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Literary marathon to read. Preparing to write a novel, especially if you're good at it, robs you of some of the fun of writing.

Literary marathon to read. Preparing to write a novel, especially if you're good at it, robs you of some of the fun of writing.

30.05.2019

Chris Baty, founder of the National Novel Writing Month, a literary marathon that created dozens of world bestsellers, described all the necessary stages of a writer's creative path in an easy and witty way. The inspiring speeches and key writing strategies in Batey's book cover all phases of the work: the creativity and energy of the first week, the major "plot flashes" of the second week, the urge to quit on the third, as well as the completion of the work on the fourth and the promotion of your own book. further.

This practical guide will be useful for both the aspiring novelist who can't seem to get pen to paper, or the result-oriented writer who wants to explore the publishing world.

book characteristics

Date of writing: 2004
Translation date: 2016
Name: Literary marathon: how to write a book in 30 days

Volume: 210 pages, 24 illustrations
ISBN: 978-5-00057-959-6
Translator: Alexander Korobeinikov
Copyright holder: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber

Preface to the book "Literary Marathon"

Much has changed since 2004, when this book was first published. Thanks to electronic publishing and print-on-demand technology, the release of books has become available to everyone. Social networks have greatly expanded the toolbox of writing, and now anyone with a good idea can be distracted at any time by cat videos and vacation photos from school friends.

And National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, NaNo)—a literary marathon I launched ten years ago for pennies from my living room—has grown into an annual non-profit event with a full staff, office, and 450,000 attendees. The main event, which takes place in the fall, was complemented by a virtual summer camp for novelists (www.campnanowrimo.org) and a young writers' education program, which is taught in more than 1,000 schools.

During this wonderful and crazy decade, I have come across a number of new strategies to find a place for a book in our incredibly busy lives. In this reissue we bring you fresh advice on everything from digital distractions, how to balance writing with parenthood, and how to edit your book without losing your mind. I've also added weekly summaries and about 100 cool tricks suggested by NaNoWriMo winners. There are also mobilizing, stress-reducing rhetoric from authors whose work has gone from NaNoWriMo to the New York Times bestseller list.

The new edition of the book gives me the opportunity to correct some of the questionable statements that appeared in the previous version. For example, for some reason I thought that readers were ready to tear apart authors who narrate in a third person. However, my biggest mistake was the belief that everyone has a romance in them. Now that I have ten years of NaNoWriMo experience behind me, I can say with confidence: this is not true. Dozens of novels are ripening in everyone's head. And being able to write down one of those stories is a much more interesting experience than I imagined. Many years have passed and I still look forward to NaNoWriMo. No matter what you offer: your first or already fifteenth novel, I still hope that the new edition of the book "Literary Marathon" will be your faithful friend for a whole month of literary oblivion.

Introduction

Now we can say that that era was generally suitable for strange ideas. In 1999, I was a writer, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, drinking too much coffee, and watching the dot-com boom rewrite the rules of the world.

It seemed plausible that my friends and I could spend three years in the office, shooting foam bullets at each other and riding office chairs, and then exercise our hard-earned stock options, buy a small island somewhere, and fly off in a helicopter for a well-deserved rest. .

It was a wonderful, surreal time, and at one point I decided that I needed to write a novel in a month. That being said, I can't say that I had a great story in my head. Moreover, I had no ideas.

In 1999, all this seemed to be taken for granted.

In a more sober era, my idea of a “romance in a month” would not have passed the reality check at the inception stage. However, the very first NaNoWriMo started just two weeks later, and almost all my friends and neighbors participated in it.

There is no doubt that those who decided on this adventure - and these are 21 people - were not quite in their minds and they should not have engaged in such serious things as writing novels. We didn't take writing classes at school, we didn't read tutorials on storytelling or the finer points of the craft. And everything that came out from under our pen after the need to write essays disappeared would fit perfectly on a piece of notebook.

The only explanation I can think of for our writerly claims is that if you're surrounded by delivery sites like pet food that cost more than the entire Apple company, then the sense of reality is lost and the boundaries of what's possible are blurred. The old millennium was dying, the new and beautiful was on the threshold. We were all in our early twenties and had little idea what we were doing. But we knew that we loved books, so we decided to become writers.

book hooligans

This love of books, probably, saved our plan. Although we agreed not to take the creative process seriously, we treated the novels themselves—those tomes of kindness that, when carefully studied, evoked the most amazing images in their owners—we treated with the utmost respect. In the books one could find magical portals and close friends, true love and absolute evil. Books, like our friends or parents, have played a big role in our education, allowing us to look through the gates of childhood into life.

