10 Dirty Ways to Reach 50,000 Words in NaNoWriMo

When taking on the task of creating a 50,000 word manuscript for National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) one should be prepared to pad their stories just a little bit.  There are plenty of ways to add extra words, some of them quite dirty. 

I was perusing the forums at NaNoWriMo.org and found a couple discussions on dirty, cheap ways to reach 50,000 words.  The rules for National Novel Writer’s Month do state that you can’t type the same word 50,000 times, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make use of the cut and paste feature in other ways.  I haven’t decided if I’ll be making use of some of these tricks or not, guess it depends on how desperate I get.  Of course some of the ‘tricks’ sound a lot like regular exposition too.

Ten Cheap, Dirty Ways to Reach 50,000 Words

1. Type one word such as ‘potato’ between every other word in your novel.  (courtesy of satachan)

2.  Remove all contractions, like ‘don’t’ becomes ’do not’.  (courtesy of J. Kreth)

3. Copy and paste extensive sections from early on in the book into the later sections of the book and call them flashbacks. (courtesy of Fallen Grace)

4. Paste in lots of song lyrics. (courtesy of Romancegirl for her idea to keep replaying love songs each time her characters meet) 

5. Have your characters write up every article, blog post and report that you also end up writing during the month of November.  (Courtesy of Erin Kelly)     

6. Describe each new character introduced in the story in detail, then copy and paste in every time that character shows up again.  (Courtesy in part to MelBell for her lovely descriptive in the 50,000 words forum.)

7. Break up the scenes/sections in your story with stars (**) or some other symbol such as the wingdings type font, as your computer will recognize them as words. (courtesy of ShadowedWhispers)

8. Create very long chapter titles including chapter synopsis’ for each chapter of your book. (courtesy of SnowLhite)

9. Add a long famous quote to the beginning of your book and each chapter and the end and anywhere else you can think up.  (courtesy of me)

10. Use lots of hyphens between words but put a space before the hyphen and after the hyphen so your hyphenated word will register as three words by the computer. (courtesy of GeorgeEliot)  

There you have it, 10 down and dirty ways to reach 50,000 words in your manuscript for NaNoWriMo.  It’s entirely up to you whether or not you wish to take advantage of these little tricks…

I’m Taking Part in NaNoWriMo!

I’ve decided to take the plunge this year and enter National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo) although it’s probably not in my best interests. : ) Yes, its the wild and crazy challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days, which is something like 1667 words a day. That’s not too bad, but of course it’ll be on top of my freelancing work. Hmm…I just might have to pick up some temporary work that month.

The site recommends that I tell everyone I know about my entry so that I don’t give up and risk looking like a complete fool in front of my friends and family halfway through the month, so this is what I’m doing. During November, if I’m not dead tired and suffering from wrist strain, I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Otherwise you can just go to my NaNoWriMo profile and check out my daily word count and get some excerpts from the book I’ll be working on.

I have an idea about a story to write, but don’t really know if it will be enough for an actual book. : ( We’ll see…If anyone wants to join in NaNoWriMo and be one of my writing buddies feel free! We can cheer each other to the 50,000 word mark, or maybe 30,000 words, 20,000?…Hmmm.

The Organizational Quest: Pt 2 Willing to Change

I’d just like to thank everyone for helping my little blog reach over a thousand page views.

There has been a recent increase in activity on here. A small flurry of comments have started up on 101 Reasons to Continue Freelancing on the topic of getting a second job while working as a freelancer. I’d love to hear more from other visitors if you’d like to drop by.

I’ve also completed my seven day time log trial and calculated the results, to make the big change in my working life.

As you’ll see in the nifty charts below I worked anywhere from about 2 to 5 hours a day of real work and ended up with about a 26 hour workweek. The equivalent of a part time job, which makes sense since I’d only been earning the equivalent of a part time job in pay…

I also worked on 3 to 7 different projects a day. It seems like a lot but I’ve got a lot of little long term projects going on now so they don’t take up that much time. The problem seems to come in when I don’t get to those little project as soon as I wake up in the morning. I kept putting them off, so I never made it to the larger money making projects and ended up not getting to those little projects until close to midnight. On my little chart by the way days 6 and 7 would be my bad days by the way. Although none of the days were particularly inspiring.

