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Five. Golden. Rings!

Guys, Sarah Belliston is a rock star. I just finished reading the first 50ish pages of her YA fantasy Conduit and it pretty much rocks. But that’s not the only reason she is awesome.

Sarah is especially awesome for organizing the12 Days of Christmas Giveaway & Blog Hop. Here’s how it works:

12 blogs.

12 days of Christmas.

12 times to WIN.

Listed on Sarah’s blog are the 12 bloggers participating in this blog hop. Between now and December 1st, each of the 12 will put up a contest post, letting you know what you can win at their blog. All contests are open through December 12th. Then, starting on December 13th, winners will be picked! One (or maybe more!) a day for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Then, on Christmas Day, Sarah has a super-duper Secret Santa Giveaway that goes above and beyond the 12 already being held.

Does it get any better? I submit that it does not.

I was given the fifth day of Christmas, Five golden rings! (hence the post title). But, um, my prizes really have nothing to do with golden rings. Maybe I will wear some while I am performing the prize….

So what can you win on my blog? What else:

I am giving away (another) full manuscript proofread and critique. I will read your manuscript (no length limit, but be realistic here – if your book is clocking in at 250,000 probably you should self-edit a bit). My strengths are in YA and MG, so critiques will be more in depth for those genres. Line-by-line proofreading is the same no matter what you’re writing, so that’s that.

Hey, isn’t it  FIVE golden rings?

Huh. Turns out it is. Which means we will have FIVE winners! But I’m not totally insane, y’all. Only one winner gets to send the full manuscript. For the four runners-up, I will proof and critique their first 50 pages!


But, wait! There’s more!

As a couple of you know, Geek Husband and I are starting a web design and development business. We are in pre-launch mode right now, getting everything geared up and ready to go…and building our portfolio. So, in the spirit of giving, we have decided to give:

ONE FREE WEBSITE DESIGN!!!

That’s right. All design, programming, you name it, it’s free. All our websites are designed to be used with an easy content management system (we mainly use wordpress, but if you prefer another, we will code to whatever you want) so you can update whenever you want without waiting for your web guy to do it for you. Full blog integration is included.

(Fine print: design and coding is free. CMS and blog integration is free. You must pay for your own domain name and web hosting. We reserve the right to refuse to design sites based on content. But don’t worry, you’ll be fine. If you are an author writing erotica, no biggie; if you’re wanting us to make you a porn website, we’ll say no.)

Since the web design is so large a prize, and to help promote the other authors on the blog hop, I will not be drawing the winner until the end of the year (I don’t want to take away from Sarah’s prize day and do it on Christmas…so we can wait a little longer). Entries for this will be accepted through Christmas day. Also, entries for the web design come from entering all the 12 Days of Christmas giveaways, not just mine. So go visit everyone else and enter their contests!

Enter to win the web design by following this link!

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NaNo Tip: the late and brief version

I’m a couple days late with my tip this week. Seems that packing an entire house, preparing to launch a business, and baking up a storm for a charity dessert auction (not to mention wrangling Baby Caveman) can take a lot of time. Who knew? ;)

This week’s tip is a short one: put away the computer, take a break, and go outside. Some time away to enjoy the rest of your life will be great. Plus, you will be more productive when you get back to writing, I promise.

How are things going for y’all? Are you going to reach your goals this month?

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NaNoWriMo Love

As promised, I’m back today to tell you the things about NaNoWriMo I love, despite my choice to fail this year. So, in wonderful listy form, here I go:

1) It forces you to actually finish.

Okay, so obviously that is not true. But the idea is still there. NaNoWriMo is great for the writer who has been struggling to finish anything she’s started. It gives a goal and a deadline, which is something many writers don’t give themselves. It is amazing how much more productive one is when one has a goal and a deadline. Many new writers won’t do it, so NaNoWriMo does it for them.

 
2) The communtity.

The forums at NaNoWriMo.org are filled with others just like you: semi-crazy writers trying to create their novels. They give support, help you bounce ideas around, and when things are looking down they do whatever possible to bring you back up again. The forums are fun, entertaining, educational, and a great place to meet new writer friends. Yes, there are many other forums out there that offer a place for writers to hang out, but the NaNo forums are special for many writers.

3) You have no choice but to turn the internal editor.

When you are trying to crank out 50,000 words in only 30 days,  you can’t go back to edit things. You just can’t. Not if you want to be able to meet your goal, at least.

It’s a hard thing to so, but turning off that part of the brain that wants perfection is a wonderful, beautiful thing. NaNoWriMo can help teach you to do that, and in the process free your mind for future drafts as well.

