Five Things to Do to Get Ready for NaNoWriMo 2009

NaNoWriMo starts in 26 days.  When the clock strikes 12:00 am on November 1st, participants will have 30 days to write 50,000 words.  That's 1667 words/day if you write every single day. 

What can you do to get ready?  Here are 5 things to do as you're getting ready for the Big Day:

1.  Get your research materials together and organized.  You may not want to trust the web, and some books may be vital to your work.  Things like a dictionary, thesauraus, atlas, near at hand may be valuable time-savers as well as those reference works particular to your genre or plot, e.g., Grey's Anatomy if you're going to be the next Kathy Reichs, or Daily Life in Elizabethan England if you're writing a historical romance.  Buy what you need, gather what you already have, and put everything near to your workspace. 

2.  Warn family and friends that you're not being rude when you totally ignore them the entire month of November.  Maybe a free autoresponder for your emails will help.  And don't feel guilty when they call or text anyway and you don't reply.  You're writing, and it's important. 

Rank a Blog Post Within Top 3 of Google when Google Search Results are in the Millions -- I'm Ranking Here Consistently

Yesterday, I went roaming thru my blog post stats and found some very nice ranking results. Like I'm ranking posts in the top 3 out of millions in Google search results, and with posts that have staying power (they're old and still rank high.)

So, please forgive my intrusion into the usual theme of this blog, but I'm republishing my post from yesterday on my Writer-Lawyer blog here on Rebecca Kennedy (and on Backseat Lawyer and Everyday Simplicity, too) as an experiment - to see what happens, stat-wise ....

What I'm Reading: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

I love the first line of this book, "Charles Monet was a loner."

I love it for many reasons, not the least of which is its incongruence with the subject matter of this work: the spread of the Ebola virus in Africa. Which is horrifying and real.

I usually don't read nonfiction books dealing with things like ... well... germs and stuff. Heck, I don't read fiction books that deal with germs, either. Eww.

Google Book Search Gets Swankier

Over at the Google Books Blog, there is a long post (with pictures! golly) that describes how they've improved Google Book Search in several different ways.

What's Google Book Search? Well, it's where Google is scanning book after book and then putting the contents on the web. You know, the service that's got lots of folk in a tizzy because of copyright infringement, pirating, things like that.

Time past, it was called Google Print - but after a couple of big lawsuits, things have changed.

Pictured: Han Christen Andersen's The Little Mermaid. His collection of fairy tales has been scanned and is available for free at Google Book Search.

Writer's Digest 2009 List of 101 Best Sites for Writers is Out

Writer's Digest has released its annual list of the 101 best websites for writers.

For 2009, the list is broken down into 8 categories:

Agent Blogs
Writing Communities
Publishing Resources
Jobs and Markets
Creativity and Challenges
Genres/Niches
General Resources
Fun for Writers.

And, yes, Twitter made the cut. Don't know that I agree with that one.

Validation. Worth Your 16 Minutes. Really.

Word Choice Dilemma - This Should Make U Laugh. Avoid tinny.

Reading Robert B. Parker Now ...

I don't know why I've never read any Robert B. Parker before now.

Stupid.

And, truth be told, I owe it all to Tom Selleck, because those Jesse Stone movies he's been producing and starring in -- they're specials on CBS -- made me wonder about the novels. Then, I was in line at the store and someone had stuffed one of the Jesse Stone paperbacks (Stranger in Paradise) in between the beef jerky and the King Size Snickers bars and of course, I took it as a sign.

And, sure enough it was. I love and adore Robert B. Parker.

Fast read, clean read. A true master here -- especially enjoying his dialogue. Wow. So well done, and he appears to be a member of the "use 'said' or don't use anything at all school."

Dialogue. Wow.

You know -- he said, she said. Not he cried, she exclaimed, he snarled. Dean Koontz, another one with this as a writing rule ....

I'm going through the Sunny Randall series now. From the debut forward, in publication order. And, I'm also doing this with the Jesse Stone series.

Spencer? I'm waiting on him -- that's a big buncha books, plus I dunno. I feel less connected somehow to Spencer, although I do remember the TV series from years ago, and I do remember liking the characters there. Hawk. Cool.

And, fine. I have to be honest. One of the reasons that I'm really enjoying Parker's work has nothing to do with plots or settings or character development or series construction or mysteries or thrillers or anything like that.

I love Rosie the bull terrier.

I just really like Rosie, the miniature bull terrier that splits her time between Sunny Randall and her ex-husband. Rosie is just endearing and fabulous, and well ... dog lovers are a special kind of folk, and it's nice to know that Robert B. Parker is one of us. (And, sure, I'm waiting for Jesse Stone to get his dog ... he better get one, the TV Jesse has that great golden in every story that I've seen.)

Wish Rosie had a blog, though. I mean, Martha Stewart's pugs (Francesca and Sharky) just got one, and heck. Dean Koontz's dog Trixie Koontz, has a blog AND is still writing books from the other side of Rainbow Bridge.

YouTube Interview - Lisa Scottoline

Blagojevich Gets Million Dollar Book Deal - Will YOU buy that book?

In today's news former Illinois governor Blagojevich failed to get federal prosecutors thrown off his corruption case -- the prosecutor has described Balgojevich's activities as a "white collar crime spree" that would make Abe Lincoln "roll over in his grave."

And yet, he's just made over a million bucks (all we know is "six figures") with his agreement to write a purported expose of the dark side of politics (there's another side?) for Phoenix Books. The tome is scheduled to hit the shelves in October.

I just gotta wonder two things:

1. what juice can he possibly put in this story, when you know his lawyers aren't going to let him write anything that pertains to the pending charges?

2. who cares? I'm not planning on even borrowing this one from the library, much less spend cash on the darn thing. Six-figures? Right. Sure. Stinks like a three-day old fish.