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Self-publishing Your NaNoWriMo Book

Self-publishing your NaNoWriMo book may be easier than you think — and take a lot longer than you expect. The above novels took me an average of one year to draft and another year to edit and polish, develop cover art and marketing materials, and launch. They each required an investment of money and time, and of the two, time was the more expensive investement — well beyond the month of November.

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Being a NaNoWriMo Rebel

I’m a born rebel, so when I set goals as a NaNoWriMo rebel, I pick the ones that fit with my writing habits. These are habits born of observing my best writing periods and replicating what worked, forgetting what didn’t. For me, as a National Novel Writing Month fan, word counts don’t work. For me, daily writing works. But you may be a different kind of writer. How can you use NaNo to your advantage?…

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NaNoWriMo in Writing Women’s Fiction

NaNoWriMo for women’s fiction writers seems like an oxymoron. Writing about women and their relationships requires careful, deep creativity. National Novel Writing Month urges speed and volume of words. As a writer of upmarket, magical realism fiction, I’ve nevertheless found NaNoWriMo invvaluable. It’s helped me build my craft and my writing life in several ways. I’ve done NaNoWriMo in writing women’s fiction three times now. It has helped me build skills of endurance and belief…

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Preparing for National Novel Writing Month

I never thought I’d be writing about preparing for National Novel Writing Month, but November 2016 changed my perspective on what I had considered a ridiculous rush to write a novel in one month. How could any self-respecting author write so fast, so carelessly, so focused on the wrong dimension — the sheer number of words? And then I tried it. I was in grief over losing someone close to me. I couldn’t work, I…

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