Over at Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg wrote an inspiring post called “The only advice you need for NaNoWriMo.” While tantalizing readers with all the viral content and Facebook news they will be missing, her post urged all marathon writers to stop reading posts and write.

Check it out: “Get off the Internet. Stop looking at Twitter. Do you know how frequently people were tweeting about #nanowrimo on Nov. 1, Day One of NaNoWriMo? One about every five seconds. That’s 720 tweets an hour, 17,280 tweets a day. If you took the time just to skim a portion of those, do you know how much writing time you will have lost? Get off the Internet.”

This is our third NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.

Join us at Social Gaming & Gambling Summit, December 13-14 in Los Angeles, for a two-day conference focused on the intersection of mobile gaming, immersive worlds, real-life brands, and social networking. Keynote speaker Niranjan Nagar, Head of Games & Apps at Facebook, will show you the tactics he uses to manage Facebook’s marketing strategy for the vertical and for architecting programs to build the category globally. Register today.

In an excellent New Yorker profile, Booker-winning author Hilary Mantel shared two secrets from her writing life–these techniques will work for writers all year round.

Check it out: “When she’s starting a new book, she needs to feel her way inside the characters, to know what it’s like to be them. There is a trick she uses sometimes which another writer taught her. Sit quietly and withdraw your attention from the room you’re in until you’re focussed inside your mind. Imagine a chair and invite your character to come and sit in it; once he is comfortable, you may ask him questions.”

This is our third NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.

Read more

Hurricane Sandy wrecked Brooklyn’s powerHouse Arena this week, and the bookstore will host a fundraiser to keep the business alive.

The DUMBO-based establishment had no flood insurance, and the the storm destroyed the “gallery, boutique, book store, performance, and events space” that has hosted countless literary events. The bookstore created the Tumblr blog Sandy Hates Books to record the recovery process. Here’s more:

Save the date, and save the store! On Saturday, November 17, 12–8pm, we’re hosting a day-long book fair featuring drinks, music, and some of our favorite authors. We will share more details with you as they come. A big thank you to everyone for the incredible outpouring of support we’ve already received. If you’d like to help us rebuild and restock and can donate a small amount, your assistance will be dearly appreciated, and we will think of something very nice to do in honoring and celebrating your contribution. Our thoughts are with everyone struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

It is too easy for first-time writers to obsess over book deals. Back in 1972, the great author Kurt Vonnegut cautioned one young writer against seeking an advance before finishing his book–sharing important advice that all aspiring authors.

Vonnegut advised his son (author Mark Vonnegut) “to carry on without an advance” while working on his first book. You can read the complete letter he wrote to his son in the new Kurt Vonnegut: Letters collection, but we’ve posted an excerpt below:

I have mixed feelings about advances on first books. They are hard to get, for one thing, and are usually so small that they tie you up without appreciably improving your financial situation. Also: I have seen a lot of writers stop writing or at least slow down after getting an advance. They have a feeling of completion after making a deal. That’s bad news creatively. If you are within a few months of having a finished, edited manuscript, I advise you to carry on without an advance, without that false feeling of completion, without that bit of good news to announce to a lot of people before the job is really done.

Many people are still without power or shelter on the East Coast as temperatures fall this weekend. We are building a list of food, water and shelter for Hurricane Sandy victims below–see if the shelters and resources near you need support.

We’ve also collected ways you can volunteer for hurricane relief. In addition, the New York Blood Center needs donations. If your community has resources we should add, be sure to include links in the comments section.

New York City Hurricane Sandy Shelters

New York City food and water distribution locations

New Jersey Hurricane Sandy shelters

New Jersey food and water distribution centers

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll won the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year for his book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.

Follow the links below to read free samples of the shortlisted business books. The winner was unveiled at the award dinner at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York. Coll earned a £30,000 (about $48,711) prize, and the other shortlisted authors received £10,000 (about $16,237).

Here’s more from the release: “The book is a hard-hitting investigation of the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.”

Read more

Formerly self-published romance novelist Sylvia Day has sold 100,000 trade paperback copies of Reflected in You in a single week. The eBook was released in October and has already sold 450,000 copies.

According to Amazon’s new Author Rank feature, Day (pictured, via) is currently the fifth most popular writer on Amazon–alongside publishing giants like James Patterson, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and Suzanne Collins.

Interestingly enough, romance novelist Jessica Sorensen is currently the sixth most popular author at Amazon.  She is the only self-published author to make the top ten most popular authors list, and her new book rocketed to the top of our Self-Published Bestsellers List this week.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week, including a possible merger between two major publishing companies, Halloween costumes based on books (like this Where the Wild Things Are costume).

Click here to sign up for GalleyCat’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

1. Free eBooks for Halloween

2. 60 NaNoWriMo Writing Tips in a Single Post

3. How To Volunteer for Hurricane Sandy Relief

4. How To Use Craigslist as an Editing Tool

5. Random House & Penguin News Spawns Random Penguin Meme

6. Brooklyn Author Held Down Her Roof During Hurricane Sandy

7. Random House & Penguin To Merge

8. Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual Aids Psychologist’s Experiment

9. What Writers & Publishers Need To Know About deviantART

10. Funny or Die Stages Postmodern Version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 

Need some help keeping your National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project organized?

We asked the Google Docs team for some suggestion on how to use the free suite of online writing tools during NaNoWriMo. We’ve collected five ways you can use Google Docs below.

This is our second NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.

Read more

Some 10-year-olds are happy just to cheer for their favorite football team, but Jacob Keyes didn’t stop there. The ten year-old Spokane, Washington resident is so excited about Notre Dame’s football team that he wrote and published a book about them.

The Little Gipper’s Welcome to Notre Dame Football is Keyes’ self-published book about his favorite team. The $19.95 book is a guide the Fighting Irish.

Here is more from the book’s website: “I began following Notre Dame football when I was seven years old and instantly became a huge and loyal fan. I was lucky enough to visit Notre Dame for a summer football camp when I was eight years old. I was so excited to be at Notre Dame that I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. that first night exploring the campus! I was just amazed at the shiny Golden Dome, the candlelight in the Grotto, the Basilica, the Hesburgh Library, and of course, Notre Dame Stadium (even in the dark!).” (Via The South Bend Tribune).