Tag Archives: nanowrimo

Scrivener project targets

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With nanowrimo coming up fast, it’s useful to know how to use the targets option in Scrivener. Please note: these instructions are for the PC version, but the process should be similar in Mac version.

To add the project targets option to your toolbar, click on Tools>Customise toolbar.

 

Choose the Main Toolbar as the destination, find the project targets button in the list on the left, and then click the right arrow to move it into the list. You can move it up or down to get it exactly where you want it.

 

If you don’t want the button on your toolbar, then it can be accessed at any time Under Project>Project targets.

 

The project target window looks like this – set up your draft target for the total number of words you’re aiming for overall. Tick the box for documents included in compile only if you don’t want to include any project notes you add.

 

The session target will count the number of words you add in any session – the session ends when you shut the file down. So if you jump from scene to scene, this will keep tally for you.

 

There’s also a document target. Click on the little circle on the bottom right of the window, and you’ll get the option to set a target for that specific scene, or document.

 

Once you’ve set up your targets, you’re ready to go!

 

 

 

Nanowrimo survival guide

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Four days to go until people all round the world hit the keyboard or notebook for (inter)NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. But what’s the best way to achieve that?

  1. Aim to write every day. The target is an average of 1667 words per day, but it’s better to aim higher than that in the beginning if possible, as it can be very hard to catch up if you fall behind right at the start. Your enthusiasm may wane later in the month anyway, so bank extra words whenever you can.
  2. Use all your available time – not just that time when you can sit and physically put words down, but the time when you’re cleaning your teeth, or waiting for a bus, or sitting in traffic. Time spent planning means that when you reach the page you’re ready to start the words flowing. The best part of nano is getting totally involved with your story.
  3. Even if you are so hard-pressed for time that you can’t fit in your normal writing session, at least aim to open the file and look at it. That’s easier than ever this year, with Scrivener available on iOS. Letting the story drift from your thoughts, even for one day, can be hard to recover from.
  4. Don’t worry about the quality of what you write. You’re working out the story. There’s plenty of time to polish later. Sometimes you need to push through to figure out what your story is about.
  5. Don’t be afraid to change things as you go along – but don’t go back to fix earlier things. Just make a note to yourself for later and plough onwards. If you must rewrite a section, then leave the original there too for now – they still count as words written during November.
  6. Remember that everyone goes through a stage of hating and doubting their writing. Acknowledge that you’ve reached that stage and work through it. You only have 30 days maximum on the one project. After that, you can re-evaluate and do something else instead, but this project deserves its 30-day 50k-words of attention.
  7. Other ideas will rear their heads once you open yourself up to creativity. Thank them, note them down and promise them attention in December.
  8. If you have the chance, local write-ins can be great for motivation and companionship. There’s nothing quite like sitting at a table with other writers and just hammering out the words.
  9. Accept that whatever work you do will probably need to be redone or at least edited thoroughly, but remember that you’ll be that much better as a writer for the regular practice.
  10. Most of all, when you hit 1st December, don’t stop writing!

Opinions vary on the usefulness of nanowrimo as a writing tool. My opinion is that as long as you don’t expect to write in November, publish in December and then do nothing until the following October, then nano can be a fantastic tool.

 

Preparing for nanowrimo

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It’s halfway through October, and all round the world, writers are preparing for the massive writing festival that is NaNoWriMo, or national novel writing month, the challenge that sees them aiming for a grand total of 50,000 words on a new project within the 30 days of November.

 

I have to confess that I’m one of them – each year for the past few years, I’ve bashed out a first draft of a novel during November, and then spent the rest of the year working on it. Each year, the draft I finish is a little more polished than the previous year, and I get a little further through editing. Eventually, my aim is to have several novels all nearing the finished product at around the same time, and then start publishing.

 

But how do you prepare for such a project? And should you be starting before 1st November anyway?

 

There are two types of writers, when it comes to nano – known as the planners and the pantsers. In fact, these are just two ends of the spectrum, and most people sit some way along the route between. Planners will plan out their story in great detail, world building, character building, plotting out their story. J.K. Rowling has released sheets showing how she planned out the Harry Potter stories in detail. Pantsers will fly by the seat of their pants, starting with a basic idea (or even less than that), and just seeing how it develops. Stephen King is a great proponent of that approach.

 

This is where I find Scrivener comes in handy: I’ll work out the rough outline of my story, often dividing it into three parts, corresponding to the three act structure. I’ll budget out the words for each part, and create sections for each scene I think needs to happen. The index cards hold a rough summary of the action for that scene, and I plan on between 1000 and 2000 words per scene.

 

Then when I get to November, I aim to fill in at least one scene each day, providing a structured journey from beginning to end but with flexibility should the story develop in an unexpected way – if your characters don’t rebel at some point in your story and do something you hadn’t planned, then maybe they’re not real enough!

