NaNoWriMo Sucks

That's right. I said it. NaNoWriMo sucks and I mean it. So what has NaNoWriMo done to draw my ire you ask? Well, what hasn't it done? It sucks up the time of talented writers, I don't see how it accomplishes the sponsor organization's goal, and it's acronym is incredibly difficult to type.

After spending a paragraph bashing the thing, let me slow down and explain what NaNoWriMo is. For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It is an imaginary competition where all the entrants try to write a 50,000 word novel in 1 month. If you do that, you win the imaginary prize. If you think it sounds silly, I swear I'm not making it up.

The way to win NaNoWriMo is by writing 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. Every year, there are many, many winners. There are no "Best Novel" or "Quickest-Written Novel" awards given out. All winners will get an official "Winner" web badge and a PDF Winner's Certificate.

The purpose of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write. Just write something.

NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month.

Part of the reason we organize NaNoWriMo is just to get a book written. We love the fringe benefits accrued to novelists. For one month out of the year, we can stew and storm, and make a huge mess of our apartments and drink lots of coffee at odd hours. And we can do all of these things loudly, in front of people. As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings.

So getting back to my issues with the competition. The most annoying thing is the distraction it becomes for my favorite writers. Every year this dreaded contest draws the attention of my favorite bloggers to NaNoWriMo and away from their blogs. I enjoy their blogs, and I don't enjoy 50,000 word novels that are hastily thrown together in less than 5 weeks. On top of taking away my favorite high quality reading lists, I don't think NaNoWriMo helps those writers much either. The purpose of NanoWriMo is to get people to write, but bloggers already write on a regular basis. So why are bloggers shutting down one writing operation to open up another writing operation. Each about as useful as the other in terms of improving writing skills. I just don't get it.

If someone were to defend NaNoWriMo, I suppose they would say that it encourages writers to write and finish their novels. This is where I start questioning the whole premise of the competition. Really? A writer needs to be encouraged to write his or her story? Anyone who needs an imaginary competition to start writing may want to consider another line of business. Most writer's I know have a story inside of them just aching to be told. They have to write it. They can't not write it. You'd have to pull the pen from their cold dead fingers before they'd stop.

That kind of tenacity to write is needed because writing the novel is just the first step. You now have the hours of self editing and rewriting to go through. Then the professional editing comes. Then the marketing of your book. You have all those inquiry letters to write and rejection notices to read. So, if a writer has to be encouraged to do the first step - The fun one - what are the chances they'll ever get around to the rest of the steps?

Finally, I want to reiterate what I said before. NaNoWriMo is a pain in the butt to type. I'm serious. Try and type it 3 times in a row. It's hard. Map it out. Here's the button combination to properly write NaNoWriMo on a qwerty keyboard.

1. Hold left Shift
2. (N) Right Index,
   
3. Let go of left shit
4. (a) left pinky
   
5. Hold Left Shift
6. (N) Right Index
7. let go of left shift
8. (o)Right Ring
9. Hold Right shift
10. (W)Left Ring
11. let go of shift
12. (r) right index
13. (i) left middle
14. Hold Left Shift
15. (M) right index
16. let go of shift
17. (o) right ring

Wow! 17 steps just to write their *abbreviation*. You also are alternating shift buttons between hands. That is incredibly awkward. I know it seems like a petty thing to complain about, but they should've known better. When you're a online writing competition, you would think you'd make it easy for online writers to talk about you.

Oh yeah, and one more thing about their name. It's not even accurate. The National Novel Writing Month is actually an international event. So it should be InNoWriMo. Which actually is slightly easier to type since your left pinky doesn't have to leave the shift key between typing the 'I' and the 'N'.

Now, not everything about NaNoWriMo is bad. Some authors enjoy the intensity of trying to write a first draft in a month. Other's also like the interaction with other author's in middle of writing a novel. So why not make those tools available all year round? Let author's register the day they start and then give them 30 days to finish. They then can intereact with other author's who are writing all year long. Nobody has to wait for November anymore.

Here's way to improve it. I do not believe that the problem with the modern publishing industry has anything to do with the lack of crappy novels being pushed out. If anything, it's the lack of people reading good novels. Competing with movies, video games, and comic books is hard. However, if you can get a person to read that one book that they really like, you can turn that person into a life long bookworm. I say we need a competition that increases and encourages readers, not writers. Put in crass economic terms, we need to increase demand, not supply.

