Selected Book
Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days
- Spiral-bound
- Author: Victoria Lynn Schmidt
- Publisher: Writers Digest Books
- Release Date: January 2008
- ISBN-10: 1582974861
- ISBN-13: 9781582974866
- List Price: $22.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryWhat Can You Accomplish in 30 Days? If you make time to write and put away all of your excuses, could you stay on track and finish your novel in only a month? With a structured plan and a focused goal, yes, you can! Using a combination of flexible weekly schedules, focused instruction, and detailed worksheets, author Victoria Schmidt leads you through a proven 30-day novel-writing system without the intimidation factor. Book in a Month shows you how to:
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Great if you can stick with it!
Rating: 
I have yet to launch into my month long adventure but I have read through a large majority of this book. The book has a lot of helpful hints on staying focused, not discouraging yourself, and monitoring yourself to get the writing process done quickly - and hopefully with as less pain as possible. The book is set up to be used once, so you would be buying a new one for each book you intend to write. The one downside to the book is I find the spaces in the book your supposed to write in way too small! Otherwise I recommend it to anyone interested in writing a short novel.
A rare gem
Rating:
If you love well-planned writing and filling out worksheets to mark progress in your work, you'll probably like this book
I feel that this book is the best of Schmidt's works on creative writing. The reason I would say such a thing is that her system, the workbook/notebook approach, helps organize each book-writing project into a single place. There is a large sticker to be labeled and placed on the spine to indicate the project's name. There are also many other stickers with symbolic and perhaps sentimental value. Schmidt uses many worksheets (about 5 per day) to foprce the writer into making productive use of the 2-3 hours of daily writing time (or whatever amount of time that you choose). I don't recommend it to avsolute beginners because the worksheet method is very laborious and can become daunting unless it is maintained. Experienced writiers may notice that this is a book filled with worksheets all of which are available for free on the author's website. In addition, an experienced writer may be able to just use a lined notebook to keep track of characters, plot, outines and so forth. Well, I am not what I would call an experienced novelist (like, say, Nora Roberts, Stephen King or any number of writers of pulp fiction). My conclusion about this book is that it is the best I have ever seen from this publisher (Writer's Digest) and is a great introduction to the author and her other, well-written works on creative writing. It is expensive and she does expect the reader to buy a new book for each new novel/book project, but I would gladly buy several copies of this work and use its method over and over again. Once you master the system, you can do most of the things on scraps of paper, a notebook, or even a computer file.
To compare this to Nanowrimo is to be unfair to Dr. Schmidt. She sets out to provide a way to produce a usable book-length work in thirty days or more, while the Nanowrimo folks focus on encouragement, self-esteem and fast-production of story ideas. I still prefer schmidt.
Definitely useful
Rating:
Well, I got this book 3 weeks ago because I was finally going to bite the bullet and power through writing a book and I needed the tight deadline and accompanying rigid discipline something like this demands.
My first impression: It's fantastic, exciting, and exactly what I was looking for. The book and it's author Schmidt give quite a lot of inspiration with an angle only a book like this can have. Really, all writer-motivating books promise some sort of personal fulfillment through writing, but this is the first one I've read that puts that goal solidly within reach (30 days out). Plus, the book is meant to be a structuring guide through the process, with places to note things like subplot ideas, character sketches, story outline as well as day-by-day exercises meant to take you closer to your goal.
The difference between this BIAM and the NANOWRIMO one is that it's intended to give you something incredibly solid and usable by the end. Baty's NANO is more about an explosion of creative productivity and this one is about ordering chaos. Both lead you to a "book" in 30 days. Schmidt's makes sure your book has a solid 3 act structure that adheres to the most successful conventions of storytelling.
Why only 3 stars? Well, I'm now on day three and I haven't been able to force myself through one page of the workbook section. I read the inspirational lead in (about 64 pages), got caught up in the NANOWRIMO excitement, and now I can't stop writing long enough to follow the exercises and fill in the blanks in the book. It frankly scares me too much with it's structure and guidelines. I don't want to direct my novel-writing energy to filling out its worksheets and answering its questions.
But I can say that if I DID, I know it would improve my work and seriously help. Also, if I was having a hard time keeping track of all my ideas or focusing them into a narrative arc, this book would solve that easily.
I think this would be much better for a person's second attempt at a 30-day novel. But seriously worth the money for the inspirational intro, and the possibility of using this as a rewrite guide when i'm done (one of its intended uses).
Good for starting your book
Rating:
This workbook was good for starting my writing process. I did not complete anything in 30 days but it started my creative juices. If you follow every single day to the letter, you still will not complete a book in a month that will be worth anyone's time to read. Still, I would recommend this to a first time writer that is having trouble beginning the writing process. It will give you a place to start.
Great for structure/motivation
Rating:
The concept of this book appealed to me, so I put it on my wish list, and thankfully one of my friends bought it for me. I love it! I'm the world's worst procrastinator and start far more projects than I finish, so this type of scheduled structure was very good for me. There is a short section for each of the 30 days with your objective and usually some sort of worksheet, and all the worksheets are collected in the back of the book (larger versions with more room to write). The author included some effective motivational rhetoric, especially the part about fighting our resistance to starting and/or finishing a project. I actually managed to write a rough draft of a novella (in 45, rather than 30, days) using the worksheets and guidelines in the first half of the book, many of which sparked additional ideas for my story. I plan to finish reading the book while working on a rewrite. There is also an accompanying Yahoo group (mentioned in the book) that, if you wish to join, will e-mail you daily with a very pared down version of your goal for that day, and which provides a forum for people using the system to support each other and a place to post your goals and achievements.
I will agree with a couple of the other reviewers that some terms are not well explained (like "reversal"). I can guess what she means by this and other terms, but it would be nice if they were more explicitly defined. Still, I've found this book incredibly useful and effective for my purposes. If you already have story ideas, but have trouble motivating yourself all the way through a project, this might be the book for you.
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