TWIC: Nano prep, art podcast, drawing

NaNoWriMo starts in less than a week.  I am really torn over this one. Last year, I completed the challenge but, again, did not finish a novel. It crossed 50,000 words but only pointed toward an ending. In December and beyond, I added around 10,000 more words but haven't touched it in more than a month. My plan was, starting November 2015, I will see if I can be a writer. And the only clear result was that I could not. I could write but I didn't follow through. And I did write a lot; I have many answers on Quora and they were well researched. But they weren't the intended forum for my writing.

This year's book has the working title, "Smash the Lion, Smash the Dragon, Smash the Bear" and should conclude my steampunk trilogy - neither of the other two books have endings. One reason I am starting a new book is that this will force me to consider what happened at the end of book two so I will have a clear image of what I need to write towards when I return to it.

This story will feature a typical British stuffed shirt, and I have latched onto Cardigan as my model.

Okay, Nano stuff online: Quora topic page.
Are there are any good writing prompts for Nano?
What else could you complete in a month?
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If women wrote men the way men wrote women.
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Productive Procrastination.

4. Jordan Tannahill asks, "What is the most ridiculous thing you found yourself doing out of distraction/procrastination instead of writing?"
Duolingo. Not that it's ridiculous to try to improve my French, but it's ridiculous how addictive those little highs are when you get through a round without a mistake...
5. Jalal Barzanji asks, "How many times do you revise your manuscript before you submit it for publishing?"

At least twice - and at least one more time before it gets published.

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More on productivity: The best habits of famous writers.
Regarding failure (Toni Morrison):

Pay very close attention to failure, rather than get depressed or unnerved or feel ashamed. As a writer, a failure is just information...I recognize failure, which is important; some people don’t – and fix it, because it is data, it is information, knowledge of what does not work. That’s why writers need rewriting and editing...What you do is you identify the procedure and what went wrong and then correct it. If you think of writing simply as information, you can get closer to success.

On big projects with distance completions dates -and Nano-relevant advice (John Steinbeck):

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

And some advice important to me (Neil Gaiman):

When people come to me and they say, “I want to be a writer, what should i do?” I say you have to write. And sometimes they say, “I’m already doing that, what else should i do?” And I say you have to finish things...You learn by finishing things.

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Arts and Culture podcasts on BBC.
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A prompt for artists, your child's drawings.
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