Anywho, I also noticed when looking at my time log, which I don’t have shown here because it’s very big and embarassing, I wasn’t efficient with those projects I did get to. Meaning I could have gotten more work done on each project I got to and I could have finished my smaller daily projects much faster most of the time.

For instance, there is a blog that I post to daily for some clients. On some days I found it only took me about 15 minutes to get the research and the blog post done, on other days it took me up to an hour because I was caught up in surfing the web or watching television. So in my new schedule I compromised and gave myself half an hour each day to get it done.

Making up a daily schedule can seem really high school-ish, but it helps set the mind and body to a specific routine. Thus if I stick to it, I’ll be more efficient and get done sooner each day.

To figure out how long each work day will be for me I calculated the average amount of time I spent on each of the projects I touched on during the 7 day time log period.

My ideal average day came to about 6 and a half hours. However, I can’t expect to work solidly 6 hours without a break. Even a 9-to-5 job usually gives about 2 hours in breaks over the course of the day. So I interspered my new schedule with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack breaks. Since I work at home the ‘working’ day can run longer with longer breaks between projects. My lunch break is 2 hours long, hee, hee, hee. : )

This also gives me some free time during the middle part of the day, which was a time period during which I noticed I ended up having to run a lot of family errands.

I started the new schedule on September 28th so its been about a week and I plan on trying this for 30 days to see how it goes. If you want to learn more about the 30 Day Plan check out StevePavlina.com. Already there is an increase in efficiency and productivity, even though I’m still adjusting to it. To be honest, I’m still not waking up at exactly 8:15 am each day, but I’ll get there.

Blogging Against Animal Abuse

Around the world today, many bloggers are Blogging Against Abuse! To help raise awareness of the many abusive situations that still exists.  We can all take steps to stop abuse, particularly animal abuse. 

It’s important to be aware of animal abuse because there are many links between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans.  Negative behaviors such as torturing and killing innocent animals can easily lead to abusing and killing people.  Don’t let animal abuse progress into something more. Simply reporting an animal abuser, even if it’s a child or a relative could save lives, those of the animals and people.   Kip Kinkel, 15, was a young man who regularly bragged of abusing animals and he later went on to opening fire on his classmates in an Oregon High School. 

Animal abusers also often end up being spousal and child abusers too.  As many as 71 percent of women polled in one refuge home stated that their partners had threatened or harmed the family pet at some point. 

Signs of animal abuse are lack of food and water, pets being kept outdoors all the time, severe matting or filth in their coats, skinny, ingrown collars, fear of people, and being aggressive with people.  If you see potential abuse you can call your local humane shelter, animal control or the police.  Be aware that if you alert the police there is a chance that you may not remain entirely anonymous.  If you have pets of your own you should take care to keep them indoors or watch them at all times if you have them outside.

The Organizational Quest: Timelogs and Superman

I must say that I’m really loving the new blog layout I picked.  Purple is really my favorite color and the design just goes great with my little word of the day and qoute of the day doo-hickeys. 

As stated in the last post I’ve been falling behind, ergh, and am now on an organizing quest.  It’s amazing just how many organizational sites and blogs are out there!  Many thanks goes to one site in particular at StevePavlina.com.  This fellow blogger offers lots and lots of personal growth and business development help, free.  Although, I have decided that Steve cannot possibly be a real person, because he’s like freakin’ Superman.  

He’s got hundreds of thousands of followers, I mean readers, knows Martial Arts, runs marathons and his head literally pulses with intelligence and inspiration.  Oh, and did I mention he’s got a super classy and clairvoyant wife?  Throw in a couple kids and their The Incredibles.

Anywho, he wrote about keeping track of his daily activities to improve efficiency and using the 30 day trial as a self-improvement tool.  I decided to make use of both ideas for getting myself back on track here and added a few other self improvement tricks.

