I can’t turn anywhere these days without someone claiming that self published books are all horrid. Writers forums, communities, large news sites, blogs – everyone has an opinion and most of it isn’t good.

It’s as if it’s become accepted that if you self publish, you aren’t good enough for a traditional publisher. Not a real writer.

(By the way – I use the term ‘self’ published lightly since not many of us do everything ourselves, often we hire people to do covers, editing, formatting and so on. Indie publishing is a much better term (and the one I personally prefer), but I’ll continue using self during this article since that’s what most media are using).

It’s not just media and angry bloggers that sneer at self pubbers though, even self published authors view other self published authors with derision, and feel it’s their duty to point out their crimes to the world.

• “She can’t write, look at where she put a comma”,
• “My god – did you see that she wrote an action tag where it wasn’t needed”,
• “Too formulaic”,
• “The cover looks like my dog did it”,
• “I’m going to do it the right way and ask for fifty thousand dollars on a Kickstarter project so I can pay someone an exorbitant fee and feel better about myself”,
• “I had a New York Editor tell me I have talent so I’m better than you”.

Sigh.

Being a writer is hard enough, but when your fellow authors can’t support you, you better have a good outside support system to get you through that kind of criticism otherwise you’ll give up (writers can take a bad review to the extreme which may or may not include vodka, donkey’s and loaded water pistols. Not that I would know. *cough*).

Look, I’m not naive enough to believe that every book that is uploaded to Amazon is good. Any monkey can spend a bit of time at the keyboard and crank out words if they put enough hours into it. Just like anyone can put up a website with dubious ‘articles’ and slap some Adsense on it. Not that I would know that either *cough cough* (pops some cough lozenges).

But just as the bad websites fade into obscurity, so do the bad books.

Readers are not stupid. They can decide what they like and do not like.
(And remember what one person likes another doesn’t.)

Readers decide what is good and what they will pay money for (and if they don’t – they get a refund and avoid that author in the future).

My only job is to make sure I write something good and entertaining (fiction) or good and informative (non fiction), and get it in front of readers who’ll like it. Which isn’t always as simple as it sounds…

How to write GOOD self published books (that won’t make someone stab their eyes out).

Writers get better two ways – by reading (a lot) and by writing (a lot).

But there are ways to fast-track your skills so the (a lot) part doesn’t take as long, which I’m about to talk about.

Many authors today are too busy obsessing over the ‘marketing’ side of publishing, that I feel they sometimes forget to work on the ‘craft’ side.

Improving the craft side, and learning to write better stories, will make you far more ‘marketable’ than spending your time ‘marketing’.

The first way is to study.

Study bestselling novels and see what they are doing – How do they write cliffhangers? How do they develop characters?

Or you could take craft workshops and read craft books. I’m currently on my third workshop for the year, and let’s not get started on the amount of craft books I’m amassing.

Focused practice.

You remember the old ‘rule’ that you needed 10,000 hours to learn something? Well turns out – that is only for those wanting to be an expert. Who has the time to be an expert?

In reality it only takes about 20 hours of focused practice to get good at something.

That’s a little under a month of focused practice, and you can become a better writer than you are now, and write better books. Yay.

What do you mean by focused practice?

If you break down a task – let’s say writing a novel – you’ll see that it’s made up of a million different writer ‘tricks’.

• good hook openings to draw the reader in.
• well-developed characters.
• realistic and interesting dialogue.
• exciting cliffhangers.
• genre specific ‘must do’s’ e.g. romance needs a hot guy and a strong female lead (generally).
• rising and falling tension.
• sensory detail.
• plotting that’s fresh (but also fits certain rules such as three act structure ).
• satisfying closings, and so on.

You can choose one and practice that. For 20 hours (or thereabouts).

Let’s say you want to write good hook openings to your stories, and you want to spend the next month “practicing” to get better at it.

You already know that a good opening must have a character in a setting with a problem (from the seven point plot outline).

1. Start by reading a few books in your genre that you thought did a good job at drawing you in. Notice what the author did. Was it first person, third?, how much sensory detail was in it? Fast paced, slow-paced? Where did they start the story – in action, in emotion?
2. Read a few more books in another genre (to compare). How did they do their openings? If they used different tricks, could you translate that into your genre (could you put an emotional hook from a romance into a science fiction book? Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t – you won’t know until you experiment.
3. Practice writing your own openings. Write three different openings using some of the techniques you liked, and see which one is better. Write it again and see if you can make it even better. What worked, and what didn’t?