Here's my idea for a new yearly competition. Instead of challenging people to write 50,000 crappy words, challenge them to read 500 pages of any novel or novels they so choose. Add in some rules. For instance, if you're reading a paperback you have to read 2 pages to count as 1 hard cover page. This competition virtually guarantees that all participants who "win" would have to read at least 1 novel and maybe part of another. Now how sweet would that be? Readers can share what books they read. Part of the requirements for "winning" could be that you have to write a 250+ word review of what you read. You know, to prove to your fellow readers that you actually did it.

Finally, the last thing I would change about NaNoWriMo if I had the power to do so would be the name. I would rename National Novel Writing Month to be International Novel Month - abbreviated INM and pronounced "In Me". This has a number of improvements. First of all, the abbreviation is easier to type. You can use just hold the left shift down the entire time, type with the other hand(Middle-Index-Middle), and then let go of the shift key. 5 steps only instead of 17. Also, Saying it requires fewer syllables, 2 instead of 4. The name also lends flexibility. Whether the competition is a writer's or reader's competition, the name still makes sense. Finally, it reflects the fact that it's international not just national.

Anyways, if this post convinces just one person to skip participating in NaNoWriMo and instead work on their blog or plotting out a good novel, then my goal will have been accomplished. I know I'm probably on the other side of popular opinion so, please, feel free to flame away in the comments.

Nothing New Today

I've been ill the last few days. I haven't been reading, writing, working - not even moving for a couple of those days. Anyways, this is just a long convoluted way to say that posting will be light this week while I try to catch up with everything. Originally I intended to write something cranky about nanoWriMo. Look for that at the end of this week. In the meantime, please take the poll from last week. I'm still running it and would love to hear your opinions.

Reviewing Blog Fiction (100th Post!)

Congratulations to me. This is my 100th published post on this, the Blog Fiction blog. It also marks 1 month short of a year that I've maintained this site. In that time, I'm proud of the things I've done to help promote the genre. I've maintained the Blog Fiction forums. I created the Blog Fiction Widget. I've maintained the list of all the blog fiction sites that I know about. I've also tried to keep up with all of the latest blog fiction news.

Among the things I haven't done is do actual reviews of blog fiction writings. Sure, I've critiqued site layouts, but I've never critiqued people's blog fiction writing. Even in the case of the Ten-Sided disaster, I only critiqued their lack of working together - not their individual writing styles. I never did literary critiques because I never felt qualified to do it. I don't have any formal writing training. I've also never been published in anything. It felt presumptuous of me to think that I could offer advice to other writers.

So, that is the thing I wanted to ask everyone. Would you really be interested in my opinions on the writing of any blog fiction sites. Really, my only qualifications to offer reviews are the following:

• I have a blog about Blog Fiction
• I've read a lot of blog fiction and even tried to write some myself.
  

So, is that enough for you to take my word that maybe a story is too slow paced. Or to say that the character's of a blog fiction don't feel real. Please take the poll to the left and let me know. Also feel free to leave a comment to let me know why you voted the way you do. I'm going to leave the poll up for a while.

In the meantime, I feel like celebrating my 100 milestone South Park style.
("For reviews, against reviews, WHO CARES! 100 posts.")



UPDATE: This is how this post was supposed to look. Blogger really screwed up my javascript so you only saw about 1/5 of the post earlier.

Common Blog Widgets I can't stand

Sometimes it feels like a memo goes out once a week to all bloggers that says, "any sidebar space not filled with a widget will be confiscated". I say this because so many bloggers fill up their website with some of the silliest widgets and functions. That alone wouldn't annoy me. The problem is that so many of them they choose to fill their sites with are either annoying, distracting, useless, or all of the above. Here is a list of some of the most egregious offenders.

*disclaimer* The opinions below are that of DustinM alone. They are his personal opinion reached by years of reading blogs, and not the result of any type of market research or polling. So don't go pulling any of these widgets off your website just because of what's said here. Pull them because they deserve to be strapped onto a rocket and aimed directly at the sun.

Showing location of the site's readers
So let me get this straight. Of all the things you think your reader should know, you thing they need to know where each other are from? Sometimes not even all of them, just the most recent visitors. Great! I think it's awesome that people from Mongolia and Peru read your website, but I really don't care. I just want to read your article about the "10 best firefox add-ons".