Loving books, we treated their creators with no less enthusiasm. The novelists were, of course, a special branch of homo sapiens - an enlightened subspecies, endowed with an extremely developed understanding of the human soul and an uncanny ability to write words correctly.

Moreover, they could devote their whole lives to writing novels - this is one of the few entertainment industries where a career continues after you stop looking attractive in cool underwear.

In short, we adored novels and idolized writers, so we thought that if, after a month of effort, we could get even a little closer to their world, something mysterious would happen to us, completely changing our lives. The temptation to start the month at zero and end it with my own book in hand - no matter how bad it turned out - was irresistible. We would never have confessed out loud, but there was hope in everyone's soul - what if something undeniably brilliant emerges from the depths of our imagination! An absolute masterpiece that will forever change the literary picture of the world. A true American novel.

Just think of the sea of praise! About the feeling of satisfaction! About how the number of girls who are ready to come to you on a date will increase dramatically!

Unfortunately, it is impossible to underestimate the power of influence on us of the last argument. As a music fan, I knew this was possible. The annals of rock and roll are full of examples of how a self-taught musician first recorded albums, and only then learned to play the appropriate instruments. Members of the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Beat Happening - these are the very unlearned enthusiasts who made their way into people only thanks to their own passion. But if fantasies about fans at autograph sessions visited us in 1999, we didn't tell anyone about it. In fact, all this novel-writing fuss was supposed to be an exercise in mediocrity. The more you write and the less you (allegedly) care about what you write, the more honorable.

And so, at the start of the first National Novel Month, we took pleasure in ridiculing our total lack of preparation and doubtful chances of success. As brave and not very sober novice sailors, we set off to sea on an already doomed ship.

On July 1, 1999, the first National Novel Writing Month began. It looked something like this: all of us (twenty-one people) cheerfully waved to the mourners gathered on the shore, sent kisses to friends and family, but at the same time nervously glanced at the deck in search of life jackets.

We had no idea how soon we would need them.

Literary Marathon: How to Write a Book in 30 Days - Chris Baty (Download)

(introductory fragment of the book)

Chris Baty

NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM!

A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days

Published with permission from Chronicle Books

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

First published in English by Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, California.

* * *

TO MY PARENTS,

who always believed that everything would be like this

Preface to this edition

The new edition of the book gives me the opportunity to correct some of the questionable statements that appeared in the previous version. For example, for some reason I thought that readers were ready to tear apart authors who narrate in a third person. However, my biggest mistake was the belief that everyone has a romance in them. Now that I have ten years of NaNoWriMo experience behind me, I can say with confidence: this is not true. Dozens of novels are ripening in everyone's head. And to be able to write down one of these stories is a much more interesting experience than I imagined. Many years have passed and I still look forward to NaNoWriMo. No matter what you offer: your first or already fifteenth novel, I still hope that the new edition of the book "Literary Marathon" will be your faithful friend for a whole month of literary oblivion.

Introduction

It was a wonderful, surreal time, and at one point I decided that I needed to write a novel in a month. That being said, I can't say that I had a great story in my head. Moreover, I had no ideas.

In 1999, all this seemed to be taken for granted.

There is no doubt that those who decided on this adventure - and these are 21 people - were not quite in their minds and should not have been involved in such serious things as writing novels. We didn't take writing classes at school, we didn't read tutorials on storytelling or the finer points of the craft. And everything that came out from under our pen after the need to write essays disappeared would fit perfectly on a piece of notebook.

book hooligans

This love of books, probably, saved our plan. Although we agreed not to take the creative process seriously, we treated the novels themselves—those tomes of kindness that, when carefully examined, evoked the most amazing images in their owners—we treated with the utmost respect. In the books one could find magical portals and close friends, true love and absolute evil. Books, like our friends or parents, have played a big role in our education, allowing us to look through the gates of childhood into life.

Moreover, they could devote their whole lives to writing novels - this is one of the few entertainment industries where a career continues after you stop looking attractive in cool underwear.

In short, we adored novels and idolized writers, so we thought that if, after a month of effort, we could get even a little closer to their world, something mysterious would happen to us, completely changing our lives. The temptation to start the month at zero and end it with my own book in hand - no matter how bad it turned out - was irresistible. We would never have confessed out loud, but there was hope in everyone's soul - what if something undeniably brilliant will emerge from the depths of our imagination! An absolute masterpiece that will forever change the literary picture of the world. A true American novel.

