One of the things people enjoy doing on Twitter is celebrating milestones. Follower milestones are a huge thing but a lesser thing are the number of tweets you have. This morning, I noticed that I was only 5 tweets away from my 10,000th tweet.

Now, it may be silly, but I felt the need to make it something memorable. But, of course, as soon as I thought that, I was overcome with crippling tweeter’s block. When you look at the screenshot below, you’ll notice it too me 20 minutes to stop spazzing enough to actual write my 10,000th tweet.

So I finally just tweeted something I said to my parents the other day after I saw The Muppets in theatres as my 10,000th tweet and it was immediately retweeted by someone which made me feel validated as a human. In case you were wondering, my 10,000th tweet was:

The Muppets have a new movie, My Little Pony & TMNT are popular again… I hope you’re all enjoying this world I created with MY MIND!

Which seemed appropriate.

But this is the part I actually wanted to tell you about. I spent all that time waffling about what to put as my 10,000th tweet and exactly 1 minute after I posted it a tweet that I had scheduled several days ago went out. So if I hadn’t posted that status at the exact second I did I would have spent 4 tweets talking about my epic 10,000th tweet only to then have my milestone tweet be the world’s most generic NaNoWriMo tweet. Rarely do I miss looking like an idiot by such a narrow margin and it seemed noteworthy. Evil sneaky attempted milestone theft!

Also I guess it’s a cautionary tale about why you shouldn’t be like me and schedule everything to post at a time different then when you write it. So I guess from now on I should only blog or tweet when I’m actually here at my computer. So, let’s see, I’m writing this now on Dec 1 so I’ll schedule it to post… eh… sometime later.

I have apparently learned nothing.

Thanksgiving falls right in the thick of National Novel Writing Month. For every person who sees this as a blessing, someone else considers this a detriment to getting their novel done. I’m here to give you some tips so, no matter what your plans for the holiday are, you’ll be able to use your turkey time productively.

Thanksgiving is one of the biggest travel holidays of the year. But the time spent getting from here to there can be good for your novel in three big ways.

Downtime to let you mind work out ideas

Sometimes I do my best writing while I’m just staring out the window, watching the world go by. You’ve been going non-stop this month and sometimes travel can be the perfect opportunity to just let your mind wander. The beauty of letting your mind rest this way is that sometimes elements of your novel magically work themselves out when your brain can step away and work on them in the background.

Time to write

Planes, trains and automobiles. You can write on any one of them! Got a laptop? Tablet? Good old fashioned paper and pen? Write while in the car. Write while waiting to board the  train. Write while on line for airport security. All those moments of sitting on your butt that are just a part of getting from here to there can be the valuable writing time you need to get ahead.

Even the driver can take advantage of travel time by dictating novel ideas into a recorder to be transcribed later or using a voice to text program like Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Inspiration for characters and settings

You really see some characters out there on public transport, don’t you? That weird guy at the rest stop at 3 AM should totally go in your novel. That woman you overheard on the train having baby daddy drama is just the conflict you need for your next scene. Even the stress of dealing with rude or annoying people is great inspiration for experiences to put your characters through.

And the change of scenery may also be just what your novel ordered. What interesting landscapes do you pass on the way to your destination? Could you work that quirky building into your story? Does being back in your hometown remind you of something you’re passionate about?

You’ve probably been stuck inside working on your novel for most of the month. Getting out of the house can provide some fantastic external stimuli for new ideas to revitalize your novel.

Travel, even annoying travel, can be very good for your writing. Sometimes you need to go somewhere else to get your novel back to where it belongs.

My mom doesn’t really like when I share her momisms here but NOT sharing them was crushing all the fun out of my life so she’ll have to deal.

First, this classic from several months ago:

“Robert Pattinson. Isn’t he in that movie with Reese Witherwhatever, Elephants Can’t Swim?” -My mom

And then, from just now:

Mom: Doesn’t Reese… *a long pause ensues in which I assume she’s going to say some version of Witherspoon when she throws me a curve ball* Fillbus look good?

