Chris Baty's Blog

from our sponsors at Freewrite

Here at Freewrite, we help writers reach peak productivity in order to meet word count goals and create their best work yet. That’s our reason for being.

Today, we’re going to share the three easy steps proven by science to help you reach your writing goals!

1) Set A Goal & Write It Down

The psychology of goal setting is pretty clear. It’s what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Research has proven that people who set goals experience higher motivation and are more likely to feel accomplished.

However, the type of goal you set makes a big difference to your efforts. Make sure that your goals are (a) clear and specific, (b) realistic, and © measurable.

Being clear about your goal will help you hone in on what you’re trying to achieve and ignore distractions. Make sure to write it down, as well. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews has revealed that people who write down goals are 33% more successful than those who simply set a goal in their head.

Next, be realistic. This means being honest with yourself about what you can and can’t achieve based on your other life obligations. Setting goals that you can’t achieve will only lead to frustration and, ultimately, a lack of motivation.

And last, make sure each goal is measurable. “Write 1,000 words each day” is much easier to measure than “Finish this book.” Because we all know it’s difficult to measure a book being “done”!

Breaking these goals down into smaller, simpler steps will help, too. If your goal is to write 20,000 words during Camp NaNo, break that down into 5,000 words a week, and then figure out how many words you’ll have to write each day to reach those smaller goals.

2) Practice Freewriting

Freewriting is thinking. It’s as simple — and as difficult — as that.

While every writer is unique, and there is no one way to be a writer, there are similarities we all share as humans — especially humans in the modern world — that create common obstacles to doing the things we love — like reading, writing, and yes, thinking. There are the obvious external obstacles: social media, email, the internet. But there are sneaky internal obstacles, too — the main culprit being the inner critic.

As humans, we are judgmental. It’s in our DNA. Our brains are constantly assessing situations, imagining outcomes, and making decisions. It’s part of survival at a very basic level. However, that means that when we do anything, including writing, we tend to automatically assess our actions — judging our own words, tweaking and editing them as we go along. That constant evaluation not only hinders progress, it can also stop us from ever getting started. And if we do manage to sit down to write, that inner critic creates an unconscious anxiety that prevents us from experimenting and writing down our most innovative and creative — and weird! — ideas.

We’ve all heard the advice to “write now, edit later.” Or perhaps you’ve heard writers reference “the sloppy/crappy/messy first draft.” Those are just fun ways of referencing the writing method in which you separate the drafting process from the editing process. Or, what we call freewriting.

Many people haven’t written this freely since childhood, but there’s a reason this method is taught in MFA programs. Getting your thoughts down first and revising later increases productivity and yields better, more creative work because it allows you to give your brain fully to each task. It means that when you’re drafting, you’re drafting, and when you’re editing, you’re editing. There’s no context-switching or multitasking.

So, what if you gave yourself permission to write badly at first? And we don’t just mean cheesy or with glaring plot holes — we mean typos, missing words, character names replaced by big Xs because you couldn’t remember them in the moment.

The next time you draft, we challenge you to give it a try. Just let yourself go and give your thoughts and feelings over to the act of creating. Because that’s when the magic happens. 

3) Track Your Stats

OK, you’ve set measurable goals, and you’ve started drafting. What’s next?

Track your efforts!

Here at Freewrite, we’ve created a tool to automatically track important writing stats, like word count, writing days, writing streak, and more! It’s called a Postbox Profile, and it gives you a unique URL that allows you to share your stats with writing friends.

Anyone with a Postbox account — that’s anyone who writes on a Freewrite OR uses our free in-browser drafting tool, Sprinter — can create a Postbox Profile and track their stats.

👉Don’t have a Freewrite yet? No problem! We have a FREE in-browser drafting experience called Sprinter that helps you shut down distractions and make progress — and gives you access to Postbox. Start writing today absolutely FREE at sprinter.getfreewrite.com.

👉Ready to grab your own Freewrite? Our entry-level device, Alpha, is $50 off this June only! Just use code STARTWITHALPHA at checkout.

When it comes to publishing, many writers will think about big publishers first. However, there are a lot of different publishing options out there to explore. NaNo participant and author, Clara Ward, talks about their experience publishing with a small press and gives you questions to consider while you think through your publishing options!