The self indie published writers who are getting it right, and who do write great books, ARE the ones that work on their craft. They are constantly striving to make sure the next book is better than the previous.

And I’ve read some great one’s.

Each new book is a step towards writing THE ONE. We’ll never get there of course – none of us ever think our own writing is good enough (writers also suffer from both crushing self-doubt and illusions that we are most brilliant – very often at the same exact moment).

It’s not just indie authors, all authors continually work on getting better. Find an author you love and read their earliest books and you’ll see how much they’ve grown. You get better by writing more.

Stop the myth. Stop the stereotype. Stop the absolute blanket statements. 

We are all working to put out the best work we can, no matter what sort of author we are. And really, that’s all we can do.

Thanks for reading Self Published Books are Dreck. (Really? All Of Them?) from Tracey Writes.

But first, I want to point out that this article is not about which writing software is better. I know some die-hard Scrivener fans, and some writers who like the simplicity of a no frills text editor. Writers tend to have strong opinions on their preferred writing tool, but I gotta say, I’m a big believer in just use what you like best. There is no ‘best’ software. I just happen to prefer Word.

If you like Word too, and want to get more out of it, then perhaps this article will be of use (or at least that was my goal for writing it).

Which brings me to main focus – using the Document Map feature in Word to quickly jump around the document from scene to scene or chapter to chapter.

I don’t write linearly – I didn’t with my non-fiction books, and I don’t with my fiction books. I like jumping around and ‘layering’ my books as the moods strikes.

For those that haven’t used this feature before, you can easily turn it on by going to the View tab, and clicking the checklist (it won’t be pink – I just highlighted it here so you can see it more easily).

This will open up a panel on the left hand side of your screen.

If you are in a new document, it will be probably be blank, but if you are in a current working document – depending on how you’ve set up your styles – you’ll see a whole bunch of headings and other notes here.

Here’s what my current WIP’s document map looks like:

You can see fairly clearly that I’ve listed all my chapters sequentially and I’ve also got notes of what happens in the scene, and sometimes other notes including things I still need to do.

How do you get your document map to look like this?

Heading Styles.

As I’m writing the document, I attribute my chapters and notes to different headings.

Chapter 1 (for example) will get the Heading 1 style. Scene description will get heading 2 and sometimes I’ll write extra notes using heading 3.

This is a quick guide of which styles I personally use, although you should play around with it for what works best for you:

Heading 1 attribute: ACT #, Chapter #
Heading 2 attribute: POV, Scene Description, Scene # (if more than one scene per chapter)
Heading 3 attribute: Notes, Word Counts, To Do’s

The hierarchy of the Document Map shows Heading 1′s first, Heading 2′s indented under that, and Heading 3′s indented further again.

You can also open or close anything under the Heading styles using the tiny + or – box next to the main heading. This helps if you have a lot of notes, and just want to skip quickly around to each chapter.

I like using the Document Map so that I can quickly jump around my manuscript by clicking on the left which then brings me to the correct place on the right side of the screen, so I can continue writing.

It’s much better than scrolling through your document trying to navigate to earlier or later chapters which can be a pain for large books. It’s also a good method to see at a glance what’s going on – to see the big picture.

Heading Styles

You might be wondering by now, what happens to these notes once you’ve finished your manuscript. I delete them.

Using the document map like this is only useful in your drafts (and I keep a few draft versions), so you will need to delete anything that isn’t necessary in your final clean document before you upload to stores.

I do keep the notes in until the very last-minute though. They are even included when my editor goes through it. She likes that she can see a good overview of the book at a glance and says it makes her job easier, too.

Using Commenting to keep track of details.

Another small tip I do is write notes such as character hair color and so on, by using the commenting feature of Word.

 * No laughing at the story – it’s still very rough first draft

Usually I do this for minor characters only (as I prefer to have a separate scene and character document for major characters and locations).

It’s a quick way to find out what hair or eye color you’ve made for one of your characters as you can view all of  your comments at once by opening the Reviewing Pane (from the Review tab). You can either open it in place of the Document Map or at the bottom of your working document.

I hope you’ve found these tips useful for using Word to write your next book.

Happy writing,

Tracey

Thanks for reading Using Word’s Document Map for Outlining Your Book from Tracey Writes.

I received an email from Goodreads this morning, informing me that Amazon has just acquired them, and I knew immediately that this was going to create a huge stir in the indie author community. I was right – boards such as the newly renamed kboards.com are abuzz with speculation – what does this mean for us? Oh woe, Amazon is going to screw us, oh doom.

