SPA Girls Podcast – EP105 – Why YOU Should Do NaNoWriMo!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
This week we talk about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, writers around the world challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days. For newer writers, it can seem like an insurmountable challenge, but even just joining in and being part of the NaNoWriMo environment can be inspiring and energising. It’s been getting bigger and bigger every year, and for the writers who manage to ‘win’ (ie finish 50K) it’s an amazing achievement. There are stories everywhere of people who’ve started their writing career with NaNoWriMo, going on to publish many books and have successful careers.
So what’s so great about NaNoWriMo? That’s what we discuss in this episode of the SPA Girls Podcast – why it’s been so successful, the aspects of it that we love, and why we think you should be doing it this year. (And don’t miss our surprise challenge at the end of the episode!)
Join us HERE on facebook
Sign up to Nanowrimo
Martha Alderson’s guide to scheduling Nanowrimo
How Nanowrimo changes your writing routine
Episodes 100 – 200 List
200 What we’ve learned so far…
199 Interview with Adam Croft – Mindset and Marketing
198 Find Your Sparkle – with Julie Schooler
197 Hack Your Muse – with Kelly McClymer
196 Public Speaking For Authors – with Alena Van Arendonk
195 The Magic Pill – with Laura Van Arendonk-Baugh
194 A Day In The Life Of A Writer
193 Keep It Simple
192 Interview with Skye Warren: Money Mindset and Facebook Ads
For Authors (Part Two)
191 Interview with Skye Warren: Time Management & Advertising
For Authors (Part One)