The Mission:

I want to understand where all of my time is going during the day.  It just seems like there isn’t time to get all of the work done, yet I know I’m using up a lot of free time.  Part of my goal will be to find out where that time is going and make adjustments if possible to improve my time management and productivity. 

In addition, I need to establish a regular work schedule so I’ll always be certain of having work to rely on.  Right now, I have a few long-term clients.  It’s just that I’m not getting all of the work done for them on time. 

Regular Schedule=Regular Work=Regular Paychecks=Bills Paid on Time!

The Current Plan:

1. To get an idea of where all this time is going I’ve started keeping a daily timelog.  This is my third day of a full seven days that I plan on logging.  I’m keeping track of everything in 15 minute blocks of time from waking up to about 10 or so at night.  

Each night I log the day’s activities into an Excel Spreadsheet for later reference.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use Excel to figure out where the majority of my time is going, and also to understand what my current daily patterns are so making a more productive adjustment won’t be really difficult.

2. In addition I’ve implemented the 30 day test method for a couple of items.  I will be getting up at 8:30 am everyday for the next thirty days.  Today was my first real day, I’ve had false starts for the past two days.  I know what your thinking…and yes I admit being really lazy as far as wake up time goes.  But bed is like Nirvana to a Taurean like me and it’s part of why I wanted to go freelance.  8:30 am is the earliest I can really, gulp, think of myself getting up right now.  I’ll tackle an earlier wake up later. 

3. The other 30 day implementation is to simply spend one hour a day working on a long-term project involving product descriptions.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I find that a big part of my problem is not working every single day.  I usually end up working on projects in large chunks of time in the few days leading up to the due date.  A little time every day will save me a lot in procrastination dues.

4. Create a To-Do List for the next day.  This is going to be a permanent installment, but I haven’t quite decided what format to keep it in.  I’ve been keeping To-Do Lists on and off for years, especially in school when the projects and simple tasks really started piling up.  Bed memories tend to run in the family and even forgetting one little task can waste a lot of time, even an entire day.  So, I’m making it a requirement to create my next day To-Do List each night while the day’s work is still fresh in my head.

The Other Stuff:

That’s it so far on my organizational quest, but I do plan on researching more.  Of course I’ll be posting my timelog analysis and the time management solutions later and will keep you updated on how well this takes. 

There are lots of other ideas and goals floating around in my head that need solidifying and time created in my schedule for them.  I’d especially like to carve out time in my schedule for working on fiction again and get back to submitting.  I’m really starting to go into withdrawal over the lack of creative prose… 

New Themes and a Money Tree

As you can see I’ve been playing around with the themes again.  Just can’t seem to settle on just one!  I’m getting really behind in my work and can’t seem to catch up. With that in mind I plan on improving my task scheduling and organizational techniques.  Maybe if I get myself enough lists together, I’ll be able to get my work together…

101 Reasons to Continue Freelancing…

Many thanks to Rich McIver for sending an email about the most recent blog posting over at HR World called 101 Reasons Freelancers Do It Better and giving me a reason to update the old blog.  I read the list and it’s fun and actually quite inspiring.  I now have 101 reasons why I’m right to try and freelance while the masses continue to go into work. 

Having such reinforcement is surprisingly helpful, especially when the rent isn’t paid, a client just told you to stuff it and you’re still expecting payment from a project you finished in May!!!  Just about every day I have a serious bout of ‘why don’t I just go get a freaking job’ syndrome and even catch myself looking through the classifieds.  Luckily, I credit the overwhelming support of my family and one very strong stubborn streak to keep me plugging away. 

I recently joined a nice little writing community called Inked-In.  It’s nice and cozy with only about a 100 people or so and many are serial published authors.  ‘Course, everyone should go join and try to double or even triple the number of members!

How-to: Basic look at Business of Critiquing Manuscripts

Old Post…February 23rd, 2007
Manuscript critiquing is a big business, and as a newbie writer I’ve been exploring this area as one of the many possible ways I can make use of my creative writing degree. I must say it looks promising.

