Bride—both are adventures narrated by one very excited participant (you) and derided by one very snide bystander (your Internal Editor).

During the first week of NaNo, you will have all the energy and enthusiasm of the Grandfather. You’ve got a book to offer, and nothing could be better. The Grandson is your Internal Editor, constantly questioning and doubting that your story will be any good. Right from the start, the Grandson is unconvinced of the story’s appeal. “Are there any sports in it?” he asks.

How many of us have heard that little voice asking if we actually have a plot? Was our answer as good as the Grandfather’s? “Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…” (Sounds a lot like a NaNo Bingo card, doesn’t it? And whose story doesn’t include a few of those elements? I can personally check off fighting, torture, revenge, escapes, true love, and miracles.)

If you watch The Princess Bride, you learn that the secret to telling a good story lies in ignoring the heckler. He’s barely into his story when the Grandson interrupts: “Hold it, hold it! Are you trying to trick me? Where’s the sports? Is this a kissing book?”

Does the Grandfather put the book down and say, “You’re right, I’m sorry… What was I thinking, imagining I could tell an interesting story? I’ll just go on home now, and you can get back to your game.” No! He tells the kid to sit still and wait! There’s good stuff coming, and he knows it.

Here’s the secret I want you to learn this week. Your Internal Editor does not know your whole story. All it knows is the part you’ve already told, and we all know that the first chapter, or even the first third a book doesn’t show the whole picture. When that little voice starts whining at you, wondering if this is ‘a kissing book,” tell it to be patient. The good stuff is yet to come.

Next Week: The Dread Pirate Roberts