 

The important thing when tackling nanowrimo is to remember that the aim is to create a first draft of a novel. It is not to create a polished, well-written manuscript that’s ready to send off to agents and publishers. There’s lots of work still to do once that first draft is finished.

 

Nor should you be worried if the story doesn’t achieve all you hoped for it. That’s what the rest of the year is for. The aim is to bash through your story, become completely involved in it and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Once you’ve finished, you might be able to work with what you have, or it might mean pulling it apart completely and restructuring. Whichever level it’s at, you’ll have had 50k words’ worth of work put into it, and you’ll have a much better idea of what the story needs.

 

So enjoy your nano prep and enjoy your writing – just be prepared to keep working on it for the rest of the year!

 

How much does an editor cost?

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One concern of a writer getting ready to publish is how much an editor will cost. I’ve seen much resentment on all sides, from professional editors accused of high fees, from writers convinced the editor is charging far too much, and from those who charge very low fees and are surprised that others get upset.

 

So just what is a reasonable fee editing a novel? First of all, ask yourself some questions.

How long have you spent on your novel?

Just for fun, take a rough guess at how many hours you’ve spent on your novel. Bear in mind that in the NaNoWriMo challenge, some writers have managed to churn out 50,000 words in 24 hours, working flat out. Then there’s the time spent staring at the screen, trying to work out the best way of phrasing something. And the time spent working out your plot and whether things happen in the right order.

How long would it take to read through your novel?

If a reader were to sit down and read through it, how long would it take them? Okay, reading speeds vary, but you can get a rough idea. If we take a very rough estimate of 100 pages per hour, at 250 words per page, that’s 25k words per hour. And that’s reading very fast, not taking in every detail. So for a nano novel you’re looking at two hours minimum for a readthrough. That’s the reading time for an edited, published novel, though, not for a raw manuscript that still might need a lot of work. That can easily take four or five times that reading time.

How long would it take to edit your novel?

How long do you think it would take for someone to read through your novel carefully, line by line, making notes, checking every word, ensuring it all makes sense, ensuring continuity, and becoming as familiar with the text as you are?  This is very hard to estimate, so I would suggest that as an absolute minimum, take the reading time and multiply it by ten. The time taken will vary widely with the quality of the original writing, of course. Some texts only need a clean-up, while others will need a lot more work, entailing not only close reading but constant checking backwards and forwards. Novels written by someone who is not a native English speaker can be even more complex.

What’s a decent hourly rate?

The minimum wage in the UK is around £7 an hour. The recommended rate for editing in the UK is £20 – £30 an hour plus, depending on level of edit needed and quality of writing to be edited (Society for Editors and Proofreaders).  Editors with a great deal of experience might well ask for a higher fee, while some jobs are more complex than others. Don’t forget that an editor is also usually self employed, so responsible for covering their own tax, pension, sickness cover, holiday pay, training, national insurance and costs of running their office, such as heating and lighting. Admin also takes up part of their time, so time available to do paid, chargeable work is reduced accordingly. One estimate is that of any hourly fee they take in, around 75% maximum is actual net income, so here we’re talking about earning around £15 an hour net.

 

Look at those figures in relation to your estimate of time taken. What do you notice? For your nano novel, we’re talking about a minimum of around 20 hours of editing, at £140 minimum wage or £600 recommended rate. And most novels are more like twice that size. As the size grows, so does the complexity of the edit. For the 100k novel, we’re looking at a very rough estimate of £280 ($360 approx) at minimum wage and £1200 ($1500 approx) recommended rate. And that’s  for the bare minimum level of work on a very clean original. If you’re paying a lot less than this, then what’s happening?

Why are some editors much cheaper?

You will always be able to find editors offering to work on your novel for a low fee. This probably means one of the following:

  • They’re just setting out in business and trying to get experience and testimonials.
  • They cut corners and don’t give your work the time it needs (some may well just run the spell and grammar checks and claim to have edited your work).
  • They’re just editing as a hobby, and the money is an extra bonus.

Each group has its own drawbacks:

  • The first group lack experience and are likely to be inundated with requests. They will either buckle under the pressure or soon find they can’t afford to work at that rate for long and their fees will rise with their experience level.
  • The second group – well, just don’t expect them to add much quality to your novel. If you’re lucky, they won’t actually do any harm.
  • The third group forms more of a grey area. On the one hand, if your writing is a hobby, then maybe a hobby editor is suitable. I’m sure there are some out there who can consistently offer a good service at or near minimum wage. On the other hand, they are likely to lack the experience that a professional editor has gained over many years of working in the business, or they might be tempted to rush through the job or not understand the full implications of editing.

How hard is it to edit?

Editing is a highly skilled job, but a good edit is invisible, so it’s far too easy to get the idea that anyone can do it. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing – be very careful of editors who apply rules rigidly, for example. In all writing, but especially with fiction, an editor needs to understand when a rule may be broken, and be aware of regional variations in usage, among many other issues.