190 Dragon Wrangling with Scott Baker: secrets for
Successful dictation
189 Interview with Patricia McLinn: Writing by the seat of
Your pants
188 Interview with Morgana Best: Writing & Marketing
Cozy Mysteries
187 Interview with Geoff Symon: Wounds & Crime Scenes
186 Interview with Natasha Bajema, WMD for Authors
185 The Writer’s Detective with Adam Richardson
183 Facebook Advertising with Maria Luis ~ Part Two
182 Facebook Advertising with Maria Luis ~ Part One
181 Learn dictation with Kilby Blades
180 Interview with Brian Meeks, Mastering Book Descriptions
179 Interview with Tara Cremin, Kobo Writing Life
178 Interview with Larissa Reynolds – Newsletters Part Two
177 Interview with Larissa Reynolds – Newsletters Part One
175 Wrangling Facebook: How To Make It Work For You
174 How To Write A Regency Romance
173 How Do You Identify Your Writing Weaknesses?
172 Interview With Dan Wood, D2D
171 Interview With Serenity Woods
169 5 Goals You Need To Make In 2019
168 Jumpstart Your 2019 Marketing with 31 Quick To Dos for Jan.
167 Scheduling For Writing Success
166 Our 2018 Roundup
165 He Said, She Said: Creating Dazzling Dialogue
164 Interview with Steffanie Holmes: Reverse Harem
163 Interview with YA author Kelly St Clare
160 Amazon Excl v Wide – things to consider and how to market
159 Interview With Kathryn LeVeque
158 Some Like It Hot – Or Not. Heat Levels In Romance
157 Interview With Louisa George
156 The Kindness Factor: Helping You Achieve More and Stress Less
155 Editing
153 Characters: From Cookie Cutter to Kapow
152 Interview with Tina Dietz: Audiobooks
151 Interview with Grace Burrowes
150 Should You Prune Your Mailing List?
149 RWNZ18 Interview with Damon Suede & Geoff Symon
148 Interview with indie superstar, Bella Andre
147 Top Ten Traits for Success
146 Write Better Faster with Becca Syme
145 Newsletter Ninja Tammi LaBrecque
144 Looking After Your Creative Health
143 Interview with Carlyn Robertson from Bookbub
142 Personal Branding For Authors with Lauren Clemett
141 Ten Free Online Tools For Authors
140 Tempting Taglines & Heartstopping Hooks
139 Findaway Voices with Kelly Lytle
138 Get Your Writing Mojo Back
137 Interview with Toni Kenyon: facebook live & serials
136 Dealing with misinformation and change in Sp-ing
134 Interview with Kevin Tumlinson, Draft2Digital
133 Interview with Sara Rosett
132 Organization For Authors – how to keep track of your
research and book details without losing your mind
131 Interview with Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy
130 Critical Care: Leveraging feedback for success
129 Brand You
128 SAS Special: Interview with Johnny B. Truant & Sean Platt
127 Industry Insiders with Damon J. Courtney of Bookfunnel
& Christine Monroe of Kobo
126 SAS Debrief with Jami Albright
125 SAS Special: Interview with Michelle Spiva
124 SAS Special : Interview With Michael Anderle
123 Sports Psychology for Authors – Interview With Nate Vella
122 Using Sub Plots To Amp Up Your Writing
121 Interview with Scott King: Outlining Your Novel
120 Pen-names Pros, Cons and Possibilities
119 Reader Engagement with Nalini Singh
118 Writing the Small Town Setting
117 Handling Negativity and Naysayers
116 Tough Mindset Questions For 2018
115 Interview With Nicola Davidson: Sex and Sensibility
114 Tropealicious
112 Interview With Honoree Corder & Ben Hale: Write Like A Boss
111 Ten Health Hacks For Writers
110 Interview with Kathryn Burnett: Your Writing Audit For Future Success
109 Interview with Melissa Storm: What Readers Want
108 Interview With Zoe Dawson: Writing Across Genres
107 Interview With Dave Chesson, The Keyword King
106 Pros and Cons of Kindle Unlimited
105 Why YOU should do Nanowrimo
104 Ten Truths For New Self Publishers
103 Find 30 Minutes A Day EXTRA!
102 Your Christmas Presence: Maximizing the Holiday Season for Authors
101 The Writing Life: Interview with Katie Cross
100 100 Episodes! Retrospective with funny moments; changing AO title
SPA Girls Podcast – EP167 – Scheduling To Save Time
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
If you’re trying to find a few more minutes in your day for writing, then this episode is for you. We talk about how you can use scheduling to be more productive, free up time and get stuff done.
Each of the SPA Girls uses different kinds of scheduling to make certain repetitive tasks easier and faster, and we share them all for you in this informative episode!
SHOW NOTES:
WHAT IS SCHEDULING? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
It’s easy to let the time fly away through your fingers, telling yourself it’s only five minutes on Facebook, a quick check on Twitter. But if you add up all the procrastination, the tiny bits of time each day that you spend doing nothing… It’s scary how much time you actually spend NOT WRITING.
Scheduling your day, your time is one way to claim back your writing time, to make sure you’re using your day to the best of your ability.
We’re all busy, have limited time in our day. Scheduling is the best way to claim back more hours in your day for what’s important. Writing!
There are several different aspects to scheduling. One is scheduling your day, planning out what you’re going to do. You could also schedule on a longer term basis, like how much you want to write that week etc. You can also schedule things like Facebook posts ahead of time, using blocks of time, instead of small amounts of time all over the show.
HOW DO YOU SCHEDULE?
There are different ways you can schedule. Here are a few examples:
- Chunking – where you plan your day in chunks of time, and do something for that period of time, then stop.
- Timed activities – You could do on the hour writing, so that at 9am, you start writing, until you read 1000 words, then you can stop and do something else (like washing, or marketing or whatever) and then at 10am an alarm goes off and you sit back down and write another 1000 words. Same again at 11am and so on.
- Plan big and then make it small – Get a diary, plan out what you want to achieve over the whole year, divide it into manageable weekly and daily chunks, and then use those goals in your daily work like.
- Write lists – Write daily lists and make sure you cross everything off the list
- Schedule social media in chunks – Instead of going in every day for a few minutes and then getting lost in the abyss of social media, try scheduling posts in chunks on one day a week. Sunday night, do all your posts for hte week, and then you just have to pop back in to check on comments.
- Working out a writing schedule
- Dividing the time allocated to your writing into writing time, and marketing time etc
- Work out when you do your best work – are you a morning person or an evening person? Monitor yourself for a few weeks, work out when you’re doing your best work, and then make sure you save that time for writing.
- Also collect data – each time you sit down to write, make sure you write down how much time you spent, how many words you wrote. That will help with planning your schedule.
- Know how you work best – work out your writing routine. (music, silence etc)
SETTING GOALS AND PLANNING AHEAD
- Set goals that will motivate you to stick to your schedule
- Parkinson’s law – things will expand to fit the time you have.
- Pareto rule – 80/20 – get the data
WHAT TOOLS CAN YOU USE TO SCHEDULE?
Facebook Scheduling
Keep a file with quotes or facebook pre-prepared tiles/Share others posts
To schedule a post:
Start creating your post at the top of your Page’s timeline.
Click next to Publish and select Schedule.
Below Publication, select the date and time when you want the post to publish.
Click Schedule
Twitter Scheduling
Keep in the same file as above and use the Facebook content that you have prepared/Share others posts
Use Tweetdeck which is a free app. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com
- pomodoro,
- Cut and paste document/outlook shortcut keys.
