The 9 Best (Worst) Bits of Advice for The Day After Nano

The absolute worst most epic, amazeballs advice to jet-propel your post NaNoWriMo week straight to submission and publication faster than the GOP trying to avoid debate and get to a floor vote.

So you're writing during NaNo because NaNo is awesome and you're awesome. However, unlike all the other "It was a great experience" losers, your novel is not only going to get picked up by a major publisher, it's going to rocket to the top of the charts. Your book's theme song will be Rocket Man, even if it doesn't have any spaceships in it.

This won't be because you worked hard, but because you know the secrets to unlocking your the full potential of your creative genius.

They say genius and talent can't be taught. But they only say that because they don't want you learning what I'm about to tell you. Your NaNo book has officially reached the inside track to absolute unadulterated awesome pure gold awesome. Follow my advice, and this will happen so fast, you will be able to spend your massive advance on Christmas shopping.

Seriously, I hope your peeps like riding around in Ferraris.

1- Don't worry about that word count.

Did you quit after like five days? Don't worry about it. What's important is that you got that killer idea onto paper. No one is going to care that your book isn't done yet once they see how fucking ridonkulous your concept is. They will hire a team of ghostwriters to finish it for you.

If you are not the kind of writer who can hammer out writing at a fevered pace, like 1667 words a day, stop not being that kind of writer and be AWESOME instead.

2- Not finishing is fine. In fact, it's great.

Book not done? 50,000 words kind of slim for a "novel," or maybe you stopped writing around Thanksgiving when life fell apart. Don't worry. You've got the main chunk of the beginning done, and any publisher is going to be able to see that it's absolutely genius. Don't fret about writing the entire thing out completely.  That's for later. Once you have the advance, you can get to work on the rest of it--or better yet, the publisher will probably assign you a phalanx of ghostwriters to whom you can just describe what's going to happen and they will do the writing part.

3- Be vocal about what you're doing, especially to professional writers.

You know how many people publish their NaNo books?

Like five.

Ever.

You know why? Because they don't spend time making connections like you're going to.

You of all people know the power of words. Don't water down what you're accomplishing here. Tell everyone (whether they ask or not) that you've written a novel. Put stress on the word novel and say it multiple times. Work the word novel into conversations.

If someone tells you that they're a writer, and particularly if you already know one, become even more enthusiastic about how you are writing a novel. Ask them to hook you up with their agent and publisher so you can let them see your novel. There is a very good chance that they will become so blown away by your sheer universe-altering will about your novel, that they will probably introduce you to their agent. If you say it, you give it life. So talk about your novel as much as you can. Novel.

4 Don't revise.

Revision is for people who didn't write a good story in the first place. Did you not write a good story or is your story the biznizzle? Yeah, that's what I thought: you already know your story is awesome. A lot of people talk about revising their NaNo manuscript, but you can tell that deep down they know they just haven't struck mental gold.

But you have struck mental gold. That's what the elite team of editors that your publisher will assign to you is going to do.

What you want to do is get out ahead of the pack in shopping for an agent. Or better yet go right to the publisher since the agent will probably try to steal your work.

5- Don't even worry about that polish.

"Polish" is just code for "I don't have confidence that this is going to make you forget what grammar even is." Polish is code for "I didn't write an awesome story." Polish is code for "Why don't you just give up and become a plumber." Are any of these things true? If they are, stop wasting your time reading this article, and go play with your coloring books.

If you want to be a writer, believe in yourself.

6- Submit your novel right away. 

The deluge of NaNoWriMo manuscripts is about to hit every publisher in the world. You don't want to get caught in this rush of losers. Even though your awesomeness is PARTICULARLY awesome and would absolutely stand out like a lighthouse on a foggy night, anyone can get a bad break if they're manuscript is in a stack of a hundred.

So how do you avoid getting lumped in with a bunch of plebs' sub-par manuscripts?

Easy, submit yours first. Beat the rush.

Not revising and not polishing isn't just about having confidence in how good your idea is. It's about beating all those losers to the punch. If they spend two or three days editing their draft, and don't submit until December 3rd or 4th, that's two or three days earlier that you will get in before them.

Is some publisher going to pass on your rockstar idea because you forgot a comma?

I don't think so.

7- Announce yourself.  

Be sure to tell the publisher you send your novel to that you just wrote it for NaNoWriMo, and that it is so good you sent it immediately without even a revision. They will respect and admire your candor.

As will I, my fervid pixel shifting champion.

As. Will. I.

8- Most importantly...take a break.

You've had a tough month. Time to put your feet up and let those creative batteries recharge. Take a month or two at least...probably longer. Relax. You want to be nice and well rested ready when the next lightning strike of inspiration hits. True genius comes in fits and starts not from daily persistence.

Follow these simple steps, and your dreams of having publishers pee themselves a little when they hear about you, and fall over each other to publish you will come true.