Most people don’t like change, and this is extremely evident in the author world (we are a skittish bunch).

But since I like to look at things from all angles I wanted to have a think about this before I commented. I’ve read a few news reports, a few blog posts, a few forum discussions. Admittedly this is all second-hand information – I’m not privy to any of the inner workings of Amazon or Goodreads, but it’s good to get some initial impressions and opinions before I formed my own.

At the moment, my thoughts are this – it’s a good thing (as Martha would say).

What does Amazon have, more than any other site? = Books

What does Goodreads have, more than any other site? = Readers

Bringing the very thing that the readers want, to their fingertips, will make it easier to purchase their favorite books (you just know that Amazon is going to integrate an easy way for readers to buy books – many people are speculating already that they may introduce a buy button or at least a link directly to the Amz book page).

Many people currently complain that Goodreads can be clunky and hard to find your way around, if there is a tuck and tweak to the website to create a better user experience, and we all know that Amazon is well-known for tweaking their own site for maximum efficiency and (obviously) revenue, that can only help to improve the overall reader experience.

True, it does mean that the largest reader social site online right now will now promote Amz books, and not other stores. You already know that I’m against the exclusivity of Amazon’s Select program preferring wider distribution, however, a one click buy will make it much easier for readers.

So for readers, I can see this acquisition is a very good thing.

But what about authors?

Bringing books directly to readers is what Amazon has always been about from the moment they first introduced the Kindle.

Since they did so back in 2007 a new world opened up for authors. The rise of the independent author rose unlike any other time in history, and it created a way for authors to get their product directly into the hands of the consumer without having to go through a middleman.

That move was revolutionary and I for one am so thankful for the opportunities I have today because of it.

This latest move – Amazon acquiring Goodreads – was all about Amazon acquiring more customers for their business. Specifically – readers for their Kindle eBooks.

More readers for ebooks means more income for authors.

Let me repeat that – more readers buying ebooks, means more income for authors.

Yes, all the income will come from one store (although customers still do have a choice where to buy as they always have). But more readers and therefore buyers, has to be good for authors.

And don’t think that Apple (especially) and perhaps Kobo (although I think B&N doesn’t have much fight left in them) will ignore this. They’ll be looking for new ways to acquire new customers. This news will fire them up to try to entice readers over to their stores to buy books, too. Again making it better for authors.

We’ll see some interesting moves from them in the future – if they are smart.

But won’t Amazon change Goodreads?

They didn’t change Shelfari when they acquired them. They just integrated Shelfari into the Amz site with extra metadata including character names, series info, etc.

They didn’t take away Createspace’s ability to distribute elsewhere. You can still get your print books into other online stores with extended distribution.

When they started KDP (before it was called that), over time they’ve made it better and easier for authors.

Everything they’ve acquired at this point has only made better opportunities for authors. And right now, I can only see that this acquisition is better for authors too, by making it better for readers.

Let’s hope I’m right

Thanks for reading Amazon bought Goodreads – What does this mean for Authors? from Tracey Writes.

I got the email from Smashwords and figured it would be a good boost to my books that were having rather lackluster sales. If nothing else, at least I could get a few more eyeballs on them.

So, I discounted four of my books by 50%, and four by 75% through the ‘Manage Site-Wide Promotions’ on the Smashwords dashboard, and sat back feeling a smug (although really not expecting much).

For sake of comparison four books were non-fiction, four were fiction (two novels, and two ‘collections’).

The whole time I kept thinking what a good promotion it was, and how I wish Amazon would do something similar making it easy for publishers to discount books for a limited time.

And then it hit me. We can change the price at Amazon to whatever we like, whenever we like. Why don’t I just do my own ‘sale’ over there at the same time?

I changed the price of all eight of my titles that were in the promotion to the equivalent discounts on Amazon and put a note on all my descriptions:

** Discounted by 75% for a Limited Time **

In celebration of Read an Ebook Week, this title is on sale between March 3-9. After that it will return to the full list price of $3.99.

Results

Nothing happened with the non-fiction. No sales on Smashwords and sales actually went down on Amazon. It seems that people are very wary when it comes to low priced nonfiction books.  As soon as I increased the prices again on Amazon, sales returned to normal.

The collections didn’t sell on Smashwords, but did well on Amazon. I had increased sales and my ranking improved quite a bit. Probably not enough that I want to leave them at the lower price though.

The novels DID sell on Smashwords. Sold a couple of each at the 75% discount. Sales on Amazon were marginally higher, but not enough to show any real significant changes with ranking. I’ve since returned them to normal price.

