Writing About Mental Illness

Mental illness has become a serious issues in many countries. Many writers know nothing or very little about mental illness. Research is important when a character of yours has a mental illness. With so many illnesses out there you must be precise about the affects and the way mental health affects someone's life. It is important to be accurate. Though not all mental illnesses affect everyone the same.

Research is difficult with all the websites out there that say they are legit but aren't. Make sue you find ones that are. It is hard to find them. Try out mental health clinic sites, university sites, old school reference books (yes I know, that takes forever), see if you can speak to a mental health therapist, someone that has a mental illness (Twitter is a good source), or a mental health physician's assistant. These are all great sources.
When approaching someone with a mental illness please ask if they are willing to talk. Many try and hide it. Those I found on Twitter are usually open about it and are willing to help. Make sure they understand that you are only looking for information for your writing and not writing about them in particular. If they believe you will be writing about them it may scare them and not want to help.
Another thing to remember, that two people can be diagnosed with the same illness but very different symptoms, medications, therapy and daily life.
Here are the three I like and know are legit.
National Institute of Mental Health,  Mayo Clinic and Science Daily There are more just look and be careful about what information you use. If someone with mental health reads your book, misinformation could possible upset them.

 The main mental health issues I find in novels are: anxiety, bipolar disorder and narcissism. Antagonists are usually the narcissists, which is good.

Now that you have some information get to researching!

@jesdeh2o on Twitter is open about her anxiety, mild OCD, rage and bipolar disorder. Feel free to contact her (aka ME)

Book Bibles... Yay or Nay?

Over the years I have found that many authors use book bibles. At first I thought it was just for novel series, I know better now. So, this post is going to explore BOOK BIBLES.

What are Book Bibles?

A book bible (also known as a story bible, show bible, series bible, or pitch bible) is a reference document used by novelists, screenwriters for information on a television series' characters, settings, and other elements. Basically it's a handbook of information that allows the writer to create a consistent universe over a number of events or even years/centuries of events.

Why a Book Bible?

The primary goal is to make finding what was said or described in other books in the series, in order to achieve consistency among the books in the series and to save time researching past work.  To that end, it is useful to separate the written words of the books produced (content) from the supporting material.

So if Jane was wearing a purple dress in chapter 1, the description will be the same in chapter 2, 5, 8, etc. if it comes up again.

Things That Might be Included in a Book Bible

I, myself use mine for character, place and item descriptions. I use Aeon Timeline to track dates of events that happen from day to day and century to century. Lately I have been trying out Scapple to see if it'll work for me in my book bibles.

To learn more check out Hallow Land's, A Writer's Blog by Karen Myers It's a blog I follow and learned how to use Scrivener & Aeon Timeline together.

Here are things that are sometimes included in a book bible...

• The overall concept
• Ongoing characters - main, supporting, villains
• The setting
• The rules of the world you're creating
• Gadgets and gizmos [if any] and how they work
• What CAN'T happen in future storylines
• Format
• Series tone
• Series theme
• An opening story
• Story suggestions

Here are some timeline programs I found besides Aeon. 

Timelines

Plotlist

Capzules

Preceden

Tiki-Toki

TimeGlider

Timeline 3D

Time Toast

Word Processing Programs

Microsoft Word

Scrivener

Google Docs

WordPerdect

Pages

All writers have their preference when writing and they will have a preference for timelines and mapping programs as well. Only the writer herself/himself will know what works for them.

In short, a book bible is a great thing to keep track of everything. Whether it's for a single novel, screenplay or a novel series, it'll help (in my opinion). 

I am not paid for my opinions or referrals to programs and/or websites. All my suggestions are my opinions alone.

Time For Prepping for NaNoWriMo

One month from today we start a 30 day writing frenzy. Are you ready? Have you tried any new apps or programs for your writing? Well I'll start off with ones I know about. If you know more post links in the comments section.

Scrivener by Literature and Latte

Literature & Latte ©

Scrivener is an all in one program for writers. Available for iOS, Mac & Windows. Keep notes organized, outline, write & edit.  Export your finished document to a wide variety of file formats, including Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF and HTML—making it easy to share your work with others. Or self-publish by exporting to ePub or Kindle* formats to share your work via iBooks or Amazon, or for reading on any e-reader.
Another feature I love is the word count option/tracking.