Just think of the sea of praise! About the feeling of satisfaction! About how the number of girls who are ready to come to you on a date will increase dramatically!

Unfortunately, it is impossible to underestimate the power of influence on us of the latter argument. As a music fan, I knew this was possible. The annals of rock and roll are full of examples of how a self-taught musician first recorded albums, and only then learned to play the appropriate instruments. Members of the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Beat Happening are the very unlearned enthusiasts who made their way into people only thanks to their own passion. But if fantasies about fans at autograph sessions visited us in 1999, we didn't tell anyone about it. In fact, all this novel-writing fuss was supposed to be an exercise in mediocrity. The more you write and the less you (allegedly) care about what you write, the more honorable.

We had no idea how soon we would need them.

Moon at sea

Writer and figure skating champion Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked, "If you're skating on thin ice, speed is the answer." Rushing towards the coming literary failure, we, at least, certainly differed in speed.

The first week of NaNoWriMo (as we've come to call the event) was filled with feverish key-banging fueled by a nightmarish amount of caffeine. To begin with, we agreed that a novel is a work of art containing 50,000 words. Because of this lofty goal, quantity quickly took precedence over quality, and we met every evening after work in coffee houses to complete our creations with a couple of thousand more words.

We assigned ourselves a production rate and came up with the most sophisticated tasks. The laggards were not allowed to refresh themselves with drinks or take a bath until the quota was met. The sincere fun and frivolity of the first working sessions took their toll on the insane task of writing the book in an absurdly short amount of time, turning it into a whirlwind trip to the country of Romagna.

Surprisingly, the beginning of the work was quite successful for all of us. Very quickly, everyone had a scene, the main characters and the first few chapters. The hardest part seemed to be behind us. We delved into the work, confident that our muses would not leave us and help us overcome any coming difficulties.

However, it turned out that the Muses had other plans.

Calm

Seven days passed, the first excitement subsided, and the bitter truth was revealed: our novels were bad. Even terrible. The first week flew by, the rapture of speed passed, and we looked at our creations through the eyes of a third grader who discovered that a piece of cake on his plate was replaced with boiled vegetables.

After discussing the nature of our initial enthusiasm, we discovered a common problem for all of us: it was easy to start, but difficult to continue. The suspicion crept in that the chaotic scattering of characters across a Word document is not the best approach to creating a work design. And the attempt to squeeze the novel into our very busy schedule also endangered our lives and world literature.

Our life has undergone not the most rosy changes: since we devoted every free minute to writing, it meant that it was impossible to sleep longer on weekends, watch TV, go to dinner with friends. Instead, we were constantly trying to squeeze something out of our lifeless characters and see how long the human body can survive on instant noodles and Coca-Cola before the liver finally fails.

By the end of the second week, many were ready to revolt. Half of the participants left the project. Unfortunately, some of us advertised our potential talent so widely that it was embarrassing to give up before we even lasted a month. And we decided to keep going, still going to the writing sessions, but with much less enthusiasm. We no longer counted on winning, but planned to just play for time.

The second week has come to an end. And then strange things began.

The anemic, aimlessly wandering characters, born in our imagination in the first fourteen days, suddenly perked up and got down to business. And it was strange, unexpected, but interesting. They sold their SUVs and started driving electric cars from the golf club to work. They went to learn how to dance the polka, they were kidnapped by forest dwellers, together with their neighbors in the nursing home, they engaged in armed robberies of jewelry stores.

It seemed that our protagonists, tired of waiting for the director's insight from us, decided to take control of the production. Luckily, they turned out to be much better storytellers than we are.

There was no trace of the apathy of the second week, and the neat lines of our novels began to resemble real storylines along the trajectory. Of course, we were still very tired. But our books have ceased to hang like weights around our necks, turning into cozy islands in the midst of worldly storms. Instead of the dread of the evening sessions, we now experienced a rush of fantasy as we dreamed about the turn our stories would take. We called ourselves on an answering machine to say the plot twists that came to mind in the morning, wrote down suitable topics on napkins, checks, the backs of colleagues - in a word, everywhere our hand reached, to fix the ideas streaming from our heads.

It must be admitted that the novels that appeared on the hard drives of our computers were not at all like the masterpieces that we secretly hoped for. They were clumsy creatures, adorned only with plot holes. But they were wonderful in their own way. And their potential was amazing.

