Guidelines and Rules for the December Writing Marathon

Calendar Writing MarathonIn my previous post entitled Who’s Up for a December Writing Marathon? Some Proposed Rules, I offered some generic guidelines to see what you might think. Because December is a little over a week away, I’d like to share with you the specifics of this marathon. First? Some guidelines to help keep this marathon honest and fair.

What Is or Isn’t Included?

Many of my fellow authors and game designers are under what’s known as a non-disclosure agreement for our projects. For those of you who haven’t sold a particular story, you’re working on something that is speculative, so what you share is up to you.

Because our projects and the amount of detail that we reveal may vary from person to person, it’s easier to explain what’s eligible for this marathon by sharing with you what I feel is not eligible.

Words Not Included Toward Goal

    1. Blogging and other internet-related content on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
    2. Outlines and related planning materials
    3. Research, including works copied/pasted from Wikipedia and other sources
    4. Editorials, reviews or lit crit about other people’s works
    5. Business correspondence (e.g. queries, pitches, emails, etc.)

The goal here is to spend the month writing on a particular project, one that is either brand new or existing. In order to do that, we all need to do a little leg work to ensure that we’re working towards a completed story or project. Some of the things I mentioned above, like the research or the outlines, are things all writers do. Of course, if a project comes up that needs to be revised, that may throw a kink in the works. (I have four out there that I’m waiting to hear back on.) However, this is very similar to what happens in real life. For myself, if a revision comes up? I still have to keep going.

How Do I Get Started?

All you need to do to get started, is to figure out what it is you want to write and what your goals for the month are. For beginning writers, maybe your goal is simply to finish writing 20,000 words in a month. If you’re an experienced writer, perhaps you may want to add a layer of difficulty in like an extra revision or a higher word count goal.

Is That It? How Do I Keep Going?

Here’s the fun part. When you submit your goal (see below), tell me what you’ll do if you miss a day. Do you hate sit-ups? If you miss a day, you could do twenty-five of those. Do you loathe laundry? Promise yourself that you’ll do laundry instead.

To help motivate you, I’ve already started working on drafts talking about the marathon in December. You can subscribe to my RSS feed if you wish or you can stop back once-a-week to check in. It’s up to you. For your convenience, I did create a December Writing Marathon on MLVWrites.com category specifically for this activity.

What Do I Need From You?

If you wish, please blog your goals for the December Writing Marathon by midnight, November 30, 2009. Then, please send me your link using my contact form to your blog post so I can add them to a post about our writing goals. Please include what activity you will do if you miss a day.

If you send me a post at the end of the week, I will be happy to include that in my weekly wrap-up as well. It is not required for you to blog, though, since that word count is over-and-above what you’re working on.

How You Can Keep Track of Your Goals

Many word processing programs have a word count feature. If you want to post your word count on your own website, I recommend using one of these word count tools from this post entitled 6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word Count Obsessed.

Any Advice On What I Should Avoid?

Recommend avoiding any discussions that cause you to second-and-triple guess either your career or what you’re working on and add to your fears. Be brave. Be BOLD. Write, write, write! The publishing industry will still publish books, with or without you writing them. Also? Recommend identifying your time-wasters up front.

What Happens If You Fall Behind?

If you need a pep talk, give a shout-out to a fellow marathon member or read more for motivation. If you don’t finish by December 31, 2009 – keep going until you do! This marathon is not about speed, it’s about endurance and getting in the habit of writing every day.

What Should I Do When I’m Done?

Since I’d like to do a wrap-up of our goals, I’d like to ask you to write a post describing what you’ve learned from the experience and if there is something “new” that you want. For example, did you learn that it’s really hard for you to write as much as you did? Do you want to find people to collaborate with? Regardless of what your experience was, it’s a good idea to wrap-up what you’ve learned so you can also figure out your 2010 writing goals.

Please send me your link using my contact form by Wednesday, January 3, 2010. From there, I’ll put everyone’s wrap-up together in a post on my blog.

Can You Help Me Write My Goals?

I will offer an optional form tomorrow that you can fill out to help you formulate your goals for this project. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work on my own to get ready for this too!

November 23, 2009
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Who’s Up for a December Writing Marathon? Some Proposed Rules.

