Tag: writing

How I Wrote My Best NaNoWriMo Draft Yet

trevor

I have had a number of successes with National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo. I wrote a novel with only a drawing to guide me, learned some lessons, lost, and won. I’m getting practiced now, and have completed three novels in five years. My hands-down best performance came in April 2021, during Camp NaNoWriMo. I set a word count goal of 25 000 words – to double the length of the manuscript I started last November during NaNo 2020. Instead of 25 000 words, I wrote almost 50 000 and…

Did I Fail NaNoWriMo?

trevor
Did I fail NaNoWriMo 2018?

National Novel Writing Month is over. I’m sure you’re wondering if I made my 50 000 words this year. Spoiler: no. I super didn’t. Sigh. I thought I had a streak going. I did two NaNos successfully in a row. I did a couple of Camps in there too. Each time, I was very successful. But… it turns out that this was not that year. For 14 000 words I did great. I was in that beautiful, dizzying place where you know exactly where you’re going and you get in…

Conundrum Part II: Write a Novel With Only a Sketch to Guide You

trevor

I’ve told people not to ever throw out unfinished creative work. Completed creative work that you really hate, sure. The experience of creation and evaluation is more valuable than the product, in that case. But unfinished work? The beginning of something? Getting rid of that is like cutting out the warmup before a race. Why not go into a massive undertaking, like, say, to write a novel, already having stretched your muscles? 2016 in general was a massive undertaking, full of significant changes. Many of those changes were achievements of one sort…

5 Lessons Learned from NaNoWriMo 2016

trevor

I’ve said before on the site that 2016 has been a year of significant change for us. From the wedding to the move to the girls’ new school to the mess that is world events, 2016 has brought with it not only change, but a new resolve and determination to stop talking about the things that are important and actually do them. (I think that Hamilton: An American Musical has a lot to do with that, too, but that’s going to have to be another post, otherwise we’ll be here…

Shake off your writer’s block with 6 fall-themed prompts

trevor

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about writer’s block lately. I have the opposite problem: way too many ideas rumbling around and not nearly enough time to develop them. Fall is the worst – with so much change happening, I’m noticing little things that get my creative juices flowing, and yet I’m so busy with work, Halloween costumes, and wedding stuff, I’m not spending almost any time writing. So let’s help each other out, shall we? Here are six short-story prompts to get you started writing that I’ve thought…

Using Office365 with WordPress

trevor

I have been enjoying using the new Office. Full disclosure: I got my first year of Office365 for free. I took part in the preview and genuinely enjoyed it. I said as much on Twitter and was rewarded by the Office team with a year’s subscription at no cost. That’s been great for me – as a new teacher without a huge budget for tech, having the service free for a year has been incredibly helpful. But as I use it, I’m more and more aware of the fact that…

Sunday Reading 07/09/2013

trevor

My stars, a new one-sheet and a new Sunday Reading in the same weekend? Well fan my peaches, or mint my julep, or something. It’s almost like I’m making content for the website. Where’d the Southern thing come from? No idea. Let’s get into some fun things to read with your coffee. Geeking Out on the Logo – Marissa Mayer, Marissa’s Tumblr Yahoo is a weird thing. I still don’t fully understand the brand or the company myself, but it seems to be popping up with increasing regularity since Marissa…

Balance

trevor

What’s happened here? I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve posted on spillway. And I had so much stuff lined up, too. Ready to go with daily content. New original podcasts in the pipe. Gearing up for more posts in The Tiny Enterprise Project and Branching Out series. Where did that all go? The desire to share stuff hasn’t gone away. I’ve been excitedly prepping material documenting other projects, including paddle-making and a little scratchbuild I call DroidQuest2013. But the posts about them haven’t materialized. Why? I’ve…

High Tech, Low Tech

trevor

There’s something to be said for doing things by hand. Don’t underestimate the intimacy of the tactile connection to make you feel connected to your work. And it’s worthwhile sometimes to slow yourself down and digest your ideas as you translate them to the page. Paddle your own canoe, folks. Trevor

Re: Talent is Cheaper than Table Salt

trevor

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been skeptical for a while about Kristin Lamb. I haven’t read her book, We Are Not Alone – The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. The growing obsession with social media “experts” turns my stomach, even when I recognize I could probably use some more of that expertise around the spillway. The #MyWANA community on Twitter, a sort of group-therapy session and navel-gazing exercise for writers, has both drawn me in and turned me off more than once with its promise of positive, passionate interactions and…