Build it and Kevin Costner will come

Needless to say, by this time we had almost lost our minds. It seemed that we got through a portal into some other world - into Narnia for adults, where hours flew by like seconds and the most daring and magnificent fantasies were embodied in reality. It was perhaps the best experience in my life, which brought me real satisfaction. The only thing I can compare it to is Field of Dreams, where Kevin Costner (he plays an Iowa farmer) suddenly starts hearing voices telling him, "Build it and it will come." On the advice of these mysterious voices, Kevin leaves his incredulous wife and does what any self-respecting man would do in his place: in the place of the cornfield next to the house, he creates a baseball field. He is clearly going crazy. He is obsessed. Real maniac.

For those of us who made it to the fourth week of NaNoWriMo, this state was very familiar.

In the film, Costner's efforts are rewarded by having the ghosts of baseball legends of the past come to play on his field, who play in exhibition games and inspire James Earl Jones to revelations. For us, the reward was just as generous. After two weeks of cultivating the meager soil of our imagination, the stories we cultivated flourished. In the third week, we began to reap an unprecedented harvest of plot twists and amazing characters, all of whom were ready to star in our show.

Although they were unpromising as baseball players, each had its own strengths. My characters, for example, were especially good at sleeping with the most incredible people. For other participants, the heroes often made successful trips. Someone else's heroes could come up with such fonts with such letter styles, from which the brain exploded. In a word, to each his own. Whatever direction our stories took, they definitely captivated and pulled us along.

On the twenty-ninth day, the first participant broke the 50,000-word barrier. And then another, and another. July was drawing to a close, and while we enjoyed spending 31 days exploring the depths of our own imagination, it was time to get back to reality. So we ended our stories, stuffed our heroes into beds, and put out the lights in the worlds we had created. That year, only six of us made it across the 50,000 word finish line—the rest stuck somewhere between 500,000 and 49,000. But all participants of the event received invaluable experience.

Some have realized through this that they will never write. Others were ready to race the very next day to enroll in a master's program in writing. For me, the main revelation was the following: it is not the lack of talent that prevents people from realizing their artistic ambitions, but the lack of a deadline. Give any person an impossible task, put them in a supportive environment, set a reasonable but tough deadline, and miracles will start to happen regularly. Thanks to the haste in which the event takes place, the inner desire to write perfect prose disappears. It is replaced by the pleasure of learning by doing, taking risks, making mistakes, following your own ideas to see where they lead.

I've found that chasing quantity rather than quality, oddly enough, benefits both. Not that it made any sense to me, especially since I used to have to spend days poring over 75-word reviews. But the fact was, and anyone who mastered NaNoWriMo that year could readily confirm that we were able to write our novels and enjoy it only because we worked very hard. Adrenaline drowned out that critical inner voice that so prevents adults from indulging in creativity.

Dotcom is a household name for a company whose business model was entirely based on working within the Internet. The most widespread in the late 90s. XX century.

An innate feature in which people react to certain stimuli in an unusual way.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) - American essayist, poet, philosopher, pastor, public figure; one of the most prominent thinkers and writers of the United States. In his essay "Nature" (1836), he was the first to express and formulate the philosophy of transcendentalism.

Rated the book

After reading this book, you will not learn how to write books on your own. This is really a literary marathon for those who are eager to put their thoughts on paper and sculpt a novel. Most likely - the novel sucks, the first experience. So it's more like a kind of therapy or one of the ways to remove the creative block. In general, it is somewhat similar to Julia Cameron's bestsellers, only not such a runny compote of solid water. Cameron barely comes across dried fruits of specific methods, and here the brew is much thicker, although also not without excess liquid.

The book is very small, but still inspiring. It looks like a description of some technique for getting rid of some kind of sore. In the role of a sore - creative constipation or graphomaniac itch. If you are firmly convinced that you want to become a real writer, then reading it will be an extra step. But if you are not confident in your own strengths and your own perseverance, then the proposed technique will allow you to challenge yourself. Moreover, all the steps of the call are just described in detail and practically, but there is almost nothing on the very craft of the writer: sketches and handwriting. The rules of the game, however, are very interesting. They play all sorts of games on LL, why not start such games for writers?

