Book Review: No Plot? No Problem!

I want to know how Chris Baty managed to write this incredible, helpful, sometimes refreshingly silly book with his tongue so permanently fixed in his cheek, it probably popped right through!

The mad genius and benefactor behind National Novel Writing Month offers this book on the NaNo site to give guidance to those who think: A WHOLE BOOK, rough drafted in 30 days? Ain't no way, Jose!

I've been looking at the book for the last three NaNo seasons, and finally broke down and got it. Not that I have any trouble writing a rough draft in 30 days (not to be bragging, because I think it's a touch of OCD here!), but this fresh perspective on preparation, on deciding what you can ignore and what you need to focus on, and developing priorities in your weird and wonderful novelling journey ... it HELPED!

It doesn't matter if you're going to do NaNoWriMo this year, if you've never done it, if you keep thinking about it and life gets in the way: If you want to write a book, read this book. Because honestly, there is no one, hard-and-fast way to write a book. Everybody's brain is wired differently, so logic dictates (I got a very high score in logic on my GRE, so trust me on this!) that everybody comes to the novelling task in a slightly different way. This book could be the "ah hah!" moment in finding your process.

Read it. Snicker. Scratch your head. Snicker some more. Wait for the light bulb to go off.
Repeat as needed.