Me: …I’m sure I would agree with you if I had any idea who Reese Fillbus… wait. Do you mean Regis Philbin?

Mom: *unfazed* Doesn’t he look good for his age?

Me: *sighs* Yes, mom. Yes, he does.

And then, for old time’s sake, a rerun of this classic from the day Heath Ledger died…

Mom: Isn’t that a shame about Keith Richards?

My husband: You mean Heath Ledger? Yeah…

Mom: And Keith Richards is still alive! *she says as if Husband was the one who’d said it wrong*

Husband: Uh… yeah.

Mom: And now I’m all depressed about this financial stuff I saw on TV. I was watching that guy… oh, you know… the Mad Money guy…

Husband: *just trying to keep up* Jim Cramer?

Mom: Yes! Him. You know me. I’m terrible with numbers.

Doesn’t that just about sum it up?

The most wonderful time of the year is when it becomes socially acceptable for me to drink eggnog flavored tea every morning again.

Eggnogg’n by Bigelow. Imagine someone mixed black tea with green tea and then mixed that with eggnog flavor and cinnamon. Then imagine that somehow that actually worked and came out tasting pretty good because it doesn’t sound like it would.

Yeah… that’s what’s going on in my mouth right now.

I have recently realized that Bigelow makes all of my favor flavors of tea. I hesitate to tell you how many boxes of their tea are in my house right now. Let’s just say I shouldn’t run out anytime soon…

What’s your favorite seasonal beverage?

I have a lot of music. I used to listen to the radio just about 24/7 but now we live next to this big hill that prevents us from getting a radio signal (seriously, it’s really annoying). Working from home, alone, I really need to listen to music at all times in order to properly function. I download indie artists I’ve never heard of when they offer their albums for free. I download the free songs on Amazon. I ripped every CD in this house to MP3 (and we have a TON). I’m not picky. I just like music.

I do  listen to internet radio a lot as well. But I can only hear the same commercials on Pandora and Yahoo Radio in a row before I want to kill people. Also, there are many times during the day when I cannot spare the bandwidth for internet radio because I’m doing something  online that needs it all.

But, as I’m sure is a common issue for the iPod generation, I started to run into a problem with how to listen to all this. See, I’m one of those people that obsessively listens to their favorite song of the minute  over and over and over again and, while this makes me happy, it meant that I really didn’t listen to most of my song collection. I enjoy the random thrill of a song I used to love in high school popping into the playlist between my new favorites but true random shuffle wasn’t working for me because it was repeating songs and also giving me stuff like Christmas music that I don’t want to hear year round. I also felt like there were some songs I never ever heard.

It took me several years of tweaking, but I finally found a way to play my music to my satisfaction. 

I use the free open source Songbird but this would work in iTunes, Winamp or any player that does Smart Playlists. First I made sure all the songs had the correct genres on them (especially what I think of as less mainstream stuff like showtunes, Christmas music, etc that I don’t want to hear every day). Then I set up a smart playlist that automatically excluded those genres, thus automatically guaranteeing me a playlist of normal mainstream music.  (You can also just do this as you listen, changing genres whenever you catch a song that doesn’t fit.)

Then I set up a parameter that told Songbird to only pull a playlist of 250 songs from that pool of mainstream music based on what song was played the least recently. Now, this playlist automatically updates so that 250 is an arbitrary number… every time a song plays, it gets removed from the playlist and another song gets added in its place so there are always exactly 250 songs on the list. I just picked 250 because it was big enough to give me selection when I feel like playing DJ instead of trusting shuffle, small enough to not kill my computer.

The beauty of this system is that the newest music (with a most recently played date of nothing) automatically goes on the list but then the rest of the list is filled in with the songs it’s been the longest since I’ve heard. So, for instance, today’s playlist is some new music and a bunch of songs I last listened to a few months ago. The more music I listen to, the sooner between song repeats but it guarantees I’m always listening to music that I haven’t just heard and I’ve always got a wide variety. That Beatles binge I went on in April? The playlist is going to force me to give those songs a rest and listen to some other stuff for a little while before it puts them back on the list. Instead of obsessively listening to my favorites, it lets me rediscover the music I forgot I loved.