Thoughts

Overall I liked the promotion and would (will) do it again. I think they have another similar type of promotion in June or July?  Obviously 75% discount is going to do much better than 50%, and full length novels/books will do better than short stories.

Next time I might try putting a few of them free to see what happens.

Tracey

Thanks for reading Read an Ebook Week – My Results from Tracey Writes.

Before you do — you might want to check your back matter.

Do you have a call to action for what you want readers to do next?

Well, you should.

If a reader has gotten to the end of your book, it means they probably loved it (of course), and may want to read more of what you’ve got.

So tell them what to do next.

Here is what I do (ymmv):

1. Add a link to your next book (either the next in the series, or a similar book in that genre). Not a link to every book you have though, this will make customers overwhelmed. Just one or two links is enough.

It may mean, if you haven’t written the next in the series, or have no other books, that you will need to come and update your back matter when you have more written. 

AND

2. A link to your mailing list. This one is important. I neglected this for my first year as an indie, and wish I hadn’t. The key to every successful indie author I’ve stalked researched is that they have a list of people who’ve signed up to hear about their new releases. This not only helps get sales from those people when you write new books (yah for fans), but those initial sales will boost your rank and push you higher on new releases lists and other genre lists on Amazon (and other retailers).

I’ve also noted that successful authors ONLY send emails to their lists when they have a new book, or a special sale. Don’t waste your readers time with random newsletters about the writing process or your cat) . 

AND

3. A thank-you for reading your book. Your reader will appreciate it. (And it’s always good to leave on a positive note).

OPTIONAL

4. A request for reviews. I don’t do this, however it can be very effective. Asking for their time to write an honest review on Amazon (or other retailer) does help boost the amount of reviews that you will get. Keep your request polite and to the point.

That’s it!

Just adding these to your back matter will help build your sales and platform.

Happy writing & selling!

Tracey

P.S. I was asked why you wouldn’t put links to all your books and let customers choose. My answer: By all means have a list of all the books you’ve written if you want at the end. I wouldn’t put links on them all though. 

What I do is as soon as the story hits THE END, I say a quick thank you for reading, then a link to the next book (or another book) and then my mailing list link.

On the next page is a very brief ‘about the author’ section with a sentence or two about me (or my pen name) and the bibliography of all the books I’ve written under that name. My bibliography doesn’t have links — only the one or two books I’ve linked after the story does. 

I hope that makes it more clear

P.S.S. January was my best sales month so far! Income is slowly creeping up – yah! Also I’ve just finished my second novel which should be published at the end of this month. Fingers crossed readers like sexy men with wings What am I saying? – of course they do – duh.

P.S.S.S. I’m also doing a self-editing course this month – it’s going well so far. I’m hoping it helps me write even betterer.

Thanks for reading Do You Have a Call-To-Action Inside Your Book? from Tracey Writes.

I started this novel back in July, so it’s taken nearly six months to get from first word to live, but today it’s now available on Amazon (more retailers coming in the next few weeks).

Of course that begs the question – what now? Now that it’s available for sale, what are the next steps?

I’ve written my plan of what I am going to do to help increase visibility and (hopefully) sales, in case it might help any of you.

Step 1: Celebrate your achievement.

My ‘I Just Wrote a Novel’ yellow bowls.

Writing a novel is hard work. It’s certainly a labor of love, but at the end I don’t think enough writers celebrate their achievements.

So you have my full permission to shout out the window, throw an impromptu disco party with your kids, and go shopping for some beautiful yellow bowls that will sit in your open shelves and make you smile. Or at least that’s what I did, your celebrations might involve something else entirely – like blue bowls for instance.

Step 2: Blog about it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for fiction books, marketing is too hit and miss to be done effectively (works awesome for nonfiction, but not so much for fiction). But that doesn’t mean that you can’t inadvertently promote your new book. In fact the more eyeballs you can get to your book, the more chances you have.

I’m not, however, one for tweeting my link every hour or spamming my friends and family.

What *I* do is blog. Generally about seemingly unrelated random things that have nothing to do with my book. But things I think people would be interested in. And if they get curious about me, then all they have to do is click the ‘my books’ tab and see what I’ve written. Or sometimes (depending on the blogs traffic or subject matter), I’ll put a link in the blog’s sidebar with a picture of the book cover.

Apart from my pen name authors actual blog (I have one for each pen name) I rarely write much about that book at all.