There was not enough more specificity and deepening into details, somehow everything is too simple and on the surface. You do not need to be an expert in your field to write such a book as "Literary Marathon". That is, I wouldn’t have to work with dozens of people for this, conduct seminars and watch the passage of the marathon. If I hypothetically recreated the whole situation in my mind, then I myself would come to all these conclusions, they are really on the surface. In addition, the text is really too small and short for a good manual. Here, for example, I outlined it. The entire abstract took exactly 2 pages: the one below and its turnover. Although I do not sin when compiling notes by skipping important logical parts.

Conclusion: having a paper version is unnecessary, but you can casually familiarize yourself with the methodology itself.

Rated the book

Reading about how other writers work is always interesting, even if you are sure that you will not adopt any of the methods of others (in your place, by the way, I would not be so sure). And it is doubly interesting to read about how other writers work in extreme conditions. Because extreme conditions for a creative person living in the modern world are a familiar reality.

If you keep daydreaming or thinking "someday I'll write a book," Chris wrote Literary Marathon for you. You are his ideal reader. Feel free to pick up a book. It is small, you will overcome it in a couple of days.

Here are a few key points that I would like to focus on.

1. Chris emphasizes that you DO NOT need to be a writer to write a novel.

Don't wait for a higher power to grant you superpowers and a "best-selling author" label. Sometimes you just need to pick up and sit down for a novel. A writer is a person who writes. So you opened Word and typed the first couple of dozen words of the future book. You are already a writer. If someone tries to dispute this, do not answer anything, he has his own reasons for doubts, and let the facts and results speak for you. A writer is a person who writes. It is most important. The rest is secondary.

2. For a "non-professional" - although it is strange to talk like that about a person who wrote 50,000 words in a month, and did it more than once or twice !!! - Chris gives VERY good advice on working with the manuscript.

I even felt something suspiciously reminiscent of envy: some things reached me for a long time, more than one year. And it's up to me, a writer with decent experience and more than one book behind my back ... and I'm drawn to write a "serious" book, of course. But why is a novel written in a month a non-serious novel? Didn't the person who created it work hard? Do we, authors who publish a novel every six months on average, work harder? Don't think.

3. Chris shatters all the stereotypes "thanks" to which the dream of many people to write a novel remains a dream.

In particular, the stereotype that a writer needs a lot of free time. You know, "lots of free time" isn't just for the writer. In fact, everyone wants "a lot of free time", well, at least 97 percent of the population of the planet Earth definitely wants it. Well, we have a choice. Either we are in the eternal search for "a lot of free time", or we sit down and write a novel. There are no magic pills here.

4. Chris very well describes the stages of work on the book from the point of view of the psychology of the author.

This is useful not only for those who decide to write a novel in a month, because these stages are somehow present in the process of writing any novel.

5. Chris speaks very clear language!

This is not a textbook on writing, but rather a kind of motivational guide for practitioners.

6. By the way, you will have to practice.

Because otherwise the information gleaned from the book will go into one ear, and in a minute it will come out of the other ear.

7. People actually write 50,000 words a month. In all seriousness.

Under the short motivational speeches that Chris gives, by the way, in huge numbers, there are captions "five-time NaNoRaiMo winner", "ten-time NaNoRaiMo winner". Among them are writers who have published their works on paper. Among them are writers whose novels have become bestsellers. They can be told that 50,000 words in a month is not serious or simply unbelievable. And while you say this, picking up especially caustic arguments, they will write another novel.

Summing up, we can say that the book is really very curious and at the same time easy to understand. Even experienced authors can find something useful in it, copy, adopt or model certain techniques. So read, read, read.

Rated the book

"After I finished my own manuscript, it turned out that I can appreciate my favorite books in a new way. I stopped taking the text for granted and began to capture a lot of artful details and carefully masked seams. To understand the inside of my favorite books, it is useful to try to write something yourself."

Plot: Do you love to write and your dream is to one day write your own book? Do you know the fear of a blank slate and the doubts that overcome after the first written chapter? Have you ever been frustrated about leaving a piece of writing at the beginning because it didn't turn out the way you imagined it? Do many exciting ideas sit idle in the farthest closet of your castle in Fantasyland? Then you should definitely read this book!