NaNoWriMo inspired me to write. Signing with a small press gave me the support I needed to publish a book I love. 

I’d published books before—starting with NaNoWriMo sponsor deals in the early days of online publishing—but I never had the right skill set to promote those books. As a result, they never truly found their audience. 

In November of 2020, I poured my heart into a genre-blurring near-future tale of sailing across the Pacific and building a neurodiverse, queer, and possibly magical chosen family. In 2021, I titled it Be the Sea and asked myself: What am I going to do with that?

1. Are you looking for fame or family?

Small presses are as varied as the people who form them. If you read widely, you may already have a treasured book on your shelf from your publisher-to-be. Try asking NaNoWriMo friends who share your interests if they’ve discovered any surprising or emerging sources for great reads. (At the very least, you may find books you’ll love in unexpected places!)

Admittedly, a small press doesn’t have a fortune to spend on paving your path to fame. But I have never felt as seen as when my soon-to-be publisher, E.D.E. Bell at Atthis Arts, wrote back, “I’m really in love with what you are doing and would like to talk about it.” 

2. Do you have the bandwidth for working with others?

Even with the most supportive small press, you may have to push outside your comfort zone. I know authors who love the absolute control and freedom of self-publishing. For a time, I felt very comfortable just posting my NaNoWriMo fanfiction novels on Archive of Our Own. At most, I had one or two beta readers to offer feedback on those works. Whereas E.D.E. told me in one of our earliest conversations that in addition to our three rounds of editing we’d need “a good number of betas” to cover the range of topics we were working on together.

I was delighted! I knew what I’d written was ambitious, and I welcomed all the feedback I could get. But it turns out, each extra person in a process adds new challenges and delays. I had to stretch my empathy as well as my publishing timeline because, to quote E.D.E. again: “It’s a lot of emotion (as well as brain cycles) to go through…” Outside perspectives will only improve your writing if you are willing to work with them, to truly listen and learn.

3. Can you handle the two-way commitment?

No form of publishing is easy. The myth that authors write while others handle business and promotion is not true at the top, and certainly not with small presses. In my experience, working with Atthis Arts was like joining a team or chosen family. Beyond certain paid tasks, such as editing and sensitivity reading, I discovered a community of authors who freely offered coaching before my first public reading, social media boosting, tips for author webpages, and an extra pair of eyes on letters requesting bookshop readings or other events. While not all small presses work the same way, this supportive culture proved to be an excellent fit for me. Naturally, I wanted to give back whenever possible.

Small presses can only succeed with community. This month, as I promote the launch of Be the Sea at bookshops in Mountain View, Davis, and Sacramento, I will be introducing many Californians to my Michigan-based small publisher, Atthis Arts. When I stand up as a panelist at Norwescon in Washington state or at various science, library, or Pride events later in the year, I’ll be promoting more than Be the Sea by Clara Ward. I’ll give back by sharing my appreciation for small presses, the supportive and inclusive practices they can normalize, and the opportunities they open up for future writers and readers. 

Clara Ward lives in Silicon Valley on the border between reality and speculative fiction. Their latest novel, Be the Sea, features a near-future ocean voyage, chosen family, and sea creature perspectives, while delving into our oceans, our selves, and how all futures intertwine. Their short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Decoded Pride, Small Wonders, and as a postcard from Thinking Ink Press. When not using words to teach or tell stories, Clara uses wood, fiber, and glass to make practical or completely impractical objects. More of their words along with crafted creations can be found at: https://clarawardauthor.wordpress.com

Photo by Hümâ H. Yardım on Unsplash

NaNo participant Demi Michelle Schwartz shares her story on how NaNoWriMo helped her sign on with a literary agent! She also offers some lessons she learned from taking on the challenge — and maybe it’ll inspire you too!

Are you an author with dreams of being represented by a literary agent? If so, I’m here to tell you that NaNoWriMo played a key role in my journey to signing with my agent, Michelle Jackson at LCS Literary.

I received an offer on the manuscript I drafted during my first NaNoWriMo in 2022. Fun fact, I signed my contract during November in 2023, exactly a year after writing the book. Reflecting back, there were choices I made that I hope will give you insight into how your NaNoWriMo project could lead to securing representation.

Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone

I’ve been an avid reader of young adult mysteries and thrillers ever since middle school. For this reason, I naturally gravitated to those genres when I started writing books. Still, I’ve grown to appreciate all genres from my MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University, a top one being fantasy. When I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, I stepped outside my comfort zone and drafted a young adult Little Red Riding Hood reimagining with Greek mythology.

Exploring a different genre led to me writing the book that got me my agent. So, if you’re interested in taking the NaNoWriMo challenge, consider trying something new. Along the way, you’ll expand your creative horizons.

Planning Before Taking the Challenge

Something I noticed after participating in NaNoWriMo twice now is that planning my books led to me feeling invested in them. As authors, we always have ideas bouncing around in our heads. Some stick, and others don’t. Taking time to explore my characters, plot, world, and more made me realize how much I loved what I was creating. Before I even started writing on November 1, I felt passionate about my story.

When you’re pitching agents, your goal is to sell your story. Having such a strong belief in your manuscript will allow you to authentically query it. Passion shines through, and if you care about your book, an agent may fall in love with it, too.

Taking Time to Receive Feedback and Revise

I can’t stress enough how important it is to receive feedback on your work and do several rounds of revisions. Once you draft a book during NaNoWriMo, it may be difficult to resist the temptation to send it out right away. Rather than querying a manuscript that isn’t ready, channel your eagerness to share your work into finding critique partners and beta readers.

For my manuscript, I did a revision on my own after winning NaNoWriMo. Then, I received critiques, made edits, and repeated this process until I felt my manuscript was ready. I queried my agent in August, and she offered me representation at the end of October. I truly believe the time and effort I put into polishing my book led to getting many full requests and my offer.

If I would have pitched the draft from NaNoWriMo, I’m 100 percent sure my email would have been flooded with only rejections. So, remember to take your time revising. The wait will be worth it when you begin receiving positive responses to submissions.

Now that it’s a new year, there’s a long runway before November arrives. It’s never too early to start planning your NaNoWriMo project. Since this challenge gave me the opportunity to draft the book that made one of my dreams come true, I hope you feel inspired to take a strategic approach to your NaNoWriMo project and give it wings to soar in the publishing world.

Demi Michelle Schwartz is a young adult fantasy and thriller author from Pittsburgh, PA, represented by Michelle Jackson at LCS Literary. After earning BAs in Creative Writing and Music from Seton Hill University, she went on to pursue her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill and graduated with her degree in June of 2022. When Demi isn’t working on her manuscripts, she’s busy chasing her other dream as an award-winning songwriter and recording artist.

Check out her website, Twitter, and Instagram!

Header photo by Negative Space.

ALT

Dear NaNoWriMo Community Members,

Thank you for reaching out to us with your inquiries about the forums, your support, offers to volunteer, and your legitimate concerns.

Our inbox has been flooded, and we appreciate all of the thoughtful responses from participants and volunteers who genuinely care about NaNoWriMo, our fellow writers, and the community as we do. It is impossible to respond to each message individually, but we wanted to let you all know we are working with purpose and sincerity.

Please see below the breakdown of the work that has been done since we last shared an update with the community. Our intention is to keep you abreast of all we are doing to make NaNoWriMo a better, safer, place:

We’ve overseen a full-scale review of business practices led by former Board Member, Kilby Blades, who has stepped in to assist the organization on an interim basis.
 We’ve begun to implement new procedures around community safety, including:Full revision and legal review of our employee handbook and codes of conduct.Full revision and legal review of our Municipal Liaison(ML) agreement.Development of a formal contract agreement for all (non-ML) Volunteers.Development of a stricter vetting process for all volunteers (which includes identity verification and background checks, wherever necessary).Licensing of a digital constituent management system that will enhance volunteer management capabilities.Comprehensive background checks for all current employees.Checks and balances to ensure that standards of conduct and ethics are adhered to (e.g., better leadership training, volunteer training, tech mechanisms, and active oversight).We’ve made staffing changes and revised our staffing plan.We have rescoped certain roles and initiated some staffing changes. (However, certain employees who left the organization voluntarily are in pursuit of their next opportunities.)We believe that learning from this moment through addressing skill gaps in the organization is healthy and we will go through a hiring process to fill necessary gaps in open roles.We’ve listened to other community feedback and are still in listening mode.We’ve disabled the mechanism on the YWP website that allows users to self-identify as educators for the purpose of creating classrooms, and we are researching mechanisms that will allow us to verify adults as educators.We’ve revised our technology roadmap to address usability issues and are hoping to introduce new features in 2024.We are midway through a deep dive on forums and forum moderation; this has included benchmarking with other organizations with similar challenges.In February, we will hold focus groups for continuing MLs. We are also thinking through the logistics of Town Hall meetings and other gatherings.We’ve processed dozens of pages of community member feedback and are integrating it into our thinking.With the staffing changes mentioned above, we are open to hearing from those of you who have reached out with offers to help and/or be a part of the organization’s future.  Get notified about future job opportunities at NaNoWriMo.

