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Five Reasons Not to do NaNoWriMo

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We’re three days into November. Or, as many of think about it, three days into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Cathy wrote a great post yesterday about trusting your gut during NaNoWriMo. Today I thought I’d write a post about the reasons you shouldn’t do NaNoWriMo at all.

Now, to be clear, I secretly love NaNo. I’ve done it sporadically over the last couple of decades, and I absolutely love the concept of it. I just think that if you’re doing NaNoWriMo for the wrong reasons, it may do more harm than good. So let’s get into it. Here are the top five reasons you absolutely shouldn’t do NaNoWriMo.

(Note: The first year I participated, I started on the 8th of November, so if you haven’t started yet and you think you’d enjoy the experience, it’s definitely not too late!)

1. Because it will be easier to write my novel when I’m part of a group.

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It Takes a Village

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Last week in the creative writing workshop I teach, one of the students shared her latest short story with the group. None of these kids—ages 13-17—know each other outside our class. They all attend different schools. One is an outgoing 6’5” 17-year-old rower who loves fantasy fiction; another is a shy and brilliant 14-year-old who […]

MFA + DIY: An Entrepreneurial Take on the MFA Debate

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Please welcome Gabriela Pereira, author of DIY MFA: Write with Focus, Read with Purpose, Build Your Community, to Writer Unboxed today! Gabriela is a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur who wants to challenge the status quo of higher education. As the founder of DIYMFA.com, her mission is to empower writers, artists and other creatives to take an entrepreneurial […]

A Community of Debut Authors Unite to Help Each Other

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Please welcome Kate Brandes as our guest today! An environmental scientist with over 20 years of experience, Kate is also a watercolor painter and a writer of women’s fiction with an environmental bent. Her short stories have been published in The Binnacle, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Grey Sparrow Journal. Kate is a member of the […]

A Writing Group that Works

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Please welcome guest Judy Fogarty who lives, writes, reads, and runs on the historic Isle of Hope in her native Savannah, Georgia. She holds a Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance and Literature from the University of Illinois and has served as marketing director for private golf and tennis communities in the Savannah/Hilton Head […]

Be the Encouragement

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I spend far too much time on the internet. Not (just) reading political stories which occasionally make me feel frustrated and/or helpless, either. No, I also spend far too much time in forums and writing groups and the like, which also occasionally make me feel frustrated and/or helpless. So I’d like to take a moment […]

Survey: Writing Process

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Hello, friends! I’m here to ask you a quick favour. I’ve been mentoring a local senior high school student with her senior research project this year. She’s undertaking a research project incorporating both practical and theoretical components. Her subject of choice: Novel writing. The first part of her project is to write a novel. She’s been […]

2016 Writer Unboxed UnConference: Open for Early Registration ———- plus, Announcing Our Scholarship Winner

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The Writer Unboxed Un-Conference is unique. Part symposium. Part networking affair. Part workshop. Part retreat. Unlike other conferences, the Writer Unboxed UnConference will not focus on the business of writing; there will be zero (zip, nada) sessions on finding agents or writing query letters or building platform. Instead, our focus will be exclusively on the […]

The Creativity Trinity: Truth|Empathy|Hope

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Please welcome MM Finck as our guest today. MM’s women’s fiction is represented by Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. She is a regular contributor to WomenWritersWomen[‘s]Books and also oversees that blog’s Author Interview segment and Agent’s Corner. She is the contest chair for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association 2016 Rising Star writing contest for […]

Free the Writers! (From Each Other)

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  We’ve had a lot of laughs at publishers’ expense lately, about how many “actual readers” they may have met, right? What if our writers know even fewer “actual readers” than our publishers?    You’ve been around too much lately, Helen, you ought to stay at home more. That sentence, husband-to-wife, from Noel Coward’s Design for […]

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