4) In the end, you have a finished draft!

Many writers will write for years and years without actually finishing something they start. It’s great to get practice putting words on paper, but that’s only part of the battle. We need to finish what we start in order to really grow. For many, the first time they ever finished a draft came during NaNoWriMo.

5) It teaches that YOU CAN DO IT!

November is over and you have a shiny (okay, probably pretty murky) first draft in hand. You did it! How long have you been working at this dream, thinking that maybe you would never be able to write a book? Now you have. NaNoWriMo has taught many people that they actually have it in them to write a book. For me, it wasn’t NaNo, but I did prove to myself that I could actually write a book by forcing myself to do it all in a month. Now that I know I can do it, the process is much less daunting and I can take my time to make the book better, knowing that in the end I CAN FINISH.

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What I want most

 

We’re a week into NaNoWriMo, and last night I deleted my words. Every. Single. One. Then I opened up a new file and started again. Did I just ruin my chances of getting 50,000 words this month? Well, never say never, but yeah, I probably did.

And I am totally okay with that.

You see, my goal is to write a book that I can make great. I know it won’t be great in the first draft, but I want to have the platform to make it so. I wasn’t getting that with what I was writing in my NaNoNovel, so I decided to call a mulligan and do it over.

Normally, I am a huge advocate of the don’t get it right, get it written camp, meaning I think one should push all the way through a first draft before going back to try to edit it. That’s how I’ve written before and it has worked beautifully. This time, however, I couldn’t make myself keep moving forward because I knew what I was working on was wrong, wrong, wrong.

It had the wrong narration, the entirely wrong tone. I could have kept moving forward – I could have written the whole book – but I knew in the end that the only way to salvage what was there would to completely rewrite it. So I decided to take a step back, evaluate what would be best for my book, and ultimately start again.

The plot and action are exactly the same, but what I wrote last night is completely different from what I had before. The tone is what I had in mind when Geek Husband and I planned the book out. It fits with the vision I have in my head, where what I wrote before doesn’t. I might have had to throw out a lot of words, but it’s all okay, because what I wrote last night sets me up for success with this book.

Some might say that, in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I should have changed the tone when I realized there was an issue and then fixed the beginning to match during edits. Anything to plow through and get the first draft done this month. Shoot, once upon a time, I would have been one of those people. But I’ve learned something over the past few years of writing: yes, first drafts are all crappy – as is the nature of a first draft – but I am better off taking the time and detours needed to give myself a solid foundation than pushing through for the sake of getting more words on the paper.

I guess what it boils down to is expressed perfectly in the quote above. What I want now is to write this first draft and break-neck speed and finish it this month. What I want now is to win NaNoWriMo. But is that what I want most?

I gave that a lot of thought last night before trashing what I’d written. And the answer is: No, winning NaNoWriMo is not what I want most. What I want most is to write as solid a draft as possible on the first go-around. And, as much as I wish it weren’t the case, that is going to take some time. More than one frantic month, surely.

(Even though I decided it is not the best route for me this time, I still adore NaNoWriMo. In fact, come back tomorrow for a post on all the things about NaNoWriMo that I think are fabulous!)

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In which I was an idiot…

Oops.

A while ago, I redid my blog design, as you might remember. (Side note: I am redoing it AGAIN. Not because I don’t like it, because I do, but because Geek Husband is a programmer, but doesn’t have any WordPress or Drupal experience, so I am designing my site again and giving him the practice of coding it from the ground up on both platforms – meaning things I usually use plugins for will be specifically coded for me now.)

Anyway, during the redesign, I decided to get rid of my landing page and just have the blog be front and center. But I didn’t think things through. You see, all my lovely RSS and GFC followers were following rachelbateman.com/blah-g not rachelbateman.com. So pretty much my blog dropped from their feeds.

I repeat: oops.

So, rather than ask everyone to update their feeds, I’m bringing the landing page back and shifting the blog back to a blah-g page. Which mean I do have to ask those of you who have added me to your readers in the last couple weeks to please update my feed to http://rachelbateman.com/blah-g.

Sigh.

Thank you, lovlies.

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Two For Tuesday: linkage

Packing takes all the time, guys. For real. So nothing real from me again today, but I HAD to share a couple links with y’all.

1. This post from Kody Keplinger is a MUST READ. Must. And not just if you are a writer. This is a must read if you are a human being. Which I suspect you are. If you are not, please let me know, because I’m intrigued.

2. RECIPES!

Quite some time ago, I mentioned that I was trying a new sugar cookie and glace icing recipe to help me achieve pretty, pretty cookies without icky, icky royal icing. I love the recipe and have used it more times since then than I care to admit…but I forgot to share. So I will now.This is the only sugar cookie recipe you will ever need again. And the icing? Divine.

