writing Archives | An Aspiring Heroine

Last-minute NaNoWriMo Prep for Others Who Weren’t Planning to Do NaNo

October 31, 2016

As of this time last week, I was not going to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for you writing newbies).

Last year I got halfway through the 50,000 word goal, realized I was not, in fact, a pantser, and didn’t “win,” AKA write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. Needless to say, my one NaNo experience was not a pleasant one, and I had no intentions of repeating it.

Let me just point out that 50,000 words in 30 days means you’re writing at least 1,667 words per day, but really more because you need to build up a buffer for when Thanksgiving and sickness and your husband’s birthday inevitably suck away hours of writing time.

So I wasn’t going to do it, and I was feeling 100% (okay, 99.7%) okay with that. I’d already written 50,000 words of my novel at my pace, and things were progressing just as I wanted them to thank-you-very-much.

Then Molly, one of my coworkers, and I were walking back from lunch last Tuesday, and she asked if I was planning to NaNo this year. Unlike me, Molly has had a great experience with the whole thing; in fact, she’s “won” NaNo twice and is all psyched up to do it again this year. And if there’s one thing you should know about Molly, it’s that her enthusiasm is contagious. It took all of five minutes for me to decide, you know what, I want to be able to finish out the month of November knowing that I wrote 50,000 words no matter the blood, sweat, and tears involved.

Winning NaNo would also effectively finish out the first draft of the novel that I’ve been working on since August, so it’s a win-win situation for me.

Last-Minute NaNoWriMo Prep for Others Who Weren't Planning to Do NaNo

Of course, being a complete non-pantser had me immediately scrambling to prepare for the month. It’s a serious ordeal, and while I have a decent outline for the back half of my novel, I wanted to go back through some of my favorite writing blogs and glean as much wisdom as I can before 12:00 a.m.

Here are a few of the resources that helped get me through this crunch time prep:

10 Reasons Why You Should Participate in NaNoWriMo

I love pretty much all of Kristen Kieffer’s posts over at She’s Novel, but this is a great one for NaNo newbies or someone looking for that last little shove toward participating. (Oh, and I definitely bought The PreWrite Project months ago and would highly recommend it!)

How to Command the Muse to Come on Your Time

One great thing about NaNo is that it beats the misconception right out of you that you can only write when the feeling hits you, the time is right, the wind blows musically through the trees and ignites your inner muse… You get the idea. This is false, and Rachel Giesel has three steps for helping you get through that awkward transition period if this is what you’ve always thought about writing.

Day-by-Day NaNoWriMo Outline(s)

While I’m not one for following any kind of template outline to a T, I did go back through the 2015 NaNo outline at Better Novel Project to see if there were any elements that I wanted to incorporate from the books that Christine uses for her posts. I then stumbled upon her 2016 NaNo outline, which is all about characters and themes from Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games.

How to Storyboard Your Novel on Pinterest

When you’re in the trenches of writing a novel, your creative energy can take some serious hits. That’s why I love this idea by Jenny Bravo (and have actually used it for my own novel)!

If you’re planning to do NaNoWriMo this year, hit me up. I’m under the oh-so-interesting username tylerhhyde.

Happy NaNo-ing, friends!

AAH signature NEW

Guess who’s back, back again.

September 12, 2016

This post contains affiliate links.

You guys, I remembered my WordPress password this time! (Sorry, I figured if I segued from the last post you would forgive the nearly five months that’ve passed since I wrote it.)

Last year, when I attempted to win NaNoWriMo, I learned many things, but I’ll break them into two main points:

I wasn’t ready to write my novel yet. (I didn’t know my main character well enough, I’m not a Pantser and didn’t have a good enough outline, handwriting my first draft just isn’t for me, etc.)
Staying on top of a regular writing schedule made me want to write even more, whether poetry, blog posts, or letters to friends.

Now that I’m about a month into writing The Novel Project™, I’m experiencing the same sensation: wanting to write anything and everything, even after I’ve reached my daily word count. Thus, I’m getting back in the blogging saddle, but in a less intense way than I always tried to when I was posting regularly.

So what can you expect from this little space in the coming months? I don’t have a clue.

But I can promise that it’ll involve a gratuitous amount of snark, too many adverbs to be considered “good” writing, and a few of my favorite things. Let’s start with some of those, yeah?

Writing

I’ve made it to the other side of the “everything is write is awful” stage of the first draft. I’m not saying I’m turning all beautiful phrases, all the time, but I do think I’ve found “my voice” again, and that’s a relief. Besides the year I allowed my story idea to simmer and the sort of, kind of outline that I spent some months piecing together, I’d say Pacemaker has been the hands-down key to my success (read: the thing keeping me motivated to hit my word count every day). I would seriously recommend it to anyone doing any kind of writing. It’s awesome.

You can set up your writing based on time frame, total words, and your “strategy” (same word count each day, more words per day at the beginning, random). Here’s an example of one of the graphs that it spit for my project:

There’s a good chance I’ll write a post all about it once I’m done with this first draft, so stayed tune.

Reading

I still haven’t touched the copy of On Writing by Stephen King that’s been on my bedside table for a while (thanks again, Dad!), but I’m pretty sure he says something about good writers being people who write and read. That idea is kind of a requirement for all writing craft books. I haven’t done nearly as much reading as I hoped when I wrote this optimistic post, but I have gotten to read some really great children’s books as part of my job with the Bee.

The latest? Cinder by Marissa Meyer. And I’M OBSESSED. So I read Scarlet on Wednesday during my conference breaks, and Cress on Thursday after the conference ended, and finally Winter when I got home. How had I never read these before? Why isn’t there a bigger fan following around them? When will someone (take a lot of time and resources to) make (well done, cinematically beautiful) film adaptations? Ugh, just go read them now so we can geek out about them together.

