Year: 2009

1. This is how I get it done – The one that got it all rolling. Still the most read.
2. NaNoWriMo: Go/ – The starter gun fires.
3. The Thing You Did Wrong Yesterday
4. So, how’s it Going?
5. Biting and Sucking are Fun
6. Babble-On
7. The First Time You Get Behind
8. Dirty Trick #1: Killing Adverbs – Inspired by Chuck.
9. In Which You Pass the Dreaded Day Seven
10. A Really Mean Trick
11. “You Ready to Listen?” – Inspired by Granddad.
12. Keep Calm and Carry On
13. It is not, in fact, better to Burn Out
14. Ignoring your Inner Hermit
15. Trusting Your Demon
16. Rules of Three (Dirty Trick #2)
17. It’s all about Falling Down – Inspired by Dad.
18. Looking Ahead, Looking Behind – Inspired by Mom.
19. Bang! (With Ninjas) – Inspired by Gaming.
20. Dirty Trick #3: There’s always a Conflict – Inspired by De.
21. Okay: How far behind are you?
22. NaNoWriMo: Giving Back
23. Contents Under Pressure: Possibly Habit Forming
24. I feel like you Need a Pep Talk – Inspired by Floy-Jean.
25. Using Time
26. Charrrrrrge!
27. In which you are a Turkey-day Ninja
28. Cracking the WIP
29. “Finish for Me” – Inspired by Bonnie.
30. In which I am the Mean Parent
31. NaNoWriMo: Fleeing the Sinking Ship
32. NaNoWriMo: My personal retrospective and thanks

I’m planning on doing something with these nanowrimo pieces next year; I’m just not sure what, exactly. They’ll get reposted, yes. Might also make a free ebook out of them, just for the hell of it and for practice with making ebooks in various formats.

But for now, here they are.

The NaNoWriMo boat is sinking. Some folks saw the writing on the wall early on and got off the ship when they could. That’s fine: they’re safe, but they didn’t get to see some of the cool things we did.

And we’ve seen some mighty fine things, haven’t we?

Speaking just for myself, I saw ships exploding and squirrels talking; I saw my wife laugh aloud at lines from the science fiction part of my story, the fairytale part, and my essays. I got to read one of the “Forest of Anything” fairytales to my family’s kids for bedtime on Saturday night. The kids liked it, and the adults listened in and seemed to like it too.

I got a text from my mom the next day:

“Your dad said to me today: ‘Doyce really can write. Isn’t that something?'”

That felt pretty good to read. Good feelings.

And that’s all nice, but… not to repeat myself, the boat is sinking. It’s time to get off.

Here’s what you need to do.

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Note: this is not a series of tips on what to do with your story now that it’s done. Chuck Wendig has already written that post for you today. It is exactly what I would tell you, with the added bonus that it is (I suspect) better said than I’d have said it. If you want to see those tips, go read his post.

No, this is just a post about what you do to wrap up NaNoWriMo. I’m basically writing advice for myself most of the time anyway, and as I’m not done with my story, I can’t really write about what to do with it when it’s done.

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1. Pack up your most precious belongings.
Make copies of your story. Multiple copies. Put them in several locations. I’ve recommended Dropbox in the past, but you can simply email a copy to yourself, or upload it to google docs, or just put it on two different computers. Me? I’m doing several of those things.

2. Make sure you get your seat on the lifeboat.
Go to nanrowrimo.org and verify your word count. There are instructions on the site, but the basic idea is you copy all the text from your story, paste it into a box on your profile page, save the profile, and it verifies that you’re awesome.

3. Help others.
Not everyone is done yet. For some folks, it is going to be down to the wire, and I’ve been there, so let me reassure you: encouragement help. If you’re on Twitter, watch the #nanowrimo thread and throw a quite “you can do it” at people who think they can’t make it. Pull those stragglers out of the water and into the lifeboat. Dive down into the water if you have to. We are nothing if we can’t both survive and help others survive as well.

4. Don’t look back.
I do not recommend that you go back and read the story right now. Wait until January first at the earliest.

5. Once on the shore, celebrate.

Are you kidding me? You just wrote fifty THOUSAND WORDS (or more). Buy yourself something pretty. Dance on the roof. Take an entire day to get caught up on all the DVR’d shows you missed. Have End-of-NaNoWriMo sex. SOMETHING. You’re done writing the story, so it’s ENTIRELY OKAY to break your arm patting yourself on the back.

6. Thank the crew that got you there.
Go back to nanrowrimo.org. Donate. Give back. They do some good things, these people, some of them for you, so say thanks. If you don’t have the funds for it, check out their helpful page on ‘how to donate if you don’t have money’.

Also, go around to those people in your life or out on the internets who helped you get through this thing. Your spouse. Your kids. Your family. Your friends.

7. If necessary, book another cruise.
I’m not done with my story. Roughly speaking, I’m halfway in. So I’ll keep writing in December and January (at a slightly lower daily wordcount), and I’ll keep recording and posting podcasts until I’m done.

And then I’ll see where I am.

If you’re not done with your story, keep writing. Make it as consistent and regular as you can — every day if at all possible, even if it’s only a page. It’s a page more than you had.

And read. Lordy lordy, I can’t tell you how happy I’ll be to have more time to read again.

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That’s it. The ship is sunk. We’re rowing away, headed for shore, but the story isn’t over. The journey isn’t over. (It never is, til we’re dead, and maybe not even then.)

There is always more work to do. There is always more fun to have. There is always another adventure.

This is the Forest of Anything.

Get back to work.

Have fun.

I almost never tell my daughter she’s smart. (I do, sometimes, when I forget not to and it just pops out in response to something unexpected she came up with.)¹

That’s not because she isn’t – by all accounts and early testing, she’s a bona fide smarty pants and will no doubt excel at her chosen profession (a profession that probably doesn’t even exist today, and which she’ll have to patiently re-explain to me and my doddering old friends every time she drops in for a visit) – it’s because ‘smart’ isn’t the thing I want to reinforce/reward during her formative years.

So what do I reward with praise?

Hard work. Attention. Focus. Bottom line, that’s where success comes from. Smart is nice, but I know a lot of smart people who can’t hold down a job or pay their bills or even take care of their kids; a lot of pretty people too.

There were better writers than Zelazny back in the day; he was successful due to a solid work ethic. (And talent, sure, but talent honed with practice.) There are more talented writers than Stephen King, but some work of his is more likely to survive to 2200 simply because there’s more of it (ignoring the fact that I think he’s an as-yet unrecognized laureate of American literature). Again, the guy works.

This lesson was a hard one for me to learn, because I had a lot of smarts and talent in high school and college – never really had to work at anything. Then I got out into the real world and people actually wanted me to… you know… hit deadlines. Show up to work on time. Stay until quitting time. I couldn’t hold down any part-time job in college simply because I didn’t know how to work, and learning that took me almost ten years.

I’m better now, and when I praise Kaylee I praise her for the thing I think is most valuable:

“You worked really hard on that, and you did a good job. You should be proud of yourself.”

That’s what NaNoWriMo is really about. Finding the time. Sitting down. Finishing something big. Slogging when it’s not fun, and not losing control when it is. In short, doing the work.

So, let me be the first to say it:

You’ve worked really hard.

You did a good job.

You should be proud of yourself.

(Now get back to work. Have fun.)

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¹ – I try not to tell her she’s pretty all the time, also, but at that I utterly fail, due to this.