Photo from Literature & Latte ©

I auto-save to Dropbox which means I can open my file from any computer that has Scrivener installed and it'll save the new version. I know others sync with cloud services.
Tutorials:
Windows
Mac
iOS
Check them out and see if you might like to use Scrivener. BTW- Scrivener usually offers an extended trial version for NaNoWriMo, normal trial period is 30 days of use...NOT 30 days on your computer. NaNoWriMo version usually ends Dec. 7th of so.

Scapple © by Literature and Latte 

Many think of it as mind-mapping. It isn’t exactly mind-mapping software—it’s more like a free-form text editor that allows you to make notes anywhere on the page and to connect them using straight dotted lines or arrows. You can nest them, so if you move one you move all that are connected. I haven't used Scapple much but I am not a planner.
Since it was created by the same people that created Scrivener you can drag your Scapple notes right into Scrivener. Here is a short tutorial on Scapple. 30 day trial... 30 days of use not 30 days on your computer.

Aeon Timeline

You can model not only the events of your story & the backstory of each of your characters. Keep track of relationships between events and your characters, locations, and story arcs. Visually group events by character, location, or arc (some events may appear in multiple groups), and change this selection at any time. Automatically calculate character ages for every event, allowing you to see how key moments would have affected and shaped your character (this is the one thing I love the most).
Find plot-holes or inconsistencies in your story. Create a custom fantasy calendar if your story takes place off-world, have more than 12 months, 7 days a week, etc. Nested events are there so you can zoom in for a detailed view of individual scenes, or zoom out for a contextual overview of your entire story — or further still for a contextual view of your entire world history. Add your images, external links, notes and research to your events. Filter events by almost anything. Add bookmarks within your story and backstory so that you can easily jump between key moments in time.

Another great feature is...  You can drag documents from your Scrivener project into your timeline, or events from your timeline into Scrivener, and keep the two in sync so that your timeline is always up-to-date with your writing.

Check out the videos to see if you might like this. Click HERE for videos.

Evernote

This is one I'm not familiar with. Evernote is a cross-platform app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving. Though here is a link to learn more about it. Evernote.

Prepping Food for NaNoWriMo

Here are a few things I do to make meals quit and easy during November... Well I do it almost every month but November is a must. Plan meals ahead of time. I do it for a month but most people I know usually plan for a week at a time. Do it when it works for you.

On the 28th or 29th of October

• Cook up meat for spaghetti & goulash & freeze it
• Make up a meatloaf or 2 & freeze it
• Cook up taco meat for 2 or 3 meals & freeze it
• Make up freezer meals for my crock pot (slow cooker) Usually I do Sweet-n-Sour Chicken, Beef stew, chicken fajitas, beef fajitas, BBQ chicken, Mongolian beef, Applesauce BBQ chicken, flank steak, and Pre-packaged roast & veggies. Freeze all meals in gallon size freezer bags. Most of your favorite crock pot (slow cooker) meals can be made into freezer meals. If you have questions Tweet me @GetWordies 
• Make cookie dough balls and freeze them for fast cookies

Cleaning-October

•  Make sure all rooms are at least picked up to vacuum
• Clean out refrigerator
•  Vacuum
• Dust everything so you won't look at it and get distracted
• Clean the bathroom thoroughly
• Wash bedding, curtains and anything you normally don't. 

A clean place leaves you feeling good and you can write more, usually. I do a total Spring/Fall cleaning every year so October is my Fall month.

On Fridays in November

• Make up snacks: brownies, cookies, dips, cut veggies, spinach/artichoke dip
• Make sure kitchen is clean so it won't distract me
• Get kids organized and plans for the weekend
• Plan you writing times for the week
• If you have kids, make up snack cups/lunch box style snacks and lunch ahead of time (each day)

You can get a sink full of dishes done in 10 minutes, I use 10 minute writing breaks for that. I also fold laundry, skim social media and check in with kiddo-2. You'll find you can get tons of household things done in 10 minutes. It gives you that break from writing and you get stuff done.

Evernote, Literature & Latte, and Aeon Timeline are all .

CampNaNoWriMo July

It's that time again where we start prepping for a month's long writing and/or editing session. Whether you are cleaning and/or organizing your work space, meal prepping so the family can be fed while you loose yourself in your work; it is stressful. Take a five minute break and breathe.