Pictures of readers
Here's a weird stalker-ish inducing widget. I don't know what the logic here is. Apparently, not only do I get to know where everyone is from, but now I get a picture of what they look like. Personally, I think these last 2 widgets were the invention of the mafia trying to find guys in the witness protection program:
"Hey Vinnie, ain't dat da guy dat sold out Uncle Tony to the feds"?
"Yeah, yeah that's the scumbag. How'd ya find 'em?"
"Well, I needed to change the brakes on my '08 Taurus and found this blog about how to do dat. Apparently, our guy needed to do the same ting... 'bout 5 hours ago."
"Does the site have one of those annoying widgets that tell you where everyone's from?"
"uh... yeah, says right here. Mount Claire, California"
"Excuse me while I go make a phone call".

8,000 directory backlinks
Yeah, blog directories are great for creating incoming links. Unfortunately, some insist on a backlink to the directory. That's fine, but why would you put that in your sidebar? Nobody is going to want to see those. Put them in your footer where they belong so they can be promptly ignored by your readers.

PageRank Bragging
I am so thrilled that google thinks your website is a '4'. For the .05% of your visitors that give a rats ass what your pagerank is, now know what it is. Not because you display it like a badge of honor, but because the .05% of the people that care about it already have the google toolbar that tells them the exact same thing. And the toolbar told them much quicker because they didn't have to sift through 2 or 3 screens of directory backlink images.

Anything that flashes so fast and bright it causes epileptic seizures.
I don't care if it's a banner, widget, Advertisement, or the freakin' pope. If the damn thing makes my screen look like a vegas slot machine I'm going to click off your page faster than you can say "boss over shoulder".

Annoying popup ads on keywords
If anything destroys the internet. It's not going to be a lack of net neutrality or email spammers that do kill it. It is the unholy troll that thought to combine annoying "pop under" ads with "preview pics". If you don't know, a "pop under" ad is where the ad software goes through a site and underlines certain keywords with a dotted line. If a reader clicks that word they will be taken to the paid sponsor's site. That alone is not too annoying. However, some genius decided the dotted line wasn't enough. Now anytime I move my mouse over a link some flashy picture pops up OVER the text I'm trying to read. It turns my casual reading into a boxing match:
"shit, I can't read that text now. There's no close button. Oh I'll just move over this ad. Ah... now I can read it... Time to scroll down the page. Why can't I scroll? Oh my mouse is over the picture. I'll just move it and... crap now it's over another ad... Finally, I finished scrolling. Hey, check out that link, I think I'll just... fuck! it's covered up now!"

Latest comments box takes up an entire side
Look, you can have a widget that displays your latest comments. I think that's cool. But keep in mind that it's not something worth taking up an entire page worth of a sidebar. 90% of all blog comments are along the lines of one of the folling:

• Dude, that is so true.
• You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
• Luv your site. U should check out mine at http ://www . my-super-dupersexy-girl-friends-acting-naughty . com

Also, if you're a female blogger, you'll have this added gem.

• We should so hook up!
  

You really don't want those things clogging up more than a tiny space in your sidebar, do you?

Blogroll to unrelated topics
Links are great. Your site can't possibly contain everything a reader needs to know about a topic. That's what wikipedia is for. So, you offer links to similar websites. Or, at least, they SHOULD be similar. If your site is about home gardening, why the hell do you have links to sites about buying real estate? Just because some yahoo offers to exchange links with you doesn't mean you have to do it. Exchange links with relevant sites or at least maintain 2 different blogrolls. One labeled, "Useful links" the other labeled, "Stupid links".

Hit Counter
It is TWO-Freaking-thousand-and-EIGHT people! Come. on! 1995 called, they want their widget back! Nothing says "I can fake being popular" like a hit counter. This widget was useless even when it was new. Sure, this site has 2600 hits, but is that since last week or last year? Or is the site brand new as of yesterday, but some little shit hit refresh on his browser 2500 times. Thanks to a lack of timeframe and easy manipulation this widget tells your readers nothing about your site. Please! let this widget go to heaven where he can reunite with his grandma and grandpa, websites with frames and java applets.

By the way, sorry about all the swearing. I normally try to keep things PG, but these annoying widgets really get to me. What about you? What blogging widgets make you swear?

