National Novel Writing Month

 It's National Novel Writing Month again, which means I won't be doing much crafting (though I do have a mystery crochet project I'll share some work-in-progress photos of soon!). You can follow my progress on my other blog, CatCarlisle.com.

One of the most fun time-wasting (but also crafty!) parts of writing is coming up with titles and mock covers - you can see this year's attempt above. Based just on the title and cover, what do you think my story is about? Post your guesses in the comments. I'm curious to see what you all think!

It's NaNoWriMo Time Again!

NaNoWriMo is less than a week away! What's NaNoWriMo, you ask? It stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is a world-wide event that takes place every November where folks attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

I'm participating again this year (see this post for more information on what I did last year) and have been busy this week with my novel planning. It's going to be a challenge with my brother's wedding this month but I think I can do it. It helps that we don't have any plans for Thanksgiving so I can stay home and write!

If you're one of those people who has always wanted to write a novel but never got around to it, NaNoWriMo might be for you! Before NaNo last year I had never finished writing a short story, much less a whole book. Since then I have started writing more, including two short stories (one of which I entered in a contest and is posted here). I am very excited about my story this year and can't wait to start writing!

If you decide to attempt NaNoWriMo, look me up on the NaNo website so we can be writing buddies! My username there is Clockwise.

Happy writing!

P.S. I try not to make excuses for not posting new projects, but the reason I haven't had anything new for months is that I have been working on a very big project: an animated short film! Though I've been working on it since May I am only about halfway through and now because of NaNo it is getting pushed to the back burner. I hope to get it finished before the end of the year but that might be wishful thinking. Here's a teaser trailer I made to show to my friends who are the "actors" in the film (I felt bad about making them wait so long to see the finished product!).

Printing Your Own Book

Last November I participated in National Novel Writing Month, an event held online every year where thousands of people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I "won", which means that I did write a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days. One of the perks of winning was a free proof copy of my book from CreateSpace.com.

CreateSpace is an online self-publishing company affiliated with Amazon.com. It's free to get a basic account and publish a book as long as you do all the work yourself; you only pay for the actual printed copies. You upload a PDF of your book to the site, formatted exactly how you want it to appear in the final book including page sizes, numbers, etc. You create a cover for it, either by yourself or using one of their pre-formatted covers. For my book cover, I took a photo in my backyard (an antique key on some grass) and inserted it into one of CreateSpace's covers.

Next, someone at CreateSpace checks to make sure that your book will print correctly. It's a very basic check - mainly just to be sure that your PDF is the right size and nothing is going to be cut off on the edge of the page (they don't check for typos, missing pages or anything like that). Once your book has been checked you can order a proof copy. The cost depends on the size and page count of your book (mine was free thanks to NaNoWriMo, including free shipping!).

Your book is shipped to you, you check it over and if you're happy with it you can make it available for others to purchase at CreateSpace.com and Amazon.com. Or, if you're like me and you only want to have a copy for yourself, you don't have to make it available to purchase at all.

The hardest part of this (besides writing the book!) is formatting the PDF. It took me several days to get my book set up correctly. CreateSpace doesn't give you much help with the formatting, probably because they would prefer that you pay them to do it for you! So I used this website from self-published author Lisa Shea which goes through pretty much everything you need to know about printing your own book. She also gives her thoughts on the other two big self-publishing sites out there, Lulu and CafePress.

All in all I was happy with my free copy from CreateSpace. It was 224 pages long, which included my NaNoWriMo story plus a 43-page short short I threw in to make it a bit longer. I think the cover turned out nice, though you can see in the top photo that the front didn't turn out centered like it was in the second sample photo - it's cropped closer on the right side. Finally, the copy I got was a proof copy but the only place it said "proof" was on the very last page of the book. That's a good thing, because I was worried it was going to say it on every single page!