It was a dark and stormy night: some words for NaNoWriMo from Asimov

Many thanks to everyone who came to my NaNoWriMo workshop at Milk Wood last night.  In case you missed it, here are some words from the great Isaac Asimov speaking in 1974 about how it was he'd managed to write nearly 150 books in just under 25 years:

I’m constantly asked, “How do you manage to write all those books?”  And the answer is very simple.  First, you tell them the truth – I work very hard – but that’s not glamorous.  And so I dig deeper, and I come up with something which is surprisingly true: I cut out the frills like thinking. 

You realise how many books don’t get written because of thinking?  That is, you write the first sentence, It was a dark and stormy night… and that’s fine if you’ll keep on, but you don’t: you commit the fatal error of thinking and you say, “not sufficiently dramatic.”  You cross it out and write, A dark and stormy night: that’s what it was.  And then you say, “No – it’s too dramatic.  Perhaps we ought to open on an air of uncertainty”. Was the night dark and stormy?  And then you think some more and you say, “No no I’m ruining it, it’s anti-climactic.”  And you say, “It was a stormy and dark night.” 

Well this goes on forever and you never write the book, see?  Now I don’t do that.  I start with the assumption that the way I say it the first time is right.

Pretty sound advice for NaNoWriMo, huh?

Five tips on writing a NaNoWriMo

Here's an article I was asked to write by Virtual Writers Inc about National Novel Writing Month. I'll also be hosting a workshop in SL at 3pm SLT this coming Friday at Milk Wood about writing a NaNo.  NaNoWriMo 2013 is fast approaching, and my own preparations are in progress.  Stay tuned for more news about that...

There’s plenty that’s already been written about the business of writing a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days of November – an annual act of insanity for the last ten years known as ‘National Novel Writing Month’, or just NaNoWriMo (the pedant in me – and it’s a considerable percentage of my personality, sadly – really wishes that could be changed to ‘International Novel Writing Month’ or even just ‘Novel Writing Month’; do we have to point out to America yet again that there are other countries in the world?).  If you’ve previously completed or attempted this feat, or gone no further even than just registering at www.nanowrimo.org, you will no doubt have received plenty of emailed advice and be fully familiar with such constructs as ‘the Inner Editor’, that pesky critic inside you that deplores every last word you’ve written and stops you from getting any more than a few pages into any novel-length writing attempt.  The Inner Editor is bad and must be silenced.  If, on the other hand, you’re completely new to the process, have a nose around on the website for this advice: it’s definitely worth reading.