Prepping:

• Take time to look up recipes that will make your life easier while you are being creative. Check out our "Writer's Food" page and our Pinterest boards. 
• Prep all foods once a week or even for the month. Freezer slow cooker meals are the best way I have found to do this. 
• Organize snacks for your family & yourself.
• Plan activities for your kiddos that you don't need to supervise totally. For little ones use activities in highchairs. 
• Clean your house as if spring cleaning. Well, maybe not that thorough.
• Clean your writing space and organize your notes and apps.
• Set up or look over your timelines and character bios to remember it if it's been awhile or you're just starting a new project.

During Camp:

• Set times to write and stick to it.
• Use Twitter for encouragement and sprints.
• Talk to your cabin mates every day.
• Remember to breathe
• Get up and stretch every hour.

Now that those ideas are out there I hoe we all have a great Camp and enjoy our cabin mates!

NaNoWriMo? What is IT?

National Novel Writing Month, shortened as NaNoWriMo, is an annual internet-based creative writing project that takes place during the month of November. NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel in 30 days. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people writing and keep them motivated throughout the process.

The website provides participants with tips for writer's block, local places writers participating in NaNoWriMo are meeting, and an online community of support. The idea is to focus on completion instead of perfection. NaNoWriMo focuses on the length of a work rather than the quality, encouraging writers to finish their first draft so that it can later be edited at the author's discretion.

NaNoWriMo's main goal is to encourage creativity worldwide. The project started in July 1999 with just 21 participants, but by the 2010 event over 200,000 people took part – writing a total of over 2.8 billion words.

Writers wishing to participate first register on the project's website, where they can post profiles and information about their novels, including synopsis and excerpts. Word counts are validated on the site, with writers submitting a copy of their novel for automatic counting. Municipal leaders and regional forums help connect local writers with one another for holding writing events and to provide encouragement.

Rules

Participants' novels can be on any theme, in any genre of fiction, and in any language. Everything from fanfiction, which uses trademarked characters, to novels in poem format, and even metafiction is allowed; according to the website's FAQ, "If you believe you're writing a novel, we believe you're writing a novel too." Starting at 12:00 am on November 1, novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before 11:59:59 pm on November 30, local time. Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no earlier written material can go into the body of the novel, nor is one allowed to start early and then finish 30 days from that start point.

Participants write either a complete novel of 50,000 words, or simply the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later. Some participants set higher goals for themselves, like writing upwards of 100,000 words, or completing two or more separate novels. To win NaNoWriMo, participants must write an average of approximately 1,667 words per day. Organizers of the event say that the aim is simply to get people to start writing, using the deadline as an incentive to get the story going and to put words to paper. This "quantity over quality" philosophy is summarized by the site's slogan: No Plot? No Problem!This is also the title of Chris Baty's book of advice for NaNoWriMo participants, published in late 2004 by Chronicle Books. There is no fee to participate in NaNoWriMo; registration is only required for novel verification.

No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed. Anyone who reaches the 50,000 word mark is declared a winner. Beginning November 25, participants can submit their novel to be automatically verified for length and receive a printable certificate, an icon they can display on the web, and inclusion on the list of winners. Novels are verified for word count by software, and may be scrambled or otherwise encrypted before being submitted for verification, although the software does not keep any other record of text input. It is possible to win without anyone other than the author ever seeing or reading the novel.

Sponsors of NaNoWriMo

Some of these sponsors offer specials just for NaNoWriMo. Check them out and see what you can get! 

CreateSpace, Scrivener, Fast Pencil, Storylist Software, BookBaby, Swoon Reads, Aeon Timeline, Zoetic Press, Scribophile, Story bundle, Ulysses III, 4 the Words, JukePop, BiblioCrunch, Inked Voices, Kobo

Another resource for motivation and inspiration is Twitter. There are many who hold word sprints and writathons, especially during NaNoWriMo. Check out our Sprint Schedule for info.

Writing Break

Get Wordies wants you to take the next 23 days off from writing. Use this time to research, brain-storm or outline your NaNoWriMo project. There will be NO sprints until November 1st. You can also use this time to plan your meals and snackies and get them ready if you are going to use freezer meals.