We are excited about the future, and expect it to be brighter! We hope you feel seen and heard, and that you will stick with us as we continue supporting the writing community and our organization.

Kind regards,

NaNoWriMo Board of Directors

ALT

Hi, Wrimos! From Friday, December 15, until Tuesday, January 9, NaNoWriMo HQ will be in hibernation mode. However, you’ll still be able to use all our free resources and set independent writing goals on nanowrimo.org. We look forward to writing with you again next year!

And that’s a wrap! If you want to see any of the individual posts, feel free to look through the 30C30D tag.

This year, we included community features for the first time, and I’m very glad we did! It’s amazing to see what talent we have in our community. 30C30D continues to be a celebration of stories and art, no matter how long you’ve been creating. I’m grateful to be a part of that experience!

Thank you again for participating!
— Josie

Due to external circumstances, one of our chosen covers was unable to be completed by the original designer. So our Programs Associate, Josie Gepulle, took up the task by doodling some chickens!

Let’s wrap things up with Children’s Fiction novel Silkie Society by YWP Participant Bailly Collins!

Silkie Society

Connie, Natalie, Sylvia, and Skye are silkie chickens who work as models for Chicken Inc., a company selling all things chickens, secretly run by chickens. Since silkies are smaller than most chickens, the sisters are not always treated like the others. But when the company threatens to close down, the silkies have yet another chance to prove themselves. With the help of some friends and family, they’re sure  they can do it. Will they be able to save the company in time? And can they, more importantly, show the other chickens that they are more than meets the eye? Silkie Society is an inspirational story about four chickens, and how there’s no such thing as “too little.”

About the Author

Bailly Collins is an aspiring author who resides on a picturesque mini-farm in Minnesota. With a passion for storytelling, she has ventured into various genres, including dystopian, children’s fiction, and science fiction. With her creative imagination and unique voice, Bailly’s writing is both captivating and thought-provoking. When she’s not writing, she can be found tending to her animals or exploring the beauty of nature. Bailly is committed to honing her craft and sharing her stories with the world, and she looks forward to bringing her unique perspective to the literary world.

About the Designer

Josie Gepulle is a longtime NaNoWriMo participant! Lately, she’s been really into writing food scenes. Maybe it’s the unending marathon of baking shows. Outside of fiction, she’ll gladly hand you a media analysis essay. When not writing, she’s a digital artist, stop motion animator, and hamster aficionado.

Cover Design Process:

This year, we gave designers the optional prompt to explain their design process for the cover! Here’s Josie’s:

Children’s Fiction is often accompanied by crayon-like drawings, so I immediately knew how I wanted to draw the chickens! The accessories were added to make them more stylish, it seemed like it would go with their jobs! Maybe I should’ve gone with something a bit more modern, but I went with the chalkboard backdrop because I can imagine the chickens scratching out their plans on one. Anyway, the overall goal was to draw something whimsical and fun. Hopefully, it comes off as that!

Let’s step back and explore a thrilling supernatural adventure! Day 19 is represented by LGBTQ+ novel Hollow Bonds by Rowan York! This cover was designed by the amazing returning designer, Sean Childers-Gray!

Hollow Bonds

When recently-turned vampire Remi Moreau is attacked by an unknown force he can’t see, only the timely intervention of a stranger—Malcolm Blackburn, ‘spare’ heir to the most powerful witches’ coven in the U.S.—saves his life… and when the pair learn that the spirit that attacked Remi marked him and will likely return, and that it may also have killed the missing friend Mal came to town to find, they must work together to stop it.

About the Author

The author has chosen to keep their identity a secret!

