An Aspiring Heroine - Cincinnati Lifestyle & Travel Blog

Cincinnati-based, milliennial lifestyle and travel blog

Preptober Workbook: Four Weeks to Your Best NaNoWriMo

I've created a 50+ page Preptober Workbook to help writers get their story thoughts in order and have the best NaNoWriMo imaginable. Get the free download today! | An Aspiring Heroine

I am so stupidly excited to share today’s blog post with you. I’ve been working on something for a long, long while now, and it seems impossible that I finally get to tell you what it is: a Preptober workbook to help you kick butt with your prewriting and show NaNoWriMo who’s boss!

My free, 50+ page Preptober Workbook | An Aspiring Heroine

I’ve been doing this writing thing for a while now, and after years of trial and error, reading all the best books on the writing craft, and buying other creators’ products, I know what works for me and what definitely does not.

One thing that I’ve found is when an outline template or prewriting method is too stringent and structured, I’ll eventually throw my hands in the air and abandon the entire thing. (Shoutout to my minimalist outline for helping me embrace my inner Planner!)

With that in mind, I’ve developed a 31-day prep plan that focuses on three main aspects of storytelling — character, plot, and setting — but gives you the freedom to determine how you go about your planning. Since I’m all about helping others succeed and want to create a little Preptober community, I’m giving the entire workbook away for free! All you have to do is click the button below, tell me where to send the workbook (I promise not to make you regret it with any spammy emails), and you’ll get a downloadable PDF straight to your email inbox.

Ready to make your NaNoWriMo dreams come true?!

Download my free Preptober workbook

I’ll be using my Preptober workbook to prepare for NaNoWriMo this year, and you can follow along with my journey (and tell me about your own) on Instagram. Use #AspiringPreptober so I can see and interact with your posts!

Do you have other questions about the Preptober workbook, NaNoWriMo, or really anything? Leave a comment!

Why I Switched Back to Writing with Scrivener… Again

I'm not going to lie to you. Learning to get the most out of writing with Scrivener takes a little bit of work, but in my opinion, it is completely worth it. I've put together a few of my favorite things about writing with Scrivener to kick off a series of posts about its best features! | An Aspiring Heroine

Hello, friends! Let’s talk about writing with Scrivener for a bit, shall we?

Writers seem to either love Scrivener or they hate it, and I’m going to guess that the ones who hate it also don’t feel comfortable using it. When I first downloaded a trial version of Scrivener, I used it on and off for a few weeks, didn’t really get anywhere past the actual document view, and eventually decided Microsoft Word would do just fine for me, thank you very much.

But then I learned that my best writing friend Sarah used it, and I generally think everything she does is wonderful. So when Scrivener offered a month-long trial during NaNoWriMo last year, I decided to take the plunge again. And boy, am I glad I did!

In the coming weeks, I plan to do a bit of writing about the things I love most about writing with Scrivener (think compiling research, creating outlines, etc.), but for now I thought it would be best to start off with a little listicle about the software program for writers and why it’s enticed me to stick around for good this time.

Three Different Views for Surveying Your Story

Scrivener has three different modes for writing and reviewing the pieces of your story: the Editor, the Corkboard, and the Outliner. Each one has its own pros and cons, but when you use them together as you work through the various stages of a writing project, it’s pure magic.

I use the Outliner for seeing all of my scenes/chapter in order, the Editor for actual writing, and the Corkboard for when I want to try moving things around and need a more visual representation of my novel, what I’ve written of it so far, and what still needs to happen. Options are great, and these three options are specifically crafted to be the best for writers.

All Your Research in One Place

Before Scrivener, I kept writing notes in a million different places and could never quite remember where I had put what. I have a writer’s notebook that I’ll jot ideas into when I want to actually write with paper and pen. Sometimes I’ll make notes on my phone and then forget about them for months. And I used to use OneNote when working between multiple devices, but I no longer trust cloud-based services after a particularly nasty deletion fiasco.

With Scrivener, I can keep all of my research together: Word docs, photos, PDFs, and random notes, thoughts, and ideas. I can categorize them with keywords or pair them with specific chapters that I’m writing. No more digging around in twelve different places for a “What If?” question or piece of dialogue that wouldn’t leave my brain one afternoon.

Easy-to-Set Targets for Your Entire Manuscript and Day-to-Day Writing Progress

I love keeping track of my writing. It’s probably a holdover from the few times I’ve done NaNoWriMo, and Scrivener helps indulge me. I can track the number of words I’ve written in a work session compared with my target word count for the day. It will also show me how close I am to the estimated total of my manuscript, the number of pages, words, and characters, and much much more. For a word nerd, I’m super into these numbers!

Custom Meta-Data to Keep Track of What’s Important to You

Outlines tend not to work for me because they often don’t include the things I want them to. Sometimes it’s a specific way of tracking time; other times it’s character point of view. With custom meta-data, Scrivener lets you track anything you want, but also gives you the ability to display whatever meta-data you’d like in Outliner mode.

No Distractions Full screen Mode

To err is human. So is sitting down to work on your novel and looking up from YouTube an hour later with zero words added to your word count.

No distractions mode is just that: a full screen experience that you can customize to keep yourself focused on the end game. It makes writing with Scrivener effortless (or as effortless as writing a freakin’ novel can be).

Alright, now that I’ve told you my favorite things about Scrivener, I want to hear from you. What do you love? And what do you hate? What do you want to know more about? Help me help you get the most out of writing with Scrivener, too.

P.S. If you’re looking for more awesome writing tools, might I suggest Pacemaker?

Guess who’s back, back again.

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:

  1. 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.)
  2. 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:

PacemakerThere’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. 😉

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