This may seem insanely OCD to you but I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do this since college so, when I finally tweaked this into the currently system, I can’t tell you how it increased my happiness level. I love hearing my favorites old and new and this makes sure there’s no music I never listen to… every song gets a turn on the playlist and doesn’t leave the list until it’s gotten a listen. I never have to tweak the playlist, I just open the player, hit play and go on with my day knowing I’ll heard nothing but stuff I haven’t heard in a while. It’s awesome.

Anyway, after this rare glimpse into my insanity, I have to ask you… how do you listen to your music?

I’ve been looking all over the internet and Tumblr (which is like a weird sub internet) for inspirational posters and graphics themed around NaNoWriMo to share with readers both here and over on Words Count. I found surprisingly few so I started making my own. You can see three of mine below.

Two in typical motivational poster style…

And one that’s a parody of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Tolerate and Love meme which I cannot find anywhere to link to that is not horrible so here’s the Google results for it if you aren’t familiar.

I don’t really like this one but there are so few of these I wanted to share it as well:

I also found this one which is a little hard to read.

I want to credit that one but the font is so small I can’t even read the URL in the watermark.

Anyway, I was hoping that there would be more images out there so I turn to you. Have you found or created an inspirational NaNoWriMo related image that you’d be willing to share? You can either upload it in the comments, link to it below or submit it over on Words Count. I’d love to feature it on both blogs!

So, for posterity, we had a freakish out of season snowstorm on October 29th. Because there were still leaves on the trees, the snow pulled down many, many branches and whole trees. If you aren’t in the area, it’s really hard to explain just how massive the damage was and how, over a week later, it’s still not even really cleaned up. It’s like, it’s just snow, what’s the big deal, right? Many areas look like a tornado ripped through. Trees are snapped in half, big branches down everywhere, whole trees have fallen into the road and… just left there. Driving in some areas is… interesting.

But many trees down meant many power lines down. We lost power between 3 and 4 PM on Saturday, October 29th. We didn’t get it back until the evening of November 3rd. Our neighborhood of 400 homes was completely dark for 5 days. It was very freaky looking. (What deity has it out for Denville, man? Our poor downtown was completely trashed by the Hurricane Irene flood and this time we were the top town in NJ with number of houses without power.)

We were very lucky that our house has gas so we had hot water, use of our gas fireplace and could cook using our gas stove so we definitely were better off than many but it was still very annoying (and COLD). We were also very lucky that my parents, who live nearby, got power back on Sunday so we temporarily moved in with them starting Monday night (though we kept coming back to the house for a few hours each day out of the deluded hope the power would come back). I know the crews worked very hard to get everyone’s power back and I also know that many houses, including some friends, didn’t get their power back until even later than us so I have no complaints re: the crews and power companies.

One complaint I do have, though, is directed towards the news. Because we get the New York news stations in NJ, all the weather reports were like, “We may get a little snow tomorrow, tee hee!” when they should have been like, “Holy crap, total tree devastation, expect a week without power.” I guess if you live in NY, it was just Tee Hee Snow which was all they cared about but, living in NJ or CT, it would have been nice to have had a heads up of just how bad the situation was going to be. Maybe we are just dumb but it didn’t occur to most of us that Trees + Leaves still on the trees + Snow = Huge mess and I can’t help but feel like the news should have pointed this out. They said snow, we were thinking about normal snow storms past when really we had no idea what we’d be dealing with. There’s a big difference between the news saying, “You may lose power.” and “You WILL more than likely lose power and the power will be out for up to a week in many areas.” When you’ve never had power out for more than 12 hours before in your life, you’re not expecting a simple snowstorm to knock out your power for 124 hours.  That was the #1 complaint I kept hearing from people in person and on the news: some freaking warning would have been nice.