Elsa Neal, professional writer and manuscript critiquer extraordinaire has been kind enough to explain the business end of her manuscript critiquing service at her website www.hearwritenow.com. She states that, “The critique service has made up 80% of my income over the past 6 months.” So manuscript critiquing can be a make up a substantial part of your income as a freelance writer.

Critiquing is slightly different from professional editing. Editing looks for errors in grammar, punctuation, layout, and structure. The editor will look over your manuscript or document and look for ways to improve its usability and readability. Manuscript critiquing also looks at the manuscript’s appeal to the readers, and literary techniques like symbolism, foreshadowing, and even how believable your characters are. If this is a genre story the critiquer can also look at how well the story fits with the standard ideals of the rest of the genre, for example the romance genre’s use of the alpha male character.

Qualifications:

There are no specific requirements to critique manuscripts but it helps if you’ve had some experience looking at friend’s writing or even having worked as an editor at a publisher. Elsa started out with a degree in creative writing and by helping fellow students and writers with revising their work. In 2005 she decided to set up a critiquing service page on her site:

“I decided to offer my critiquing services on my website – really as an experiment to see if there was any interest. Within a month I had my first client, and the service has grown from there.” ~Elsa Neal

To prepare for your first client you can join any number of critiquing forums and exchange manuscripts with other writers for free or just offer to look at some people’s manuscripts and make comments. This is also a good way to build up samples of critiques to show potential clients. I’ve found that clients love seeing examples of previous work in writing, editing, and hey, even critiquing. Just make sure you ask the author of the manuscript you plan on using as an example of your skill for permission to show it.

The 6’ Ferret Writers’ Group is a site where writers can set up groups to critique each other’s work and Awesome Writers is an email discussion group populated by writers looking to talk about their work or get manuscripts critiqued. Just go online and offer to review some manuscripts for free and you’ll be deluged by writers.

Delivery Format:

There are a variety of ways to deliver revised/reviewed manuscripts to your clients. You can print out a hard copy make comments by hand and return it in the mail. Clients can send you floppy disks and you can make comments on the file and return that in the mail.

However, with the internet it is easier than ever to just attach the file to an email and send it out. Plus you don’t have to pay postage. MS Word has a track changes feature you can use to keep track of suggestions you make on manuscripts and submit that to clients. The changes will show up in red and the clients can view what the manuscript looks like with the changes and without.

Elsa uses track changes and converts that into a .pdf file that clients can print out to have on hand. She also sends a separate file of comments on the overall story. Romance writer Leigh Michaels also offers manuscript critiquing from her website. She requests the manuscript hard copy be delivered in the mail. Her critique package includes margin comments on the manuscript, an analysis of the storyline, suggestions for changes, and an overall critique of the package that’s submitted.

Advertising:

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of advertising required for your manuscript site. It helps to have a site with lots of pages on it.

‘By the time I added the Manuscript Critiquing Service in August 2006 my website had grown to nearly 300 pages, with the most popular pages reaching a Google Page Ranking of 4 and 5, so it has a pretty solid platform to sell from.’ ~Elsa Neal

But you can start with a single web page to advertise your services and go from there. It does help to have something of a web presence. You can write articles on editing and critiquing manuscripts and post them to article directories with a link to your site. You can write the content on your site so its search engine optimized. You can also pay for Google Adwords listings.

Elsa had this to say on her advertising:

‘I tried buying advertising space once for Word 4 Writers, but since I had no sales through that avenue I’ve never bothered again. I find the best source of traffic is my signature in posts I make to forums around the Internet.