For example: On this blog, I’ll write about writing, and my experiences in self publishing. On my personal blog, I’ll talk about my life. And so on. But somewhere, often subtly, I’ll put a link to my book. Like it was added there as an afterthought and not the main reason I want people to visit and enjoy my blogs. People are curious. You don’t have to shove the book in their face – if they are interested in you, they’ll find out more about what you do.

I have lots of blogs out there. Too many to keep up with, really. Plus lots of squidoo lenses, hubpages and articles. Loads of places to get eyeballs on my book.

(Having said all that – generally I do blog because I enjoy it and the topics I write about, not because I’m trying to sell books). I’m always a writer first.

Step 3: Get on with things

Whether that’s writing your next book, or catching up on the washing. Now it’s time to sit back and let luck find you. Because despite your very best efforts, if you’ve written a great book, got a professional looking cover, and written an enticing blurb, its luck that will propel you to sales beyond what you could ever imagine.

Luck that your story will resonate with readers, luck that people talk about you to their friends, and luck that you become a success. You definitely can increase your luck with the magic three (book, cover, blurb), but even the greatest marketing campaign isn’t going to make you a success like 50 Shades, Harry Potter, or Hunger Games.

So celebrate your achievements, do a small amount of marketing if you want (something you enjoy – I like blogging, I don’t like twitter much), and cross your fingers.

And get writing your next novel. If this one isn’t a bestseller, then perhaps the next one will be, or the next one. Keep writing and keep improving!

To your success,
Tracey

P.S. What, you’ve read this whole blog post and noticed I didn’t mention the name of my novel?  Well that’s awfully cheeky of me isn’t it.  Oh, go on then – satisfy your curiosity ;)

Thanks for reading Finished Your First Novel? What to Do Now. from Tracey Writes.

Type, type, tippity type.

As NaNoWriMo looks over at me, cigarette curled lazily on its lip and whispers “We made it baby, how was it for you?”  I can only stare up at the ceiling, counting the flecks of paint, and say “Meh, it was okay I guess.”

Yes, I completed, finished, came, saw and conquered my 50,000 words.  But the experience itself has left me with a rather bland and bored taste in my mouth.  The kind you get after eating Bran for breakfast every morning.  Sure it’s good for you, but it ain’t Crunchy Nut Cornflakes if you know what I mean.

Why?  Because I feel like I haven’t really completed anything substantial.  I don’t have that sense of satisfaction of holding a 50k word manuscript in my back pocket like I thought I would.  As I hold it up, it looks rather underfed and soggy.  It’s not all that pretty.  It looks like something I have to put through the wash because the cat’s peed all over it again.  (Don’t talk to me about cats right now).

Where are the fireworks?  The happy dance that I do when I complete a first draft?  The sense of warmth and tingly excitement that washes over me when I reach the end?

I haven’t got there yet.  I need more time.  More massaging, caressing, and some hardcore cut and paste.

This could take a while.

Tracey xx

P.S. Congratulations to everyone that made it to the end (and those with good intentions at the start).

–

Thanks for reading Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Virgin #3 – And I Am Spent from Tracey Writes.

Staring up at the way the light creates shapes on my wall instead of writing. Normal right?

It had to happen.  Like all good plans I tend to have, I rush in all eager and full of grandiose dreams of how I’m going to smash it.

I do the same with new diets.  Yeah, THIS TIME, I’m gonna commit and stick to the plan, man.

It lasts about two weeks.  And then I’m all, yeah whatever, I’ll just take one day off.  I DESERVE IT FOR ALL THE GOOD WORK I’M DOING.  It won’t mess anything up.  And before you know it I’m gorging myself on a whole box of chocolate eclairs (what? – don’t you judge me!).

So my NaNo willpower muscle has about the same juice as my dieting one.  Full steam ahead and then CRASH.

Before you ask, no I’m not giving up.  (I’m not giving up, I’m not giving up.)  I’m just a little behind the word count I would have liked by now.  I’m easily distracted.  I’m at the end of watching Breaking Bad Season Two (no spoilers please!!!) and must see what Walt does next, and strangely I have got a sudden enthusiasm with cleaning my house more.  That’s normal right?

Anything except sit down and pound the keyboard with more words.

It’s not like I don’t know what I’m writing, or even think the story’s bad, it’s just I’m in that middle writing slump, which normally doesn’t bother me, but this time I have a DEADLINE.  Yeah, me and pressure – not so good.

I’ll finish – I have to – for my peace of mind and sanity.  It just may mean a few late nights.  (I think I can, I think I can, just do it, rah rah and all that jazz.)