Running Shoes | By Photo.Bugz on FlickrI know that many of you might be writing for National Novel Writing Month, and if you are – I hope that it’s going really well for you. Writing 50,000 words in a month is not an easy task, and it can be very exhausting. I knew that my schedule for November wasn’t going to allow for NaNoWriMo, so I wasn’t able to participate. Admittedly, I feel a little guilty about not making a concerted effort on my writing this month, even though I’m waiting to hear back on several projects.

So, in the interest of “getting back into it” I propose a December Writing Marathon for 20,000 words minimum. The reason why I’m suggesting a smaller word count, is because I know that that “goal” is achievable, even during one of my busier months. Before I invite you to participate, I’d like to propose some rules for this Marathon, in the hopes that you’ll be inspired to get some writing done, too! Remember, if you want to chase the rainbow, you need to put your running shoes on first!

    1. Determine What Your Personal Goal Is – Do you know what it is you want to write? Whether you’re writing for a game, a novel or four short stories of 5,000 words each, before any of us starts writing for this Marathon, we should probably figure out what we want to write.
    2. Post Your Personal Goal On Your Blog – Once you have your writing goal figured out, why not add some content to your blog and write about what you’d like to work on? After you do, feel free to shoot me the link by posting a comment and I’ll collect everyone’s goals.
    3. You Must Write Every Day Or You’ll… – In order for this to be a true “marathon,” I propose that we sit down once-a-day and write something, even if we’re blowing past the 20,000 word count goal. If we don’t sit down and write, we think of a personal activity that we’ll have to do instead. For example, if I don’t sit down and write each day, I’ll have to spend a half an hour going through paperwork or I’ll have to tack on an extra workout.
    4. At the End of Every Week, We’ll Revisit our Writing Goals – Instead of summing up where we are every day, I recommend concentrating on the writing and then revisiting the word count on a weekly basis. Like we did with our writing goals, we could simply sum up where we’re at with the marathon by writing up a short blog post.
    5. If Some of Us Don’t Hit Goal by December 31st, We Keep Going Until We Do – The key with a marathon, for me, is not to worry about the best time but to focus on finishing. Yes, I believe 20,000 words in a month is very achievable, but for some of you it may still seem pretty daunting.
    6. We Avoid Talking “About” Writing, Game Design or Publishing – This is a tough one, but this rule comes from something I’ve noticed. Talking about writing or editing doesn’t help you get the words down on the page. In fact, it can be a huge distraction. December is one of those months where there will be enough distractions, especially if you’re celebrating the holidays. I propose we try to minimize talking about writing while we’re on the Marathon.
    7. At the End of the Marathon, We Write our 2010 Writing Goals – If you’ve never written this many words in a month before, this exercise can help you understand whether or not you’re interested in writing professionally. For me, I plan on focusing on a couple of speculative projects, and I hope that the marathon will help me shape my fiction writing goals. By the time the Marathon concludes, I believe we should all have a pretty good idea of what we want to do next.

So those are some simple rules that I’d like to offer for the Marathon. If you’re interested on providing feedback, feel free to take a look at these rules for the December Writing Marathon and tell me what you think. After I get some feedback from you, I can post more “official” rules before December begins along with some helpful tools.

Photo Attribution

November 19, 2009
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Why Your D&D Game Doesn’t Make a Great Novel

DragonHave you heard the line, “Your D&D game won’t make a great novel?” If you’ve heard me speak on panels before, or if you’ve read several submission guidelines from agents or publishers, you might have. I’d like to tackle why.

First, let’s get all the bad mojo out there on the table by saying something completely untrue. “Oh, that evil publisher doesn’t like gamers…” Several well-known authors I’ve met are either gamers themselves or their kids are. And by gamers, I mean everything from tabletop to video and card games. Also? Publishers aren’t evil. You may get frustrated by their decisions, but publishing a book — even if it’s potentially your book — is integral to their overall business. To imply that they’re evil means that a business is a biological entity with a soul. Yes, some businesses have been accused of being soul-less, but that’s actually a correct statement. A better description of a business would be to think of it as a large, gigantic clock. You only see the face that tells the time, but there are lots of moving parts. Each of those “parts” may have a soul, but together they act as a publisher who wants to produce books that other people will want to purchase and read – they certainly aren’t there to make a writer’s life miserable.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get back to the topic at hand. Why won’t your D&D game make a great novel?