Determining your posting schedule

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column giving advice on how to avoid abandoning your blog fiction. The very first tip was "Decide on a manageable posting schedule". Reading back, I left out how to determine that manageable posting schedule. Determining your posting schedule is simple. Rather than just haphazardly guesstimating about how many posts you can do, I created a formula to figure out how many posts a week you should do.

It boils down to a simple formula. Look at your life. How many minutes a week do you have to spend on your blog fiction(call this 'T', for Total time)? Subtract the amount of time you need to spend marking and maintaining your site(call this 'M' for Marketing and Maintenance time). Now, Divide that number by the amount of time it takes you to write a single post (call this 'P' for Posting time). What number you have is the number of posts you can realistically make in a week. Formula: Number of posting per week = (T - M) / P. For example, if you have 480 minutes(8 hours) a week to spend on your blog. You intend to spend 1 hour(60 minutes) of that promoting your site. And finally, let's say it takes you 3 hours (180 minutes) to do a post. In the end, it comes to (480 - 40) / 180 = 2.44 posts a week for our imaginary author.

Obviously one would find it difficult to write .44 posts. I would always round down. That way you know what you can almost always accomplish. The worse that can happen is that you'll start getting a backlog of posts and you can take a vacation once in a while. Short post today, but this formula is something I'm going to use the next time I start a blog fiction and thought others might find it useful.

(T - M) / P = N
T = Time to spend on Blog
M = Marketing and Maintence
P = Amount of posting
N = Number of posts per week

September News Roundup

Some Interesting News Bits happening in the Blog Fiction World. Some old, some recent, all of it was news to me in the last month. I know I usually post this on the last or second to last day of the month, but my day job has been reaking havoc on my blogging and reading time.

GGR hiatus
Purhaps the saddest news of the month was the announcement that Giant Girl Rampages is going on hiatus until further notice.

We're not ruling out Melly's eventual return, but we're not making any promises either. We've been working behind the scenes to recruit a new team of writers/illustrators with the time and energy to pick up where we've left off, but dream teams are hard to come by.

New Blog Fiction sites:
There are 2 new sites in the blog fiction list that are still active. Time Traveler blog is one of them. The other is in french-so I THINK it's active.

Lord Likely gave me 500 credits
Three cheers for Lord Likely!!! (Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!) He was kind enough to give me 500 advertising credits for entrecard. If you have an entrecard please go to his site and drop it on him to thank him. (stop and read his site too - it's hilarious for anyone who deosn't mind the "adult" humor)

Muse's Success launch.
It looks like there is another alternative to Web Fiction Guide and Pages Unbound. Muse's Success is still pretty young, but it's mission is ambitious: "create a catalogue of each and every web based novel (or serial) available on the World Wide Web. In addition, we allow our visitors to review stories within our catalogue, and also provide a community in which authors and readers of web based novels can interact and communicate." I'll be watching it to see how it will differentiate itself from the other internet fiction rating sites.

Tech Babe and Jason X meet.
Some interesting developments over at The User Pool. For quite some time, the fictional characters Tech Babe and Jason X have existed quite separately in their own little worlds. They only conversed in the online world by leaving and responding to each other's comments. In recent postings the characters recounted meeting each other in real life. Could this mean there could be some future drama between the two? I don't know. It would be very interesting to see though.

Did I miss anything? Have your own September news? Let me know in the comments.

Peculiar Blog Ficiton How-To Article

I found a peculiar how-to article on Blog Fiction. It gives 5 steps on how to start your own blog fiction. It wasn't peculiar in that there was anything wrong with each step. What was peculiar was the order it had those steps. Summarized, here are the steps:

1. Find yourself a blog-hosting site.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character.
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.
   

Do you see something wrong here? If not, let me rewrite the article as a how-to for writing a book.

1. Find yourself a publisher.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Or, how about if you're creating a broadway play.

1. Find yourself a stage.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Or how about, creating a movie.

1. Find yourself a video camera.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Do you see it yet? The first step listed is most certainly not your first step. Also, if you have any intention of attracting readers, the last step listed, is most certainly not the last thing you should consider. What would be the better order to start a blog fiction? How about this:

1. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
2. Verify a market exists for it and Find it.
   
3. Choose the right character.
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find yourself a blog-hosting site.

There are 2 advantages to using this order instead of the original. The first advantage is that if there is no market for your story you won't find out after it's too late. You won't invest countless hours in creating a blog fiction for the 'smoking man' from the X-Files to only find out that no one really cares about the X-Files anymore.