It All Ends: Best Modern Fantasy (Final Round)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years?    

Our poll that began nearly three months ago with the call for some nominations has, at last, reached the final round.

However, shenanigans ensues. You have TWO polls upon which to cast your vote(s).

You see Terry Pratchett got on this poll twice with stand alone novels, and Neil Gaiman got on three times. And based on how each of them did in the semifinals, they're easily going to be at least the top three spots in a poll that usually only has eight choices. So I had to get a little creative to keep this (very) long awaited final interesting.

Poll Number 1-

If they're going to be (whether it is from shenanigans or legitimate veneration) the top of every poll around them, then we will just assume they're going to kick ass and take names and pit them against EACH OTHER.

That's right. Poll number one is every Pratchett and Gaiman offering we had.

In poll #1, you get two (2) choices.

Poll Number 2-

This poll will include eight of the top titles that would have made it to the final round had Pratchett and Gaiman not been on it. If you want to look at this as choosing the runners up, that's up to you, but one way or another, we're going to make this interesting.

Goddamn it.

In poll #2, everyone will get three (3) votes. The top four titles will go on to the finals.

Now is the time to make one small reminder. Many of the books in question have some kind of adaptation to the screen. It's time to stress that while CGI dragons are goddamned spectacular, this poll is about BOOKS, and writing, and not about how much Peter Dinklage fucking rules. So please vote for the best book, not the best thing you've seen on DVD or HBO.

The polls themselves are both on the bottom left of the side menus, below the "About the Author."

Also, seriously, I know there are a lot of people on WAW's Facebook Page and laws governing the internet determine that a certain number of people will leave nasty comments that their faves are missing without bothering to understand the context of our nomination process and quintillion earlier rounds, but consider this your hip check that you're turning the petulant up to eleven. "Oh sweet Jesus's Nip, how could my very, very favorite fave not be here?" Well, chances are that either 1) it was and now it's not because your very favorite fave was not enough other people's very favorite fave and more's the pity but I don't control that part, 2) there were rules that disqualified titles that came out before 1992 ("Why isn't Wheel of Time on here?" Because it's not modern according to the definition of this poll.) So, while I'm really sorry, showing up on the last round and declaring that if it doesn't have The Spinsters Orcsnogger Chronicles, it's just a completely invalid poll kind of makes you look foolish.

For mobile users you click on "web page view" and then scroll ALLLLLLLLLL the way to the bottom.

This final (these finals) will run for two weeks. By then I hope to have nominations for whatever I decide to start in December. That means that the IP logging will expire after a week. And since I can't really stop shenanigans, I encourage it.

Vote early. Vote often.

Best Modern Fantasy (Semifinal 2)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years? 

The second semifinals shake out, and it's looking like there may need to be some divine shenanigans from on high to shake up the finals. Stay tuned to see what I'm on about.

I'm glad Gaiman and Pratchett had such a strong showing. They are obviously two of my favorites, but this fucking poll has taken us like three months to get to, and is now in danger of being a bit boring because half the poll will only be two authors, so get ready for things to go a little pear shaped....later on today.

And thank you to so many of you for voting.

Text results below.

Night Watch- T. Pratchett 186 31.16%

American Gods- N. Gaiman 130 21.78%

Neverwhere- N. Gaiman 84 14.07%

Stormlight Archives- B. Sanderson 61 10.22%

Percy Jackson and the Olympians - R. Riordan 51 8.54%

The Abhorson Trilogy- G. Nix 39 6.53%

The Inheritance Trilogy- N.K. Jemison 35 5.86%

Hounded (Iron Druid Chronicles)- K. Hearne 11 1.84%

Serious For A Moment (Important Update)

I'd like to take a moment to talk about something serious. No persona. No over-the-top jokes. No running "evil mystery blogger" plot. We'll put off the Best Fantasy poll until tomorrow even though it's well overdue. And no, it's not my monthly request for patrons. Though it is something that matters to the future of Writing About Writing. Indeed, it might be the future of non-traditional publishing and the internet artist.

TL;DR- I know the issue has come up enough times to cause outrage fatigue, but please learn why the current struggle for Net Neutrality is particularly huge, and what you can do to maybe stop what will be a devastating alteration to the entire landscape of our internet experience. And you can even have John Oliver make you laugh up your lung while you learn.

For the longer version, and a bit of context, let me tell you a story:

This is a picture of my "all time" analytics from Blogger. I'm probably going to break 300,000 again this month. You can't even see a single pixel of line on the graph from when I started in February 2012. In those days I would put up Hugh Grant dancing videos (from Love Actually) when a post got more than twenty of my friends to click on it. I felt like a writing GOD that day I broke a thousand page views. My first patron showed up after I had been writing six months and gave me ten dollars. TEN DOLLARS! In December of the year, after 11 months of writing, I cashed a check from Blogger (I ran ads back then–also Blogger sent out physical checks back then) for a little over a hundred dollars and I felt ten feet tall walking to the bank.

