Today's quick tip is about how to name your files when you're ready to start querying. There are two main things to keep in mind when an agent asks for a document as an attachment.

1. Always include your last name and title in the save file name.
For example, if you were to look inside one of my main writing folders, it looks like this:

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You'll notice how file versions that have been sent out with queries all have the title in all caps and my last name, plus a brief descriptor of the document--query, first chapter, etc. This also prevents me from accidentally sending out the wrong version of a file.
Agents receive thousands of emails. You always want to make sure enough of your contact information is on every document and email for them to find you. When an agent downloads a submission to read, it can be difficult to remember which email and query it went with. Make everyone's life easier by including your name on your file.

2. For the benefit of agents who read on e-readers, make sure your information is correct on the document's properties.
This one is simple to fix, but I didn't know about it until I saw a few agents mention it some time ago. In MS Word, when you click on the blue "File" tab, you'll see a screen that has all sorts of information about your document. On the right side of the split screen, it lists the number of pages, word count, editing time--which I'm not sure I want to know!-- author name, and title. (The default on author name is often the computer company.)

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 So why does this matter? Because it can affect how your document information is displayed on an e-reader. Remember, your goal is to make it as easy for an agent who likes your work to find your information as possible. See where "Properties" is underlined in yellow? Click the arrow there, then go to "Advanced Properties," and then "Summary." That will bring up a dialogue box where you can set the document's title and your name in the author field. There you go! Now you're ready to send your documents off into the wild, in search of an agent or a publisher.

Today's post is inspired by the time I spent this week helping one of my kids, who has some learning disabilities, with a writing assignment. She had to write a short story for English, after plotting it out with a nice chart the teacher had given out. And even though kiddo is extremely smart and creative and great at telling stories, putting them on paper is an incredibly stressful experience for her.
Enter writer and editor mom, to the rescue! And as we tackled her assignment together and I did my best to nudge her along, I realized something that hadn't quite clicked before.

Every sentence is a choose-your-own-adventure type pivot point.

Each sentence builds on the one that came before it. Presenting her with choices at each sentence when she didn't know what to say next helped her to avoid getting stuck in the dreaded writer's block.
In practical terms, our discussion went something like this:
Me: Okay, you have a mob of angry villagers approaching the main character and her giant, hungry cat. Does she hear or see them first?
Her: Hear them.
Me: Okay, what do they sound like?
Her: Describes it.
Me: Okay, so does she see them next or run away?
Her: She sees them.
Me: What do they look like?
Her: Angry mob with pitchforks! Standard stuff.
Me: Got it. So how does the main character react? Does she say anything, do anything, feel anything? What is the giant cat who's the cause of all the fuss doing?

Hopefully you get the idea. By using this technique of approaching every sentence as a potential fork in the road, we were able to keep her from getting stuck in any one spot, and actually wrote a first draft that was twice as long as it needed to be. (Oops. But that's what editing is for!)
So next time you feel a bout of writer's block coming on, or you just aren't sure where the scene you're working on is going, try the choose-your-own-adventure approach at the sentence level. You might be surprised at how well it works!

Chances are, if you participate in any online writing communities, you've probably seen NaNoWriMo mentioned a lot this week. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge that happens every November, with an alternate version in April where you can set your own challenge. For NaNo, participants aim to write 50,000 words of a new story over the course of a month. You can outline and prepare as much as you like beforehand, but no writing until November 1st. If you're shooting for 50,000 words in 30 days, that's an average of 1,667 words per day.

Not everyone does NaNo, and not all participants finish. And that's okay. There are writing tools offered as prizes for the winners, and stat-trackers and writing help groups to keep you on track. The "Adopt a plot-bunny" forum is always one of my favorites, personally. I've participated several times; sometimes I "win," and sometimes I don't.

Here's the key thing to remember: You win at NaNoWriMo when you get words on paper. Any words at all.
It doesn't have to be 50k. It doesn't have to be a thousand. The point of NaNo is to encourage people to write. The theory is that if you sit down to write, and let yourself go, and forget about editing, you help yourself develop routines and strengthen your creative writing muscles. Too often writers get bogged down in trying to edit sentences as they go, striving for perfection in early drafts. This isn't realistic, and inhibits your progress. It's a lot easier to trim and shape and polish a manuscript once you have a completed draft to work from. And editing as you go tends to be discouraging; it's a process that has killed many stories over the years.
Some years NaNoWriMo may work for your schedule, and sometimes it doesn't. This year I'm in an editing phase, so I'm not doing the official challenge. Instead, I'm committing to editing a manuscript in one month. You can do your own version, with whatever goal is realistic for you, any time you want.
The goal is to set aside time for your writing, whatever stage you may be at. The world needs more stories, including yours.