The second advantage is that it keeps you focused on the important part of writing blog fiction - the writing. You create the world, choose the characters, and write out a plot before doing anything on the internet. Then you can decide what tools you need to write the blog fiction and then figure out which blogging platform best provides those features.

When starting a blog fiction-or any blog for that matter-I can understand why someone would think that the first thing to do is create a blog. It's the first concrete visible step you take; however, if you do it that way your blog will likely fail from a lack of planning. If you don't plan ahead a zillion things can go wrong. You might pick the wrong blogging platform. You may start writing before you're ready. People might find your site before you're ready and ignore it due to lack of content and activity. All of these things you want to avoid.

It is like the ancient advice of SunTsu, "Victorious writers write first and then publish their blog fiction, while defeated writers publish first and then seek to write". Or at least I think he said something like that.

Now Offering Full-Text RSS Feed

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying hard to promote my rss feed. I've put the subscription link in the most visible part of my blog. I've added the instant email subscription widget. I also formatted the heck out of the link and text so that it can go at the top. My efforts were repaid by watching my feedburner subscription rate yo-yo up and down for the last week. I couldn't figure out why.

While looking for something else today, I happened upon an article that might explain why. It said to always offer a full text feed not a partial one. Meaning that your rss feed should include your entire content. At first, I just skipped over the advice mostly because I didn't want to hear it.

The reason I didn't want to hear it is because I've been so afraid of my content ending up on a splog. This is a very real and ever present danger for legitimate bloggers. If you never heard the term "splog" it means a "spam blog". These internet bottom feeders use people's feeds to automatically download content from legitimate sites, and then post it on their own. They create massive, fly-by-night websites, and collect the ad revenue from your content and 1000s of others' blogs. This hurts you because since their websites are so massive, their content may come up first in a google search. Worse still, google can then penalize your blog for not having "original" content. Therefore, to protect my blog's content I didn't publish the full text of my posts. I figured it wasn't that big of a deal for my subscribe's to click over to the website for the full text.

So like I said, I didn't listen to the advice even though the person said even he himself will not subscribe to blogs that offer partial post text. I figured I'd rather protect my content and search rank than cater to such lazy readers. The idea was then pushed to the back of my head. Well it festered for a while and eventually I did a google search to get other people's opinion on full vs. partial feeds. Well, the argument is pretty one sided and is in favor of full feeds. A small sample of what I found: here, here, and here.

Most of the other sites I found were bloggers asking their reader's opinion on if they mind partial feeds. Those comments were usually about 2/3 hated partial feeds, 1/6 didn't care, and the other 1/6 don't use rss feeds. It was while reading those comments that I realized something. I'm making the same mistake that the RIAA (music industry) and MPAA (movie industry) are making right now. I'll explain.

The RIAA, MPAA, and myself we're punishing our customers(in my case, readers) for the crimes of others. The RIAA and MPAA are forcing all this anti-copyright technology on your cd\dvds and digital downloads. All it does is piss off customers who use the content for legitimate purposes, and at most provides a brief speedbump for those who want to use it illegally. Not providing full text feeds provides the same end result. A lot of pain for my readers, and nothing more than a speedbump for A-Hole sploggers.

That all being said. I am now offering a full text rss feed. For those who might miss this post I'm indicating it in the subscribe text that it's now a full feed. So if you like my site, be sure to subscribe. If you don't have an rss reader, you can alternatevely sign up for email notification.

As for protecting my content, I plan on using 2 different tools to try and monitor malicious use of my rss feed. Of course, there is Copyscape which lets you put in a webpage and will spit out any urls that appear to have the exact same content. Also, blogger Kate has an absolutely brilliant tactic to prevent scrapes of your rss fead. I'm not going to quote or summarize. Just go read the article. It's clever, and free.

BTW, This isn't just a meta post. The recommendation extends to anyone who runs a blog fiction site. There really are advantages to allowing the full text. Fans of your site can let recent posts build up and then read at their own leisure - even if not connected to the internet at the time. Hopefully, if your content is liked well enought that someone will subscribe to your blog, they'll also be willing to still visit your site and leave comments on posts that they really like.

One last thing, If anyone knows of anyway to increase my subscription number, I'd love to hear it. Now that I'm getting some traffic I really want to try and convert that to subscribers. Right now I don't know what else to do to promote my feed besides writing good content and making it easy to subscribe. Thanks!