Six years later and I've been read by millions. Strange people I've never met recognize my name on planes and trains (no literally), and perhaps most amazing of all, through nothing but donations I have begun to be able to pay the bills through writing. Maybe not ALL the bills, but I wouldn't die (at least not right away) and I have pet sitting and child care trade to help.

As much as I am loathe to admit this, and as vociferous as I can be with deep umbrage of everything from content throttling to harassment policies that favor white supremacy, this is not a story of success that I can tell without also talking about Facebook. Simply put, none of this would have been possible without my Facebook Writing About Writing page.

That's nearly half of my all-time traffic from one referring URL–Facebook. The story of my blog's skyrocketing numbers IS the story of WAW's facebook page's skyrocketing numbers. I'm not saying I wouldn't have found another way, but I very much doubt I would be as far along.

This goes away if FB becomes something people have to pay for though their ISP. 

Throttled content is nothing new to me. I've been dealing with the Facebook algorithm for years. If every one of the 600,000 people who have said they want to see Writing About Writing's posts actually got to see them, I would A) need a fraction as much work to build three times the audience around that page, and B) would be making a lot more money at this point. But they do limit who sees those posts because they want me to pay to advertise them. They especially limit links to other URL's and ESPECIALLY the hosts that a page admin puts up regularly–in my case Blogger. I tell people who ogle at my current salary from writing that while it is breathtaking now to be paying the bills, if they added up all the hours I promoted myself and for all the years, I still wouldn't have broken $1/hr. It was like having a 5 year unpaid internship for a minimum wage job.

This throttling content is old news on Facebook but it's starting to make independent artists' lives difficult on platforms like Twitter and Tumblr as "good stuff first" posts crowd out the things followers have ASKED to see. In many cases these are places artists fled to to escape Facebook's algorithm.

Of course, that's the price of doing business on Social Media. WE are the product and we're just playing in their sandbox. But losing Net Neutrality would bring a whole new set of players (the ISPs) into the game, eager to line their own pockets. If it were just me getting the squeeze, and just throttled content, I could probably figure out a "worth it" price point. I still run a $10 promotion once in a while to see what that does to my numbers. (Not much, TBH.)

However, if everyone has to pay to stay on their social media, numbers will plummet. Then my blog numbers will plummet. Which almost certainly means my income will plummet as well. And while I have skill sets that will mean I don't starve, being able to write for the 40 hours a week this blog takes would NOT be in the cards.

The instinct is to think that "It Can't Happen Here." Just like everything else we were sure couldn't happen here until it did. The instinct is to think that greed will check greed and leave your average web surfer unscathed. (Can I use "web surfer" in 2017?) Surely FB will simply pay what the ISP's want so they are prioritized and keep getting their money from advertising, and if you aren't starting up your own new social media, your life will continue mostly unaltered (as if FB would simply sigh and lose their profit margin with a "Well, played, good chap!" and not somehow pass the cost on to SOMEONE). There may be "fast lanes" on the internet (which a moment's thought about why you spent all that money on your snazzy uber T-5 connection will reveal can't happen unless ISP's actually CAUSE slow lanes).

Except you can see in places like Portugal and New Zealand where there is no net neutrality, that is EXACTLY what has happened. The ISP's have squeezed companies that need bandwith like Facebook and Netflix, but have ALSO put the squeeze on the individual consumers. How many people do you know who would be willing to pay $100+ dollars a year to stay on Facebook? How many would be priced out? How many might pay this price, but at the cost of being able to do something else with that money?

A list of costs ISPs charge their customers to NOT block content in New Zealand.
(FB, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter= $10 for 28 days.)

And even if it doesn't go down exactly like this (and you would have to sort of believe in the generosity and restraint of a company like AT&T to think it wouldn't), it's not as if the companies squeezed are just going to give up their profit margins with a wistful sigh. They're going to pass the "savings" RIGHT on to all of us. And while we don't know exactly what that would mean, it is not unreasonable to imagine that content identified as promotional would be further throttled to try and squeeze out more advertising revenue.

Ending net neutrality will, for the sake of ISP's being able to make even MORE money, impact, and possibly destroy the careers of thousands of bloggers, vloggers, patreons, Etsy stores, Kickstarters, artists, non-traditional writers, and a wide diaspora of voices who have worked around mainstream gatekeepers to scrape out a living using social media to promote their work. (To say nothing of how the proposed tax plan eliminating business expense write offs would raise our tax burdens.) A whole generation of non-traditional creatives will be devastated.

There are huge and massive issues around how this will bring gatekeepers into the online world, exploit those with the most limited resources, and serve to further marginalize communities who have found a voice in a technology with a more even playing field. This will end so much of what makes the internet incredible and make it just one more place where the wealthy get all the good stuff.

