The New NaNo for the New and the Insane

Hello again!

I have updated and added new sections to NaNo for the New and the Insane! You can now find it on the Smashwords site, which offers formats for all major ebook readers, plus on-line, pdf, rtf (which works with almost any word processor like Word and Open Office) and a couple stripped down text versions as well. Now you can have the book on your Nook, Kindle, Sony Reader, Kobo and more. As soon as the book is reviewed, it will also turn up for the iPad and more.

And yes, the book is still free!

I wrote this book a few years ago and some of the functions of the NaNo boards have since changed. Overall, however, the book still offers a lot of helpful hints. Download it early so you have time to read it before November! I hope you find it helpful!

The book also includes the Woodle Pooves story (Author Vs. Character), which I originally wrote for the NaNo boards many years ago. (It has apparently become my most popular story, since it's the one I hear the most about!)
You can download your free copy from here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/84837


This is a Table of Contents

(New material is marked by NEW)

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE INSANITY
Introduction to the 2011 Edition
What is this Madness?
The First Step in a Crazy Journey
How to Go Crazy Once a Year
Why I Wrote This Book
The NaNo Question for Zette
An Interview with Chris Baty
CHAPTER 2: PREPARING FOR NANO
Attitude
Challenges
Pre-Writing Work and NaNo
Outlining for Fun
Phase Outlines and NaNo
Characters and Other Nuisances
NEW: Experimenting with POV
NEW: Talk to Your Characters
The Time and the Place
The Last Steps to Getting Ready!
CHAPTER 3: FORUMS, BLOGS, WEBSITES AND MORE
Forums are Good . . . and Evil
Posting Fiction on Open Boards
Forward Motion and Other Writing Sites
NEW: Expanding Avenues of Inspiration
Helpful Sites
CHAPTER 4 GOALS AND KEEPING THEM
The Actual Writing
Four Steps for Working up Openings
Easy Daily Goals: Moving Ahead with the Story
A Different Goal: Moving up the List
Almost Random Events
NEW: Zette's Take: How (and why) #write100 works
NEW: The Worst Case Scenario
CHAPTER 5: KEEP WRITING TO THE END
Don’t Stress
Why Do You Bother?
It's Not Your Fault If They Quit
Prolific Writers and NaNo
New: All the Way to The End
CHAPTER 6: THE AFTER NANO BLUES
Writing for Publication -- and the Dread of Editing
"It's a dull word," she said.
Hints from a Small Time Publisher
The Question of Publication
New: Indie Publishing: Ready or Not
CHAPTER 7: JUST FOR FUN
The Angst of Hero Naming
Author versus Character

I LOVE this book and remember it fondly from my first Nano back in '07. It's thrilling to have it in a format I can load on my Kindle now.

Thank you Lazette for updating it and making it compatible with ereaders!

To anyone who needs a little help getting going, good advice on various parts of the process, then this is the book for you. Among other things, the Phase Outline that she mentioned helped me win my first Nano and I still use it on occasion. It's a good flexible outline for those who don't like to outline.

I remember reading this last year and enjoying it. Will be reading it again within the next few days! Thank you.

Thank you for posting this again this year! My only thought would be that a table of contents in the actual book would be nice. (Maybe there was one and I missed it.) It all just kind of flows and flows with no real clear breaks for chapters so finding things can be a little difficult.

I'll look at a clickable TOC in the new version, but to be honest it's not going to happen with this year's version. I'm fighting just to get my outline done for NaNo this year, along with a huge amount of other work. Ack.

Thanks Zette! I re-read this every year along with No Plot, No Problem (by the inestimable Chris Baty). I really recommend for new and veteran WriMos.

Three cheers for Zette!

Thank you so much for putting it back on, Zette! I read it last year and it's truly awesome!

I just downloaded. Thanks for sharing. Tonight's reading is sorted!

Thank you I'm new and wanted some advice, downloading this. Thank you so much for this

Just downloaded it, thank you ^_^

Thanks for the update. I'll be reading it on my nook this year.

Thank You Zette!

Ahhh this will probably help me so much this year! I can't wait to read it. Thank you!

I need a kindle lol

Thank you Zette! This book helped me immensely in my first Nano. I'm happy you've updated the book.

Awesome! Thank you for sharing this - I look forward to reading it :-D

I hope everyone enjoys the book and finds something useful in it! Good luck with your NaNo this year.

I want to say Thank You for this post. This is my first time in participating in NaNoWriMo and I'm really looking forward to the push that's really needed to get the creative juices flowing again. I've downloaded the book to both my kindle and the PC so that it's there when I'm writing and it's there when I'm on the move or at work unable to write but have the incentive to turn to :)

I literally said, "YAY!" when I saw this thread! I have this book on my Kindle already, but just converted from the PDF into the Kindle format, which doesn't always work out perfectly. I re-read it every so often. I'm glad I have an updated version that will perhaps work better on my Kindle! *goes off to download*

Thanks for the guide - I'm really looking forward to reading it. A humble suggestion, however... it would be great if you put some direct links to the work here in your intro! It took a while digging around to find the book on Smashwords, including a long wander round their dedicated NaNo section...

Anyway. Fingers crossed I get it together this year. Thanks again.