The biggest casualty was the contents of our refrigerator though we were able to keep more food than most because I filled every Tupperware-like container in our house with snow and shoved it in the fridge and freezer. This actually worked pretty well. What can I say, I’m a smart cookie.

Anyway, we were very lucky all things considered so it was just a minor inconvenience for us. I just figured I should write up some notes about this while it was somewhat fresh in my mind.

One thing that was a little funny was how it affected my NaNoWriMo area. We had an online kick-off party for Northeast NJ and almost everyone there was like, “I’m at a hotel,” “I’m at my friend’s house,” or “I’m at my parents,” because many had no power and were mooching off someone else. We were like writer refugees huddled anywhere there was power so we could write our novels like the freaks we are. In a silly little way, I found that heartwarming.

The outage was good for one thing, though. Without access to 90% of what I need to do my day job, I really couldn’t do much else during the day but write so I got ahead on NaNo in the beginning. Of course, I squandered my early lead once the power came back and I had to do a week’s worth of real work in a day but what can you do? Also? It was a nice little reminder not to take things like electricity for granted.

Oh, and there is absolutely no place like home!

Anyway, were you effected by the October snow?

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Posts above were published in the last week on TheWhineSeller.com, MyLittlePonyCollecting.com, PricedNostalgia.com and CultofCummings.com.

The following post is a guest post from Megan of Help4Writers on Tumblr in honor of NaNoWriMo. Megan is a high school senior but has been writing for many years and loves to talk shop with other writers. Her blog has writing prompts, advice, reference and more so go on and check it out.

~Hillary

Image via Wikipedia

Many people dread the term “outline” when it comes to any kind of writing because they simply don’t feel it’s necessary to plan out what you’re writing. They get their best ideas by writing the first thing that comes to mind. Then they either edit as they go – a detriment to anyone that is participating in National Novel Writing Month – or they edit once they’ve finished writing (if they’ve gotten that far).

Outlines are an essential part of writing, whether you’re just starting out or have been writing novels for years. No matter what you’re writing down about your story to remember for a later time, this is an outline, something you wish to include when you get to a certain part.

For anyone participating in National Novel Writing Month, an outline will help you when plotting things out, especially if you’re plotting ahead of time instead of a day or two before NaNo starts.

There are four things you can do to enhance your outline so that, once you’ve completed it, it becomes your guide for the month.

• Details, Details, Details! – When you’re plotting, write down every minute detail you think you may need for your storyline. You may come up with a witty comeback for your character to say during an argument, and that’s the time to write it down. There’s no guarantee that you’ll remember it a few weeks down the road when you’re writing this argument in chapter eight. Even if you decide when writing that a certain plot detail isn’t necessarily needed, it’s good to have it down.
• It’s Not the Ten Commandments. Your outline isn’t written in stone. Things can easily change, and writers need to accept that sometimes an idea seems to work well in the planning stages but not when you’re trying to write it out. Some portions of your outline may be extraneous, and it’s perfectly fine to get rid of something that isn’t working.
• Stick To Your System. If you’re more comfortable filling out scene sheets that keep track of characters, settings and plot, use those; if you use a document on your computer to construct the classic numbered outline, utilize your computer skills to do just that. The important thing is to use a system of outlining that you’re most comfortable with. If you have a comfortable outlining system, that’s one less thing to worry about when starting on the sometimes-hectic journey of NaNoWriMo.
• Outline at Least a Rough Ending. I know this seems like an odd tip – even somewhat obvious – but you’d be surprised at how many people leave out a plan for their ending and then get stuck on what to do when the time comes to put a finish to what you’ve been working on. Having at least a rough ending before diving into your novel is important; as you write, you may go back to your outline and add more details to it, or you may change it completely; if you don’t think about the ending until you’re actually there, you’ll at least have an idea of how you wanted things to finish a month prior when you originally constructed the outline.

By keeping these four tips in mind when you’re outlining your November novel, you will easily get the premise of your novel down so you can go back and easily write later.

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Posts above were published in the last week on TheWhineSeller.com, MyLittlePonyCollecting.com, PricedNostalgia.com and CultofCummings.com.