14 Published Books That Were Written During NaNoWriMo

The list, care of Mental Floss.

Mo Yan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Time Magazine profiled the author, here.

From the piece...


For Eric Abrahamsen, a Beijing-based translator of modern Chinese fiction, it is clear that Mo Yan engages in the complex calculus of what is and isn't permissible that faces every Chinese writer. There is nothing wrong with that: not every artist has the stomach for strident dissent and, having been banned in the past, Mo Yan has nothing to prove. But these days, says Abrahamsen, Mo Yan "knows exactly where the lines are and doesn't cross them." Discussion about the drawbacks of the one-child policy, and whether it should be rolled back, is now permissible in China, for example. "I think the reason the book got published now is because it's not controversial anymore," says Abrahamsen.

Mo Yan is adamant that he never worries about censorship when choosing what to write about. "There are certain restrictions on writing in every country," he says, adding that the inability to attack some topics head on is actually an advantage. Such limitations make a writer "conform to the aesthetics of literature," Mo Yan argues. "One of the biggest problems in literature is the lack of subtlety. A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel."

Are You America's Next Top Author?

Find out by entering this contest.

Highlights from the 2012 National Poetry Slam

Win a Free Bike from the Paris Review

All you have to do is enter this contest where you write a very short story about the image above in the style of a famous writer.

Want to Try and Write a Poem a Day?

Then enter the Poem A Day Challenge.

Have an Idea for a Column?

Write for McSweeney's.

Literary Cocktails

Come up with your own and you could win an e-reader. More, here.

Five Literary Contests for Writers on a Budget

The list, care of Brokelyn.

NaNoWriMo is Coming

National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner. Wired gives you some tips on how to write a novel in 30 days.

From the piece...

1) Plan Ahead

Writing starts Nov. 1 and continues through midnight of Nov. 30, but that doesn't mean you can't start planning now. If you've got ideas jot them down -- character sketches, plot ideas, scene settings, any idea that might help speed your along once the writing starts.

Produce an outline if you can, mapping out the plot of your novel and figuring out how to move from scene to scene before you start writing will help you avoid accidental dead ends.

Clear your November schedule as much as you can to allow yourself more time to write and set a schedule so that you know your daily word goal. To make the 50,000-word finish line, you'll need to write just under 1,700 words a day. Some days you'll write less than that, but if you push yourself on good days, when you're on a roll, you can easily double your required daily output.

Once you start actually writing, take time to plan the next day's writing ahead of time. Having the scenes for tomorrow in your head today will give your brain time to work on it even when you aren't thinking about it directly. In fact, you may well find yourself dreaming about your novel, working out ideas in your sleep. Keep a notebook or a recording device next to your bed to get the ideas down when you first wake up.

All of us write to our own muse. Some writers find a tight structure very helpful. Some find such a structure confining. If you find keeping to your outline difficult, it may work best for you to let the outline go. Many successful novelists operate just that way, by allowing their writing flow spontaneously. Writing 50,000 words in a month will quickly teach you how much formal structure you need. This is not to say that an outline isn't helpful even for freeform writers. The more preparation and attention you put into your plot, whether it changes later or not, the more likely it is that you will meet your goal.

The Kafka Porn Contest

Enter Elif Batuman's Kafka Porn Contest and you can win Batuman's bed. For reals.

Writing a Novel in Three Days

Could you do it?

From a piece on The Millions...

Day three, ten a.m.: no sleep last night. Nothing else seems substantial anymore except for the words on the laptop screen. The backs of my eyeballs feel prickly, suggesting complete and unforgiving fatigue. My brain went AWOL hours earlier and I keep omitting words like ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘or’, and ‘of’ from sentences. Yet I am ecstatic—an intense happiness burgeoning in me from too much caffeine, too little sleep, and having just spent two and a half days in a dream world of my own creation. As of right now, I am a novelist.

Three days from midnight to midnight: write as much as you can, wherever you wish; this is the International 3-Day Novel Contest. The average finished entry is between twenty and thirty thousand words. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is about 77,000 words. Thus, the finished result is more novella than novel, but all the same, a grand effort considering the timeframe.

Back to day one: The Setup. The contest allows prior planning of plots and characters. Oops. I snatch at ideas, desperate for anything. How about an alien abductees’ support group? Brilliant—very Fight Club. (Didn’t Graham Greene once say, “Writing is a form of therapy”?) Having a vague idea for a plot, I engage in the writing process. Many authors talk of losing themselves in the “zone”. They make it sound as if the words write themselves. I wish. Midnight arrives and the word count is a contemptible 4,500 words. The zone has eluded me. The 3-Day Novel Contest is held annually in early September on the Canadian Labor Day long weekend. In 1977, a writer’s group in Vancouver accepted the challenge for the first time.

The contest has been running ever since. According to the organizers, the 3-Day Novel Contest has been called a “fad,” an “idle threat,” a “great way to overcome writers block,” and “a trial by deadline.” It opposes the notion that novels take eight years of angst to produce. Most entrants recognize that winning is secondary to finishing with a complete novella and no nervous breakdown.

Congratulations, Ernest Hemingway Doppleganger

Of all the Ernest Hemingway dopplegangers, this Ernest Hemingway doppleganger was the Ernest Hemingway dopplegangerist.

Speedy Typists Face Off

Who is the fastest typist in the world? The Ultimate Typing Championship will find out.

Can You Craft a 500-Word Story Based on This Photograph?

If so, you could win NPR's Three-Minute Fiction Contest.

The Annual Oddest Book Title Prize

The Bookseller's annual Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has drawn a record number of submissions for the 2009 award. Who will win? The Independent takes a look at a few entries, including the titles Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology, Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich, and An Intellectual History of Cannibalism.

Started Your Novel Yet?

You'd better get cracking. I shall start soon. A daunting task, 50K words in a month, but I will do it (maybe), writing about a father and her daughter stuck on a ride at Disneyland. There may be more to it than that. I don't think I could write 50K about how awful it is to hear "Yo ho ho ho," on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride 1,385,835 times (easy novel word filler though, just repeating "Yo ho ho ho" over and over again).

Can You Come Up With a Crummy Science Fiction Book Cover?

io9 wants to know!

Bad Sex Award Nominees Announced

The Guardian gives readers a peek at the Literary Review's nominees for the year's worst erotic writing.

From the story...

Historian Simon Montefiore is also a strong competitor, singled out for his first foray into fiction, the Soviet saga Sashenka, in which a formerly prudish Communist woman enjoys an encounter with a bohemian writer. "He pulled down her brassiere, cupping her breasts, sighing in bliss. 'The blue veins are divine,' he whispered." And later: "He's a madman, she thought as he made love to her again. Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin has driven me crazy!"

Best Romance Novel Cover Contest

The winners have been announced!