Or I won’t.  (No don’t say that, don’t give up now, Zan [probably his name] is dying from a bullet wound and needs your help, and what will Ruby do now that the Farmer has seen the creature?  And is her father going to get out of jail in time? And just where does her mother think she is anyway?)

So yeah, I have to finish.

Within two weeks.

And I’ll start back up as soon as I hang these clothes on the line, and read this article in this magazine, and show my daughter how to dance Gangham style and … oh crap.

Thanks for reading Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Virgin #2 – Where’s My Writing Mojo Gone? from Tracey Writes.

I will be drinking lots of this, this month.

NaNoWriMo

It seems rather weird that I’d be giving advice about how to tackle National Novel Writing Month seeing as I’ve only just started it and it’s my first time, but hey I’ve written one novel already – I’m like a professional novelist now right?

Yeah okay then – I see your point, but I still think it might be good to compare notes at any rate in the hope it might help someone else.

My plan of attack with Nano is not to think about the 50,000 words (which actually doesn’t scare me that much anyway), but to think of what scenes I need to write each day.

It makes it much more manageable (to me) to think about writing one or two small scene’s, rather than write a whole book.

To make it easy on myself, most of the chapters in the book will be between 2500 – 5000 words each, containing a few scenes of around 1,000 words (or thereabouts – some are shorter some are longer).

I seem to write much better when I have a strong outline and sense of how long I think each scene will run for.  It helps me stay focused and on track.

I’ve just completed Chapter One (which is probably the shortest chapter in the book) and includes three scenes for a total first draft word count of 2,618.  The main characters have been introduced, Ruby (the protag) has spied her love interest (who is now currently in chains – poor fella), and we get a good sense of the story.

All in all a good tension-driven start!

And can I just mention that I’m already totally in love with this novel.  I haven’t even written the good stuff yet (yes there will be s.e.x.) and I already love it.  This job rocks.

October Sales

I think that my last month sales were an anomaly since October’s sales were significantly lower than usual.

I attribute that to a few factors.

• Apple didn’t update on Smashwords during October (Apple represents a good 35-40% of my overall sales).
• I hardly did any blogging or promotion (catching up on real life stuff).
• I haven’t had a new release for some time now (that will change soon once the zombie novel is out of editing, and I kick my hubby’s butt into doing my cover).

There is also the fact that October represents a big publishing time for trad publishers (they release lots of new stuff just prior to Christmas) so there are a lot more new books in October and November to compete with.

But you know I’m still super pumped anyway.  How could I not be – this job (writing) is amazing fun, and I’ve only just started writing novels so it can only get better once they start being released into the wild.

Here’s hoping that your October sales were better than mine, and if you are doing Nano that your word count is coming along swimmingly.  As Dory would say (if fish could write) – just keep writing, just keep writing.

Tracey xx

P.S. Thinking of all my US readers who were affected by Sandy.  Hopefully you all stayed safe.

Thanks for reading Confessions of a NaNoWriMo Virgin (and October’s Sales) from Tracey Writes.

Yes, I’m about to write a love story set in 1943, no it won’t have a dog in it (I don’t think).

It’s true.  I’ve never done NaNoWriMo before and this year I’ve signed up and I’m super excited about it.  The reason I decided to do it was for one reason, and one reason only – it sounded like fun.

What could be more exhilarating than sitting down every day to write a story?

Now I have no illusions that whatever I write during next month will be any good (but perhaps I’ll surprise myself anyway), but who cares.  It will be FUN.

I think I’ve prepared adequately, I’ve done my outline (I even purchased a brand new pretty notepad to do so) and have written the basic plot points I want to cover and a rough guide to where everything goes in the story.  I know most of the characters names (except the male love interest whose name I can’t seem to figure out yet), and how they relate to each other.

It’ll be set in 1943 so I’ve done some research on music, food, clothing etc of that era.

I even purchased Chris Baty’s ‘No Plot No Problem’ (he’s the founder of NaNo) which I’ll be reading alongside the challenge each day.

So I’m as prepared as I can be.  Or at least I think I am.  I’m a  NaNo newbie remember?

And of course if it’s anything like the novel I’ve just finished (yes I really did finish my zombie novel – yah me – it’s currently with my editor) I know that nothing ever goes to plan and characters seem to have a mind of their own.  So really how prepared can you be?

There’s only a week to go and I can’t wait!

Who’s with me?

Thanks for reading I’m a NaNoWriMo Virgin from Tracey Writes.