Episode 8: NaNoWriMo Tips with Author Jade Eby
We are joined today by hybrid romance author Jade Eby! Jade has written 18 books and participated in NaNoWriMo for 10+ years. She brings a lot of NaNo experience to the conversation as we talk about how to prepare for NaNo and what to do with all those NaNo manuscripts!
Click to tweet: The joy of writing is the fun. NaNo is a good time to play! @jade_eby
IN THIS EPISODE
The difference between the years she was successful with NaNo and the years that she wasn’t? Jade says it all comes down to planning.
To successfully prepare for NaNo, Jade Eby says, “The most important thing is knowing where your story is going and what your story is. Like Lisa Cron of Story Genius says, story isn’t what happens to a bunch of people, it’s really about how your character changes and how that affects everything else within the story. Knowing that going in is so important, because it will be so much easier to get those words down.”
Jade time tracks and mood tracks her words, to realize the correlation between her mood and her writing progress.
Her planning timeline pre-NaNo (or for any story, really) is dependent on the amount of research required for the book.
If you aren’t comfortable with your planning by the time November 1 rolls around, Jade reminds us that NaNo is fluid. If you start and you make progress, you’re a winner.
Find your place on the spectrum of NaNo- between being intensely serious about it on one end to not taking it seriously enough and slapping a crappy manuscript up for sale on Dec 1.
Jade was a teen the first time she did NaNoWriMo.
How can we use NaNo to instill a love of writing in our kids?
Jade is the perfect NaNo candidate because after a decade of writing she knows that her best work is produced by this process: fast draft followed by several revision drafts. “It’s all about trusting your process.”
“The joy of writing is the fun. NaNo is a good time to play, experiment with something new, and see what happens.”