For freezer meals and snackies for NaNoWriMo click here for our list of yummy goodies. I am in love with the spinach/artichoke dip and tostitos for my NaNo snackie.

Get the kiddos' activities and snackies ready and planned. This will help a lot.

For research, outline and time line help check out Scrivener and Aeon. They made my 1st NaNoWrimo a success. Right now you can try Scrivener for 30 days but NaNo version will allow you to use it to December 7th.

We will start off NaNoWriMo on November 1st for 1k1hr runs for a few hours. Then November 2nd is our 1st of 2 10kWritathons. That's 10k wordies in a day. This should give all of you a great head start on your wordie counts. Remember only 1,667 wordies a day are needed. If you participate in a 10kWritathon that drops you to 1380 wordies a day. If you participate in both it drops you to 1072 wordies the other 28 days.

How I Use My Time Line Software

I thought since I showed y'all how I use Scrivener it was time to show you Aeon Timeline.

Aeon is by second best writing tool. Of course Scrivener is my bestest. Scribble Code has come up with an easy way to track events in your novel with Aeon Timeline. As we explore Aeon keep in mind this is the way I use it. Everyone will use it differently.
Many like the idea there are several options to time periods. As you can see here; you have the basics along with the ability to create your own. This helps in world building. I use the normal BC-AD for my novels.

As you can see here is part of my time line for my serials. I have 2 arcs open with the characters below. Their ages are added when you add an event that includes them. At the top you have you dates and at the bottom you have a slider bar to move quickly over long periods of time. I use this the most since my WIP is over 1000s of years.

The arcs are easy to flip back and forth to. You can have several open or just one. I usually have the MC I'm working on and the Birth/Death arc open. The Characters are always open in mine. All my arcs are color coded as are my characters by generation or who's book they are going to be in. (That's if the characters cooperate.)

Here is an event on my global arc. As you can see to the right is the open inspector. It contains everything about the event. Time, date, label (which is the MC for me), Arc it's in, and of course the title. As you can tell this is in Dalara's book and it's in the Global arc under Dalara's label.

This is one of my favorite options; the ability to lock events so you don't accidentally move it. Once I have the date set I lock the event. And believe me I have deleted events or moved them years from where they should be.

Here is my character listing. You can see that there are a few different colors and their ages are visible. This is one feature I love since some of my characters are over 2000 years old.

Here is my Birth/Death arc. I record births in pink and deaths in black. This is scrolled in as to see as much of the time line births as we can.

So, that's how I use Scrivener Timeline. It's simple and easy. Plus it's one of the few easy ones that won't break your bank. They sponsor NaNoWriMo and I bought mine at discount when I won last year. Check out their free trial. I guarantee you won't be sorry.

Camp is About Here!

As July 1st approaches many of us writers are getting ready for CampNaNoWriMo. 

Finishing up...
research and organizing the last of the many notes we have laying around, not to mention all those thoughts that just jump into our heads when we least expect it. I just a few days we will begin the hard part, putting it all together and making sense of it.

I know I have touched on many of the things I will this post but it is always good to know everything you can, especial before a month of stress and intense writing.

This week you should...
not only be preparing for a month of wonderful writing but also meals, handy snacks and quick drinks. Click Writer's Food tab at the top for tons of great ideas.

If you are looking for a new program to write with...
 check out Scrivener's free 30 day uses (not 30 days but 30 days you open the program). Grab it at Literature & Latte. Need help with keeping the time line in order check out Aeon Timeline at Scribble Code. This free trial is 20 days of use (as with Scrivener it's the days you use it.).

Keeping your blog readers up to date...
on your word counts are made easy by Sarra Cannon with her counters. Sarra's Word Meter is great to update multiple blogs with a click or two. She also has many other Indie Writer's Resources. Language is a Virus has a great NaNo word counter widget.  Writing for Your Supper has many word counter links for you as well.

As for the writing process there are many resources on Twitter. 

Get Wordies for example. We run 30 minute wordsprints Mon-Thurs and and during July we will be having more than our normal schedule and tossing in some 1k1hr to help you along. July 26th is out 10kWritathon (10,000 wordies in 1 day(12 hours- 10 hours of writing). Check out our Sprint Schedules for our times among many others that have sprints. Don't forget #writeclub with @FriNightWrites and @Sprint Shack on Twitter.