About the Designer

Sean Childers-Gray (he/they) Designer | Educator | Transgender Advocate

Sean has spent almost two decades working in the field of graphic design. He earned his MFA in Media Design from Full Sail University. He works as the BlendEd Learning Coordinator for Davis Technical College in Kaysville, Utah. He and his wife spend their free time volunteering for the LGBTQ+ community and he serves as the President and Marketing Director for Ogden Pride, creating festival materials, branding, environmental graphics, and more. He has been featured in PRINT Magazine’s Creative Voices series. You can read and subscribe to his work, The Shape of Our Dignity, on his Substack. Follow on Insta @s_childersgray

For Day 29, we’re featuring a cover designed and written by YWP author Oliver V. Álvarez titled Occams Razor, a Horror/Supernatural novel.

Occams Razor

One thousand beings, trapped in an underground bunker, created by scientists to be as powerful as possible. One thousand years, where they are all trapped in slumber. One thousand years since everything on Earth was annihilated, destroyed by some planetwide disaster only remembered by those now long dead. One thousand people, donating their minds to ‘live on’ through these creatures before that terrible disaster hit.

One date, where those beings will all awaken. One goal, for them to reclaim the desolate world. One rule, do whatever it takes to survive. One person out of a thousand, whom is neither strong nor fast nor cunning.

And one survivor, who will find that the true way to escape that bunker is not by physical strength or speed or intelligence, but the strength of the mind to persevere no matter what happens.

About the Author

Ollie is a 17-year-old disabled and queer artist whom, asides from drawing, likes to write out analogies of its past experiences in the form of fictional stories that are often sci-fi, thriller, and occasionally horror or fantasy. It completed its first full-length novel, Gasoline, in 2022, and is starting on its next, Occams Razor, for NaNoWriMo 2023. Besides noveling, schoolwork, and working on art, it also enjoys listening to obscure genres of music, surfing the web, and daydreaming about exploring the world.

For Day 28, we’re featuring a cover designed and written by author Erica Manwaring titled Reassembling Kate, a Mainstream novel.

Reassembling Kate

Kate Monroe is a successful businesswoman with a fractured past. Her little brother died when she was 5 and she has never been the same. One day she finds herself having an out-of-body experience but she can’t get back. She is forced to stand on the sidelines and watch her body carrying on, and doing a better job of it, without her. Her life, and the people in it, were not what she thought.

Just as she starts to lose hope and resign herself to being a ghost in her own lifetime her colleague, David, in the middle of a boring meeting, looks her straight in the eyes. She manages to find a way to communicate with him and together they hatch a plan to save her.
Progress is slow until she discovers more disembodied voices like her and follows them to a hidden place where she finds their owners, lost like her. Isobel, the well-meaning matron; Richard, bookish and kind; Fi, the woman with a tragic past; Morwena, full of anger and fire; Mary, dangerously fun; and Cathy, the brat.

Initially these people are bafflingly ok with their circumstance. Then David arrives and helps her realise she is inside her own head talking to parts of her psyche. She is furious at their influence in her life but her only way back is to try to become friends. As she does so Kate comes to understand just how damaged she had become and why.

But not all the parts of herself want to come quietly. Mary, the angry teenager, kidnaps Cathy, Kate’s inner child, and makes a run for it, invited in by a mysterious woman into her own mental world. There is no choice but to go after them. They find Cathy held hostage. The Woman lives only inside her head and has no qualms about stealing other people’s minds for the company. It is only by all working together that Kate succeeds where she would once have failed.

Back home she finds out David is actually a mind walker too and had been borrowing David’s body. He leaves her heartbroken until she is sitting in a café and meets a man she has never met but who she instantly recognises.

About the Author

Writer of things a little bit weird, a little bit true. Author of three books exploring how people cope with and thrive in our challenging world through the lens of contemporary fantasy. You can find me at www.dean-park.com or on Facebook or Instagram @ EricaManwaring

Cover Design Process:

This year. we gave designers the optional prompt to explain their design process for the cover! Here’s Erica’s thoughts:

I wanted something striking but that conveyed the fantasy elements of the novel. This image, found on shutter stock, was a great find and also reminded me of Magritte’s Son of Man which had a lot of great parallels. I then adapted the font to suit with the help of a graphic designer friend.