And yes, this is a personal story too. I want this blog to stay where it is, grow, and not have to go back to being a hobby that I update twice a week while pursuing a "day job." I have opted out of traditional publishing because it was possible to do so, and I would hate to see that no longer be the case. So I hope everyone reading takes a moment to inform themselves of what's at stake, and then sends on a note (or five) to the appropriate folks.

Broken Transmission

[This is the last known transmission received by the 2nd 8th rate blog Writing About Writing before all communication ceased on Wednesday, November 22 at 8:34 PM. Writing About Writing has not responded to any further attempts at communication.]

10 Things To Get You Through Week 4 of NaNoWriMo  

Hello. Evil Chris here. And I didn't just crawl out of the basement to run this Best Modern Fantasy Poll. Today I'm going to tell you about how to get through the last, and easily the most grueling week of National Novel Writing Month.

You've come this far, and there's just a little more to go. Let's keep a few things in mi–

[Static.  Transmission ends.

Status of Writing About Writing: Unknown

Bob says he'll check things out after he has dinner with the fam. He hopes the historically inaccurate Jurassic Park bio-engineered velociraptor with the laser on its head didn't get out again because his Nana made pecan pie.]

Best Modern Fantasy (Reminder to Vote)

What is the best fantasy book or series written in the last 25 years?  

I'm flipping the order of operations between tomorrow and today–today will be the poll and tomorrow will be Evil Chris's survival guide to week three of NaNoWriMo. The reason for this change is three and loves Death Star jelly bean dispensers. Also I'm going to weep bitter tears when N.K. Jemisin doesn't make it to the finals (as it seems they won't), so if you see me on the streets, have pity. I am going through the only slightly imaginable. However, such is not under my control. *sigh* 

There are only four days left to vote. On Saturday I will post the results of this poll and put up the final round.

I know some people won't read this before they look at the choices and make a comment on Facebook, but please consider that 1) this is only half the titles in the semifinal round ("Oh my god how could Harry Potter not make it????" It did. It was in the first semifinal and will be going on to the finals.), 2) there were rules that disqualified titles that came out before 1992 ("Why isn't Wheel of Time on here?" Because it's not modern according to the definition of this poll.), and 3) there have been twelve rounds getting to here and that was after the epic-est nominations process I've ever seen, and much like N.K. Jemisin's unlikelihood of making it to the finals, I controlled literally NONE OF IT. My readers made all the decisions, so if a title got voted off the island or never got nominated, acting like it is a crime to the genre might make you look a little foolish.

Don't forget you get three (3) votes, but that there is no ranking, so using as few votes as possible is better.

The poll itself is in the lower left at the bottom of the side menus.

I'm told if you're on mobile you have to click "webpage view" then scroll alllllllllll the way to the bottom, you can find the poll.

Metacular (Personal and Meta Update)

I'm sure at one point I had a reason for looking this ridiculous.

A post on Monday? Whaaaaaaaat?

Actually it's just a preview to let you know what's going on. This week is a major holiday and our update schedule might look a little screwy. You know I can't get the staff to even come in on a bank holiday. Even if I offer them double-time, they say something like: "So, you're going to give us TWO coupons for half off DippenDots with the purchase of a value meal."

And they say it in that way that means it's totally the end of the conversation, so I'm not really sure.

Sci Guy wants to install a buttload of tracking software so we can definitively figure out what's going on with Evil Mystery Blogger by logging keystrokes or something, but it's a huge endeavor and he needs the entire building offline. I'm sure he's not just wanting the power reserves to do experiments to bring his dead girlfriend over from timelines where she didn't die because nothing weird ever happens here at Writing About Writing when we go on break for a few days. We also have a bit of freelance hero work happening Tuesday (rather than the usual Monday schedule for that sort of thing).

Anyway the point is, I'm going to take the opportunity to do something of a MASSIVE admin overhaul in the next week. Everything from figuring out the future of guest blogging to an Inside Scoop e-mail to a catch up on all the menus that have fallen into decay. And I'd love to get some full force sessions in with my fiction now that life is not a screaming tire fire.

And hey...I might even take a moment to have some good food with friends and family in my ritual sacrifice with pie.

There should still be a really real post for tomorrow (Evil Chris assures me) and some of our Best Modern Fantasy Poll business will go up on Wed. [Edit: It looks like I'm going to have to flip the rollout schedule on these two days, but all the same posts will go up.] But then we need to take the blog offline until Tuesday. If things go very well, we might fire it back up by Sunday, but we'll be back to taking Mondays off next week.

Now there's a D&D article I've been threatening, and I think it's going to be ready this week, but I've changed my mind about posting it this week. I'm overdue to give my patrons an early access post, and I'm going to let them have it for a few days.