This month I’m in the process of creating a Squidoo lens to promote my critique service (http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/daoine). Squidoo is an excellent traffic generating social phenomenon.’ ~Elsa Neal

The Money Side of It:

I’ve found in my researching foray that prices vary a lot for manuscript critiquing services. Here’s a few examples from sites I’ve found:

• HearWriteNow-costs from $15.00 for first impression critique for up to 1000 words to $100 for detailed critique from 7000 to 10,000 words

• Leigh Michaels-from $95.00 for a first chapter critique to a minimum of $495 for a full manuscript of over 250 pages

• Writer’s League of Texas–offers its members critiques with professional authors at $60 for up to 20 pages.

• Scribendi–offers critiquing services for only about $3 per 100 words.

So you can see the range is wide, allowing critiquers the ability to set their own prices within reason and the better your services the more you can charge.

Most online businesses accept payment through Paypal and the same goes for manuscript critiquing websites. Typically you’ll find that sites accept check, money order, debit, credit and Paypal. For those just starting out; money order and Paypal are the easiest to set up and accept.

Last Note:

Elsa Neal and a few other manuscript critiquer’s have money-back guarantees on their sites.

‘I’ve always felt more comfortable dealing with people who are confident enough about their product or service that they are prepared to offer a money-back guarantee. People are, rightfully, wary about making purchases on the Internet, so I wanted to make potential clients feel more comfortable about giving my courses and critique service a go without taking an undue risk with their money. So far, no one has asked for their money back for either the critique service or any of my Word 4 Writers packages.’ ~Elsa Neal

I too, find that stating ahead of time, that you will return the money or in my case as a writer not ask for payment if the client is unsatisfied with the content they get back, helps to reassure the client of the quality of service they receive.

The Woes of Starting a Website…

Last night I was doing some research on manuscript critiquing sites because I’m seriously working to put together one of my own. I’m starting to realize there’s going to be a lot more involved than just picking out a free webserver and slapping up the web page. I need to come up with my own business plan, a mission statement, decide how to deal with payments, unhappy customers and also come up with answers to really tough questions. You know its almost like preparing for an interview with a big publishing company.

Why should we go with you over someone who is more experienced?

What qualifications do you have for the job?

What can you bring to my work that will make it stand out?

On the other hand I’m really excited because I’m taking things into my own hands in a way. If after a lot of hard work and lots of time advertising through word of mouth the site is successful, I won’t have to worry as much about dealing with service provider fees and trying to decide if I should take this or that low paying job. In preparation for my own website, I had completed an interview with Elsa Neal of HearWriteNow.com and created a post on it at the old blog. I’ll go ahead and repost it on here. It should be the post after this one.

P.S. Found a really great site for freelancers in a wide range of businesses. It’s called MediaBistro.com    

Potential Opportunity for Publication

Many thanks to Laurie for notifying me about her need for several short stories on the topic of gambling via the comment board. Readers, if you’ve got a piece of literary fiction lying around that has something, anything to do with the idea of gambling you just might want to dust it off and send to to Laurie. Here’s what she wrote in:

A professional writer and anthologist, I’ve edited or co-edited seven anthologies, including collections of fiction, and have published twelve short stories and over fifty scholarly essays in literary journals and anthologies.

I’m currently editing a collection of short stories on the topic of gambling. The story can deal with any aspect of gambling as long as it is a primary subject. Accepting stories between 5 and 30 pages, must be fully developed with plot, character, development, etc.

I’m not looking simply for “bad beat” stories or other personal narratives / testimonies with no theme or development.

I don’t have a publisher yet, but I will seek either an academic or commercial publisher when I have samples to submit.

Compensation will be negotiated after publisher is determined.

You can see my list of publications and other credentials on my university homepage:

www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~champion

Send queries and stories to:

************@******Paste stories into the body of the email–attachments will not be opened unless advance arrangements made. Please write GAMBLING STORY in the subject line, as I have a tight spam filter and will check filtered mail daily.

Thanks,

Laurie *******

If you want to contact her please leave a message with your email in my comments or send a request to my own email and I’ll send you the address you can submit to.  Otherwise you’ll just have to look through my comments boards to find her original comment.

I’ve looked her credits up and boy does she have a lot of stories and anthologies out. This could be a great way for you to get some work in print. Just remember, polish that work to death before you submit!