Acoustic Mashups

I’ll just go ahead and be honest: I’ve been a big fan of some of these singers for a long, long time. The ability to not only sing, but also play an instrument and create seamless mashups using unrelated, popular songs astounds me, and I wish I had a friend to do all the dirty work and then let me sing along on their videos. (I’d be happy to submit a resume, if needed. Not to brag but I once sang in the Vatican, so…)

For your listening pleasure:

I Took a Pill in Ibiza/Youth – Landon Austin

Beautiful Now/Talking Body – Megan Davies

I Was Made for Loving You/Please Don’t Say You Love Me – Gardiner Sisters

White Walls/Can’t Hold Us/Same Love/Thrift Shop – Megan & Jaclyn Davies

Traveling

I’ve been so #travelblessed (don’t worry that’s totally a thing) in 2016. So far this year, I’ve been to Seattle, Austin, Los Angeles, Denver, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. (not once, not twice, but three times) for the Bee!

We also took a must-use-flight-benefits-before-I-lose-them trip to London and Edinburgh last month, and I’m sure I’ll update you all with a dedicated post soon. I’ll try to make it as good as Sarah’s travel posts because they are pure gold.

Lava Lamps

That’s right, I said lava lamps. September 2 was my two-year workiversary with the Bee, and as such I received a completely normal, not at all odd strange, desk-sized lava lamp. I can only imagine what the traditional gift is for three years!

(Actually, the whole thing came about because of my near daily use of the phrase “I can dig it!” Sorry for being so in touch with my 1960s ancestors.)

Have a great Monday, peeps, and I’ll see you in less than five months. 😉

Seven On… Common grammar mistakes

October 13, 2014

Alright, I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a grammar girl… and by a bit, I mean that I’m actually super into semicolons, apostrophes, and subject-verb agreement. I’ve always been pretty good at telling what’s grammatically correct from that’s grammatically atrocious, and so therefore I embraced being a grammar nerd.

For that reason, I was incredibly excited to learn that my job was sending me to my first professional seminar. The grammar nerd in me leapt at the chance to spend seven hours in an editing boot camp with the American Copy Editors Society! Plus, I’d never been to Pittsburgh, and the travel meant I got to spend my birthday working from home… in my pajamas!

On Sunday afternoon, two of my coworkers and I left the Queen City for Pittsburgh, and the drive actually wasn’t so bad. 4.5 hours with some stunning fall views of the mountains of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.

When we arrived at the Omni William Penn Hotel, I was psyched to find that my company credit card equaled company status, which meant a complimentary upgrade to a much-larger-than-one-person-could-ever-need room complete with fuzzy robes and a bedside table with motion-activated floor lighting. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant (best Salmon BLT I’ve ever had in my life!), and then my exhausted self got some sleep!

The “Editing Boot Camp” workshop kicked off perfectly. I was immediately intrigued when the workshop began with this little music video.

Seriously, if you haven’t heard Weird Al’s “Word Crimes,” a parody of the awfully sexist and infuriating “Blurred Lines,” watch it. Really. I put it right there for you. All you have to do is click.

The following seven hours (with lunch break!) were a great refresher on the importance of grammar, the mistakes we all make from time to time, and why a consistent, brand-specific style is so important. I actually thought the workshop would be great for fellow bloggers who are looking for a crash course in grammar and branding! Here are a few of the reminders that I gained from working with ACES:

1. Subject-verb/subject-pronoun agreement

This rule can be so easy to get wrong, especially when using a singular but collective noun like “class” or “company.”

For example, instead of
The team can win their game today.
you should say:
The team can win its game today.
Both the subject and its pronoun are singular

2. Passive voice

Sure, it isn’t quite so terrible as your high school teachers made it out to be, but you should always try to use active verbs. They’re more exciting, more descriptive, and more likely to keep your readers engrossed in your posts!

3. Misplaced modifiers

When you begin a sentence with a dependent clause, typically with an -ing verb, please please please be sure it modifies the subject of the sentence.

“Eating his breakfast, the boy’s mother asked him to hurry.”
doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t.

4. Quotation marks

Something that I didn’t realize was a thing until this workshop was the use of quotation marks for emphasis.

If I told you I had
A “great” new post
on the blog, you would probably wonder why I was referring to my own post in such a sarcastic manner! Italics are definitely more appropriate.

5. Apostrophes

Not every word with an “s” on the end needs an apostrophe. In fact, very few do.

If it’s a personal possessive,
Tyler’s book, then go for it.

If it’s a plural noun,
Tyler has many book’s, then maybe think twice.

6. The ever popular Oxford comma

Technically, there is no rule saying you have to use the Oxford comma. Do I prefer it? Of course, I do. Does that mean you should use it? Not at all. (Well, maybe a bit!)

Unless, you need it for clarification.
The pastor blessed their meal, the children attending Sunday school and the regular parishioners.

Since the pastor probably doesn’t plan to eat the children or the parishioners, you’d need a comma after “and.”

7. Having a style guide can help you maintain consistency in your written communications.

I feel like this is less about grammar and more to do with “communicating in this crazy twenty-first century world.” I’m currently working on my own style guide that will help me have the same style for different types of blog posts, my Thrive communications to other bloggers and readers, the formatting that I use for my Pins, etc. Google “blog style guide,” and you’ll find tons of resources to help you create your own!

I would seriously recommend the American Copy Editors Society’s editing workshops. The instructors are great, and they answered all of the questions that the attendees had and really strived to make it relevant to each person’s career/background. Check out future workshops and conferences near you here!

Do you find yourself making any of these mistakes, either on your blog or in your day-to-day dealings? Or do you have problems with different grammar rules?