Here’s a rhetorical question: have you heard this story before? It’s about an elf, a ranger, a dwarf and a mage…they wake up at this inn…they don’t have any memories…they face this really evil overlord guy who–

Yes. Yes, I’m sure you have. So has everyone else on the planet.

The first lesson here, is that those characters and that plot have been beaten to death so badly, they’ve become their own cliche.

The second lesson I’d like to offer, is that writing a story not the same as “writing up a game” as a story. When you “write up a game,” you are telling the story as it happened during play, because you believe your game is so exciting other people will want to read about it. However, these stories often turn into a dictation of events, which causes the story to sound forced and the characters to become inflexible. When you write a story, you have more freedom because you don’t have to stick to a specific series of events, partly because the writer hasn’t already experienced what had happened.

Third, I’d also like to point out that many new writers don’t realize that when you write a story about your D&D game, you are engaging in a form of writing called “fan fiction.” In other words, you don’t “own” the story that you’ve created and legally, you aren’t able to sell what you’ve written. (Be sure to read my post about the difference between shared world, tie-in and fan fiction if you’re confused).

Yes, there are people who write for DRAGONLANCE and other tie-in novels for established settings. They do have some challenges writing novels, because they are writing in a world that has already been created. This type of writing can be more difficult than writing original fiction, because there are often strict guidelines that the writers and editors have to follow. (If you’ve ever worked on tie-in or media fiction, it’s a lot like putting a puzzle together.) However, this form of writing isn’t the same as “writing up a game,” because the story isn’t about a “real life” game that’s being played, it’s about a story set in the world of D&D.

If you want to share the story about your favorite game, I recommend reviewing Wizards of the Coast’s Fan Site Policy. If you want to write media, shared world or tie-in fiction, that’s an entirely different path and I encourage you to read Wizard of the Coast’s book submission guidelines.

Regardless, if you’re serious about your love of gaming and honing your craft, I’d encourage you to take a more professional approach. Please, do yourself a favor and conduct a little bit of research before you start typing away. Writing a novel is not as easy as it looks, and you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.

November 12, 2009
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Guest Blog on SFWA: Do You Know How to Sell Your Sword?

In my latest guest post on the SFWA blog, I discuss the sales cycle from an online and an offline perspective. Do You Know How to Sell Your Sword? offers you my perspective from working in online and offline retail, by providing you with a metaphor about a blacksmith who is trying to sell a magic sword.

The online sales cycle is a very passive one for retailers, because no matter how much any store owner may try — the seller is not in control. The buyer is. At a convention, for example, organizers will help facilitate traffic and flow based on the physical layout of the hall. For any website, a reader can access that store from any page because of something called natural or organic search; not “just” the home page.– SOURCE: Do You Know How to Sell Your Sword? on the SFWA blog

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed for SFWA for more articles and updates. My next guest post will be a “hit list” for authors about things to include on a website, so stay tuned.

November 12, 2009
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Read my Guest Post about Dracula on the Crackle.com Blog

Crackle.com LogoFolks, I’m pleased to announce that I have a guest post over at Crackle.com.The best part about Crackle.com, is that you can legally watch original and older content for free online — without a lot of commercials! As part of their Halloween celebration, they’re offering really, fun movies for fans to watch like GHOSTBUSTERS and CANDYMAN.

When they asked me what vampire movie I wanted to write about, I initially chose FRIGHT NIGHT as my first pick. When they had mentioned that they needed someone to write about BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, I was interested because I’ve often considered the film to be a “paranormal romance.”

In the novel, Mina does not return the Count’s love. In the film, she not only returns his love, she pities him and fights for him. This is an important difference between the two because this version of Dracula does eventually find forgiveness from the same God he turned his back on centuries ago. The phrase “the blood is the life” holds layers of significance here as well: the blood of God and the vampires’ primary sustenance. — SOURCE: Love, Blood and Fangs: Bram Stoker’s Dracula at Crackle.com

If you’re interested, I invite you to check out my post on Crackle.com’s blog. Remember, you can then watch BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA for free, too. Enjoy!

October 31, 2009
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