Make these sugar cookies.

Decorate them with this icing.

Yum!

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NaNo Tip: Sara Zarr

I had a great tip planned for you guys today, but it will wait for next week, because instead of reading what I have to say, you should read THIS piece from Sara Zarr.

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All the things, why do they happen in November?

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. This is no surprise to anyone who’s read my blog the last few weeks. It’s funny though, once I stated my interest in writing a book in one month, ALL THE THINGS started piling up for November.

Geek Husband and I have been looking to move for some time now, and recently we decided to put a deadline on ourselves and make it happen. We are now moving the first week of December. Which means I have to pack up my entire house this month. It’s amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in 3.5 years of living someplace (I’m glad it’s only been that long…I couldn’t even imagine if we’d been living here for 20 years or something).

Going along with moving, we’ve decided to take the plunge and buy a house. Add more things to take care of during November, because there’s a lot of stuff that goes into preparing to buy a home. Especially if you are getting great first-time buyer rates. I just wish there was a way to test out of all this mandatory home-buyer education. Because I’m an over-researcher so I’ve already learned all this stuff.

Then…the weekend before Thanksgiving we are holding a benefit auction to raise money to help with my father-in-law’s medical bills (he had a nasty bout of esophageal cancer). Part of the auction includes a dessert auction, so I need to bake my little tushy off (though, I won’t lie, I have a tendency to sample my product, so all that baking surely won’t reduce the size of my tushy)(which is a perfectly acceptable size)(who am I kidding? I’ll just be cocky here – I like my butt). Ahem. Anyway, lots of baking to be done.

So, yeah. I have a lot of things to juggle this month. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop my manic writing. Will I get 50,000 words this month? To be honest, probably not. There’s just too many things piling up. But you better believe I will have more words than I started with, and that’s the whole point, right?

(For the record: I surpassed my goal last night, so I’m off to a good start!)

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NaNo Productivity Tip: Dress for Success

It’s November! NaNoWriMo time! Woo-hoo!

My tip is a day late this week because I didn’t want to overshadow my contest winner post yesterday, but it’s here now and it’s a good one.

NaNo Productivity Tip: Dress for Success

One of the fun parts of being a writer is the fact that you can do your job anywhere you go, wearing anything you want. It’s been said many times that a writer’s uniform is her pajamas. So why would I want to take that comfy, lazy joy from you?

Geek Husband is a computer programmer – another job that allows one to wear whatever one likes to work. He works in an office, so there is a dress code, but it’s pretty casual. He goes to work in jeans and a t-shirt every day; he might throw on a button-up if he’s feeling particularly dressy one day. But it’s pretty well known that there are companies out there (*cough*IBM*cough*) that have a serious dress-code from their programmers. I’m talking a suit and tie here. For workers who sit in front of a computer, not seeing the public at all.

Why would a company require this? It’s simple: dressing up for work is a mental game. By buttoning up that shirt, tying the tie, and slipping the suit jacket over his shoulders, the IBM programmer is getting into the mindset to do some serious work. Sitting in front of the computer in your pajamas leaves you in that lazy mindset and you are more likely to surf the net and dink around without actually getting any work done.

As someone who’s worked at home in a number of different positions, I’ve tested this theory on myself. I know I am more productive if I get ready for the day as if I were going to work at an office where I’d be seeing clients all day long, even if really the only people I will see are Geek Husband and Baby Caveman (who couldn’t care how I look as long as I feed and play with him). Now it’s your turn to try it out.

Before you sit down to write, get dressed and ready like you would before heading off to work. Take those moments to get yourself in the mindset of working, and I promise you will be more focused and productive than if you just go to in your pajamas.

Seriously, try it.

 

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WINNER!!

Y’all gave me a lot of great movie, book, and TV suggestions. Many I was already familiar with but was reminded of; a few I’d never heard of but want to check them out now. Thank you!

Now, what you’re actually here for…A WINNER!

Random.org decided the winner for a full manuscript proofread/critique is :

Woo-hoo! I’ll be sending a message your way.

Now…there’s more:

Maybe because I’m having a sugar-high* but I’ve decided to spread the love to everyone that entered! Now, I’m not totally crazy and I can’t offer you all FREE full critiques. That’d be totally crazy. Totally.

But what I can do is this:

For everyone who gave me a recommendation and tried to win, I will proofread the first three chapters of your manuscript for free. Just shoot me an email and we’ll figure things out!

*Who else loves the song “Sugar High” that plays at the end of EMPIRE RECORDS?

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