- writing with others
- Sprints, in person or online.
HELPFUL LINKS:
Bria Quinlin’s Author Life Planner: http://briaquinlan.com/authorlife-planner-is-now/
Audrey Ann Hughey’s 2019 Author’s Journal: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790831105/
Marie Force’s blog: https://blog.marieforce.com/for-writers-how-i-doubled-my-productivity-this-summer/
Trello: www.trello.com
Pomodoro Technique: https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique
Online Time Trackers we’ve tried (free plans):
Hours Stack: https://hourstack.io/
Harvest: https://www.getharvest.com/
Toggl: https://toggl.com/
Officetime (paid phone app) : http://www.officetime.net/
Complete Guide to Bullet Journalling for Writers: https://writersedit.com/fiction-writing/complete-guide-bullet-journaling-writers/
SPA Girls Guide to: Kick Overwhelm To The Curb
https://www.getapp.com/p/sem/scheduling-software
Some Of Our Favourite Self-Publishing Resources
Writing tools
Scrivener – A program that you write in to or you can download a file. Novels or documents are broken down in to sections and/or chapters, the headings of which will be lined up on the side of your work. You can write notes and it also has a virtual corkboard. It is very visual, making it easy to follow and see gaps in your plot etc. One off cost.
writeordie.com – An app that keeps you writing in spurts. 15 minutes is a good prompt. Has several levels, including Kamakazee which deletes your work if you don’t write quick enough. None of us use this level!
Pomodoro – working in sets of approx. 25 minutes (or whatever works for you) with a five minute break in between. You can compete with yourself or others to encourage output. Ticks like a clock.
Plottr – For the visual peeps, this is a gamechanger! Lets you outline and plan your story visually and also keep a detailed story bible.
Editing support
Natural Reader – Will show up your mistakes by reading your work back to you. Punctuation, flow, grammer etc. There is a free down load option as a trial which you can use on your PC or MAC to start with, and purchase the full program later should it prove valuable to you. You can stop and start the reading, so you can follow and make notes. Free.
Pro-Writing Aid Fantastic grammar, spelling and style checker used by all of us. It’s regularly updated with new features which you can customize to your own preferences. You can buy monthly, yearly or lifetime subscriptions.
Formatting tools
Jutoh – A formatting software for all platforms. Eg Mobi, epub etc. There is an accompanying tutorial but we have found that YouTube offers some great tutorials which are more step by step with a lot of screen shots. Jutoh will save you money as you will be formatting your books all the time when you are adding links or changing covers etc. A one off cost – very reasonable.
Vellum – Fabulous formatting program for those with access to a Mac computer. Produces both print and ebooks beautifully and simply.
Atticus – from Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur comes this writing and formatting tool. Both ebooks and print books can be formatted easily and their customer service (and facebook group) is excellent.
Favourite courses
Udemy – Site for courses on all sorts of topics. It’s best to join the mailing list and wait for specials, which occur regularly. There are so many you need to pick a topic and browse them. Check reviews, and you can often get a sample. They are usually step by step and screen shots to make it incredibly easy to learn what you need to.
CreativeLive.com – More expensive than Udemy. If you’re interested in upskilling, then you will be in for a lot of well-worth-it video training. They rebroadcast free so you can see what they have on offer at any given time.
Your First 10K Readers – Nick Stephenson’s course all about reader magnets and how to get more readers in general.
Ads for Authors – Probably THE most well known and respected online advertising course for authors – Mark Dawson’s course on advertising from Facebook ads, to Amazon Ads, twitter ads and Book Bub ads. It’s extensive and once you purchase it, you get access to all future updates.
Self-Publishing Launchpad – online Self pub 101 course, again from Mark Dawson. This gets you from completed manuscript to launched book/series and covers everything you need to know. Again, it’s extensive and you have lifetime access to all the updates.
Advertising
Written Word Media – Written Word Media is the company behind promo sites like Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy. Premium membership is a must-have if you are serious about growing your author business. Premium members receive 10% off all Written Word Media promos, 14 days of advance access to inventory, access to the exclusive Limelight promotion, and much more.
KDROI – Sends your book out to free platforms – growing all the time. Be aware of the day of promotion and make sure your book is free. Small one off cost.
Research
KDSPY – A great research tools. Lets you check out your favourite genres and authors. Highlights keywords, best-selling niches that at used. How many books were sold in particular categories. Check availability as its not in all countries right now. Small one off cost.
YouTube– you can find a how to video on just about anything. Check dates for the most current.