 

Editing is not just a question of being good at grammar, punctuation and spelling. Your editor should also be drawing up a style sheet – noting anything from whether to use anymore or any more, or where to hyphenate, to whether John has blue eyes or brown, and the fact that Jane is left-handed and lives in a bungalow. The style sheet can be very complex, for example if writing fantasy, and will be used to check consistency throughout the manuscript in conjunction with a style guide that advises the editor on whether capitalisation is needed, where italics should be used, how to deal with abbreviations, and many other issues.

 

If they’re carrying out developmental editing, they may well also have many other tools such as a timeline they can check against and a way of checking the progress in each scene for balance between action and backstory.

 

A fiction editor also needs to understand the intricacies of issues such as consistent point of view, consistent use of tenses and how to retain the author’s style while polishing it ready for publication.

 

Always remember that there are three aspects to editing, as in many things: good, cheap and fast. You can always get one of the three, and usually two. But three out of three? Never! Which are you willing to sacrifice, and which is most important to you and your novel?

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve completed nanowrimo – what’s next?

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That’s the question that many people are asking themselves at the moment, or will do over the next week or so. If you’ve been keeping up with the wordcount, churning out your story and ploughing on to the end, you should have 50k or more words of a first draft and might be considering the next step.

What not to do

Please don’t rush to publish your story as soon as possible. Your story deserves more than that. It deserves a careful re-reading, consideration and editing before it is cast out into the world. The industry gets flooded with nanowrimo stories at this time of year, as new writers, overcome by the excitement of having written a novel, send it out too soon. Readers can be easily put off by a badly presented story, and you risk damaging your reputation as a writer and the reputation of indie writers generally.

 

For the same reason, please don’t rush it out to an editor or agent. An editor is likely to cost a lot of money if called in at this early stage, and an agent is likely to have many such manuscripts sent to them.

 

On the other hand, if you just want to share your work with family and friends, why not find a company who will print a few copies for you?

What you should be doing

Set the manuscript aside for a month or so. Then you should be able to read it through with a more objective eye. You might be pleasantly surprised or you might be shocked. Either way, make notes as you read, and then go through and fix the issues you spotted.

 

  • Take a look at your characterisation – do your characters grow and develop? Do they behave consistently? Are they interesting?
  • Take a look at your show/tell balance – one thing that might help here is to use highlighters. Highlight dialogue in one colour, and telling passages in another. This will give you an overall view of your balance.
  • Take a look at your use of settings. Do you know where the scenes are set? How do the characters and the plot interact with the setting?
  • Take a look at the structure. Is there a clear progression in the story? Is it logical?

Once you’ve considered all these, and revised your story as much as you can accordingly, then you need to seek out a beta reader or two. This should be someone who reads the sort of story you’ve written and is willing to comment honestly on it. If you don’t know anyone suitable, then try looking online, in places such as goodreads.com groups, or search for beta reading services. You might be asked for a small fee, or you might be lucky and find a good reader who will read for free, or will agree to exchange services. Don’t spend too much at this stage!

 

Another useful resource is scribophile.com, where you critique work to earn points that you spend to post your own work for critiques from other writers.

 

After you have heard back from the beta reader(s), it’s time to work through some more, with their comments in mind. You don’t have to implement everything they say, but they should raise some points that will help you develop the story.

 

Once you’ve reached the point where you can do no more yourself, then it’s time to consider whether your work is ready for editing, proofreading and publishing, or whether it’s better to set your manuscript aside, start on the next and return to this one when your writing has improved still further.

 

 

NaNoWriMo season

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You can’t exist for long in the writing world without hearing at least a mention of NaNoWriMo – national novel writing month. During the month of November, the challenge is to complete a novel of 50,000 words. The writing should not start until 1st November, should be a new project, and the word count target should be reached on or before 30th November. Winners – those who upload and validate at least 50k words – receive all sorts of goodies from the sponsors, such as discounts on writing software or discounted membership of writing communities.

 

Some people swear by nano – some hate it. Some never open their projects again, some go on to publish. Some enter year after year and fail every time. Some enter every year and win, but do no other writing all year. Some win on their first year and then swear never ever to do it again.

 

One thing you must be aware of when taking nano on is that the writer who can storm through their novel draft in 30 days or less and then publish it within a week is a very rare creature. What’s much more likely is that you’ll be left with a draft zero, something that has got the story down in words but that needs a lot of refining, redrafting and a major dose of editing before it’s ready to be seen by anyone other than the writer.

 

So when you have finished nano, don’t rush to publish your work without considering the quality very carefully. On the other hand, don’t throw it into the bin in despair because it’s not ready to publish. That’s only to be expected. Never judge a novel by the first draft.

 

Please, if you’re going to take part in nanowrimo, enjoy the experience, make the most of the peer support and general buzz about writing, and then consider very carefully your next step. And before you try to submit to agents or publishers, please bear in mind that they have generally learned to dread the words “here is my nanowrimo novel” because of the pile of raw drafts they receive around December/January time!