The Weekly Fun Not Fear! Mashup: October 28th

All right, Wrimos! We have less than four days before the exciting adventure of NaNoWriMo 2011 begins. We’ve put together another handy mashup of our favorite NaNo-writing links to help you as you embark on this weekend’s last-minute flurry of planning and plotting. At the moment, Em’s putting all her scenes in order and planning her writing schedule for November.  Lena’s in the midst of picking names for locations and her ridiculous horde of characters, and will hopefully have a functioning “cheat-sheet” by the time Tuesday rolls around.

Good luck as you enter the final stretch! Above all, have fun, and don’t get too caught up in last-minute planning like this poor little wrimo toon…

So enjoy the weekend, all! For those of you who celebrate Halloween, have a blast and be safe.  We’ll see you all next Friday for our first check-in!

– Em and Lena

This Week in NaNoWriMo Links…

Here at Fun Not Fear!, we’re all about standing up to those things that scare us the most, whether it’s the seeming impossibility of writing 50k in 30 days, or anything else that holds us back from doing what we love.  In that vein, the wonderful ladies at Writers in the Storm published an excellent and inspirational series on fear that we highly recommend. You’ll find the series wrap-up here, with links to the original posts.

At the moment, the writing buddies section of the official NaNo site still isn’t up, but forums are functioning.  If you’re trying to figure out how to jump in, check out this guide to the forums from WriMos FTW!

Everyone should read the NaNoWriMo checklist by Leif G.S. Notae, also at WriMos FTW!

Allison Wells has compiled a list of incredibly helpful hints on how to find time to participate in NaNo.

Becky, also known as Stupid Girl, has a few suggestions of her own for how to approach NaNo. Tip #2 is one of our favorites: Have fun!

Glitterlady has written “The Pantsers’ Guide to NaNoWriMo,” sure to resonate with everyone who eschews the plotting route.

Webgrrl talks about writing tools (including Scrivener), a brief history of NaNo, and some tips for making it through the month.

Speaking of writing tools, Scrivener is providing special offers for Nano participants, including an extended trial period and some awesome discounts.

Elizabeth Spann Craig over at Mystery Writing is Murder provides some great suggestions for moving quickly through a first draft, which is applicable to all projects, not just NaNo.

For the rest of October, Janice Hardy is writing about planning the NaNo novel. So far she’s posted a rough overview of how to plan the novel, as well as tips for brainstorming your novel’s beginning.

Finally, Smashwords is offering a special promotion for all NaNo writers. According to the official announcement,

Smashwords is opening up the Smashwords platform to allow all NaNoWriMo participants to publish, share, track and promote their works-in-progress.

For those of you who want to offer your readers the opportunity to download your works-in-progress, this will be right up your alley.