This November will be the 16th annual NaNoWriMo event. Each year the number of participants grows and the community becomes larger and larger. The authors create a support network on the forums and can always be assured of having someone in the wings cheering them on toward their goals. Additional writing groups and support networks have sprung from the masses, and have begun to inspire even the youngest authors to reach for their writing dreams.

As a non-profit, NaNoWriMo is sponsored by such names as Amazon, Kindle, Kobo, Lulu, CreateSpace, Wattpad, and more. There are also ways to donate to the organization directly. Where do all these proceeds go? All donations go toward maintaining the website, providing classroom resources, kits and “pep talks” to encourage writers. Because of the efforts of NaNoWriMo, students and amateur writers all over the world are getting excited about writing.

The challenge isn’t just for new writers, though. Some very famous names have participated in years past. The pep talks (letters written to the NaNo community) are from some well established authors such as Patrick Rothfuss, James Patterson, Mercedes Lackey, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Piers Anthony. That’s just naming a few.

Writers are also rewarded for their hard work. The corporate sponsors offer discounts or free swag to members that make it all the way to the target word count, and there is a shop with tons of NaNo flair available for purchase. The event offers plenty of incentive to reach your goals.

So have you been putting off that novel? Have you thought that there just isn’t time, or that you just aren’t cut out for it? Try NaNoWriMo this year and maybe you’ll surprise yourself. You have nothing to lose, and a novel to gain. And when you’re done writing, come on back to Simply Written and get it converted into a beautiful ebook file! Good luck!

Resources for writers come in many forms. It takes a lot of sorting to find the information you’re looking for on the internet, as it contains more information in one “place” than has ever been collected before. I’m going to break down a few of my favorite sources for you.

For Writers

The website forwriters.com is a collection of all sorts of resources. They link to a broad range of writer groups, associations, conventions and forums that you can join, and even have their own writer forum. They also link to various sites that help with the process of writing. My favorite part of this site is the links to sites that provide real information on things a writer would write about, like space or crime or science. If you want to research medical treatments, they link to that. If you want to research warp drive, they link to that. It’s great for learning more about your subject matter.

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine has an article with 50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills, and there are some gems in it. It includes links on grammar and punctuation, as well as general writing tips. It puts out some blogs on copywriting and editing. It links to a few articles on writing practices and tips from the pros. There are even a few applications that are mentioned to help with a writer’s workflow.

Open Education Database

This article is another great source for all types of links. 150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively will take you from grammar and style to helpful blogs, to writing tools, to organizations. They’re all listed in helpful categories, so scroll down through the list to find out what interests you.

These are, of course, just a few of the places you can go to find resources. There are thousands of places online to find help, and browsing them all could turn into a full time job. Just remember not to let the research stop you from writing!

The key to preventing this from happening to your writing is having a plan. Not every writer’s plan will be the same, just as not every writer feeds on words in the same way, but every successful writer will have a plan. In a very broad sense, this plan will have four key parts: ideas, focus, goals, and a schedule.

Ideas

This is usually the easiest part of the plan to think you have under control, when it’s actually in control of you. Writers are creative people, which makes sense considering they create whole worlds within their books, but too many creative people are led around by their ideas rather than owning them.

Take, for example, the following situations. You’re listening to music, the lyrics are pulling at you, and suddenly there are scenes flashing through your mind about a story that expands on the song. You’re sitting in front of a painting, the figures frozen in a single moment, and your mind begins to fill in the background of the scene. You’re weeding the garden and wishing your life was more exciting, your mind starts imagining all the different things that could happen to make the current situation more than the dull chore it is.

These are all ideas, and they come to a creative person effortlessly. They are all the basis for a potentially amazing story. At what point do they stop being your ideas and start owning you? When they start becoming the end of the creative process instead of the beginning. When you become buried in them.

Brainstorming is an important first step in any creative endeavor, but there’s always a time when the idea generator has to be set aside and the detail work begins. If you allow yourself to be completely open to incoming ideas while you’re working on a project, it’s easy to get sidetracked and have your focus shifted to another project. By all means, jot down any ideas that come across, but then set them aside to be pursued at a later time, and stay centered on the work at hand. Which brings us to the next part of the plan.

Focus

This can be the hardest part of writing. In today’s world there are so many things to distract us, and a writer often works in the very heart of distraction: the computer.

Many successful authors will tell you that the only way to prevent these distractions is to get rid of them entirely. Even though they work on a computer, they turn off anything that could distract them. They don’t open internet browsers, they don’t sign into social media, and they don’t play games on the computer when they get stuck. Some authors will go so far as to remove the access to these things from the computer entirely, reserving a separate machine for their writing so there is no chance of temptation. There is no shame in resorting to such drastic measures if that’s what it takes to get the job done.

Sometimes the problem isn’t avoiding temptation, so much as avoiding burnout. Focusing on one thing for an extended period can cause your mind to wander more the longer you try to force it into line. It’s important to step away from things periodically and let your brain reset. Even the greatest author can be reduced to a blubbering jelly bean after a marathon of writing. Step away from the words and do something refreshing to you. Get up and move around. You will return to the work with more focus after the break.

Some authors have to trick themselves into staying focused. This brings us to the third part of the plan.

Goals

A book can be a very daunting project at the beginning. Some books take years to write, and are hundreds of pages long. It can seem like a literary mountain that needs climbed, but even climbing a mountain can be broken into a series of steps. Set small goals for yourself, to keep focused and to keep moving forward, and to give yourself a sense of accomplishment along the way.

A common goal among authors is to set a word-count or page-count for each day. It’s never a bad thing to exceed your goals, and you may write an entire chapter in a single day instead of the three pages you set as your goal. That’s great! There will also be bad days where you have to force those three pages out of your tired and uncooperative brain, and feel exhausted and unsatisfied with the results. The important thing is that you wrote them, and eventually those three or more pages per day will result in a completed book.

There is also bribery. If you have to promise yourself an hour of television before bed if you finish the next chapter, and it will actually make you finish the next chapter, by all means bribe away. If you let yourself go out to eat for a celebratory dinner after every 100 pages you write, bon appetit. I’ve even known authors that deny themselves things they enjoy until they meet their goals. And of course, what are goals without structure?

Schedule

If there is no deadline for a goal, then the goal loses some of its importance. If you need a set “writing time” everyday in order to make yourself sit down and do it, then go ahead and pen it on the calendar. Many writers can get away with saying they will have a certain thing done by a certain time. It doesn’t have to be pages/words per day. It might be a chapter per week. Be wary, however, of procrastination. You don’t want to be sitting on Sunday with an entire chapter left to write.

Remember, too, that schedules can have some flexibility. If you want to work writing into an already busy schedule, block out chunks of dedicated time that flow around your normal workday. Schedule time when your favorite coffee shop is open and you can borrow a comfortable corner to get your writing done.

If you want your story done by a certain day, work backwards from that day to find out what you need to get done each day or each week. Don’t forget to leave time for editing. Eventually, you will hit your deadlines.

Write

Some writers don’t care if they ever finish their book, the joy of putting words on the screen is enough for them. Maybe writing will never be more than a personal hobby for you. That’s ok.

Some writers intend to publish, and would like to be successful. Those writers need to have a plan, and they need to see their writing for what it really is… a labor of love. It’s work, and hard work at that. Work needs structure, and deadlines, and a plan.

Every writer will approach their craft differently, so you’ll need to come up with your own plan, but when you do it’ll help you become a better writer. When you see your first book on the shelf, or the app store, or your website, all the hard work will be worth it. So make yourself a plan, and keep on writing.