Impression: First of all, the Literary Marathon attracted me with its idea: to set aside a whole month for your dream, stop slacking off and finally sit down and write 50 thousand words in 30 days, that is, a short novel. In the book, the author talks about this literary experiment, which is quite popular in the writing community, gives useful advice and inspires people to try their hand at a kind of adventurous writing adventure. By the way, it turns out that "Cyber Cinderella" by Mayer, which I have not read, but which I constantly come across positive reviews, read something ?, was written as part of this experiment :)

In fact, "Literary Marathon" is not without the same shortcomings as many similar books on writing. There is enough water here, banal and so understandable things are mentioned, there is "American humor" that I could never understand, but I must give the author credit - at least I really got a lot of useful advice from the book. For example, the last time in this genre I read "Bird after Bird" by Lammott, this book so disappointed me and turned me away from this topic that for a couple of years I did not want to read about writing at all. "Literary Marathon" did not cause any hostility in me, the author seemed quite adequate, which in itself is a huge plus)))

Here are some tips that have been helpful to me based on my own experience:
- Sit down to write a novel at least this year, but it’s better right now and not wait until you become wiser, smarter, more educated, more well-read, etc. and so on.;
This is actually my biggest problem. I keep thinking that I should grow up, grow up, read even more books and then I will automatically write better than I could now. But here I constantly lost sight of the fact that I will most likely become wiser only in old age, and then it’s too late to write a novel, as the author correctly notes. And it's all about experience - the more you write, the better it comes out. Actually, I have already checked this both at my work and on reviews on LL, as for me, over time, they have become better for me than a couple of years ago :) Well, more authentic so for sure)))

- When writing a draft, completely turn off the internal editor for a while, just write, do not go back and do not try to correct the written paragraphs;
I have several drafts in my desk that I started to write with enthusiasm, but after each chapter I stopped, reread, tried to edit, then I got bored with it or I didn’t like what was written. In the end, I just closed the notebook and forgot about my desire to write a novel. And this is not how you should do it! I always wanted to write everything well the first time, and since it turned out to be nonsense, it was not worth trying further. The author also explains how important it is to bring the idea to the end, because even the most delusional draft can be edited and brought to mind. And you should not re-read what was written, it can be done at the end of the work.

- It is pointless to set aside a weekend or wait for a vacation to write a novel;
Yep, that's what I always thought too. There will be summer holidays and I will sit down for a diploma. There will be a vacation in the summer and I will sit down for a novel. Aha, aha, a fig for two, I sat down for something))) On vacation there should be rest. And congestion with affairs and writing only in certain free time, on the contrary, is beneficial. A person does not have time to get tired of constant writing, and also takes a break from work and household chores for his novel. Mutually beneficial :)

- Don't expect a bestseller from the first draft, and from the second, and from the third...
If the first draft of the novel came out delusional and unreadable, and then the second and third, this does not mean that there is no writing talent and you can put an end to your dream. Practice and more practice, and also pure pleasure for yourself from the process of writing and composing your own world.

In addition to the above, I learned a lot more from the book. For example, how to correctly and easily edit a novel, how to set yourself up for the right mood and where to write. And finally, I will give the main advice with which I agree 100500 percent because this applies to many modern authors:

"If a scene can be omitted from a novel without harming it, then so be it."

Total: The book is good and even useful. As I said, I was interested in the idea of a Literary Monthly Marathon and after reading the book, I decided to follow the author's advice and try to participate. Not this year, for sure, because my priority is reading books in English, but next year I would still like to get my notebooks with written ideas and finally turn at least one into reality :) Still, practice is never superfluous, and even if fierce nonsense comes out, then no one will see it anyway, and if they ask, it will always be possible to say that I wrote a novel, but it is so beautiful that I don’t show it to anyone :)

Chris Baty

Literary marathon: how to write a book in 30 days

Chris Baty

NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM!

A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days

Published with permission from Chronicle Books

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

First published in English by Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, California.

TO MY PARENTS,

who always believed that everything would be like this

Preface to this edition

The new edition of the book gives me the opportunity to correct some of the questionable statements that appeared in the previous version. For example, for some reason I thought that readers were ready to tear apart authors who narrate in a third person. However, my biggest mistake was the belief that everyone has a romance in them. Now that I have ten years of NaNoWriMo experience behind me, I can say with confidence: this is not true. Dozens of novels are ripening in everyone's head. And to be able to write down one of these stories is a much more interesting experience than I imagined. Many years have passed and I still look forward to NaNoWriMo. No matter what you offer: your first or already fifteenth novel, I still hope that the new edition of the book "Literary Marathon" will be your faithful friend for a whole month of literary oblivion.

Introduction

It was a wonderful, surreal time, and at one point I decided that I needed to write a novel in a month. That being said, I can't say that I had a great story in my head. Moreover, I had no ideas.

In 1999, all this seemed to be taken for granted.