Baty, Chris

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BATY, Chris

PERSONAL: Name is pronounced "bait-ee"; born in KS. Hobbies and other interests: Traveling, Scrabble-playing, record-shopping, "listening to Marketplace while I do the dishes."

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Chronicle Books, 85 2nd St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94105. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Freelance writer on music, travel, and culture. National Novel-writing Month, director.

WRITINGS:

No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Chris Baty is the founder of the National Novel-writing Month ("nanowrimo"), which takes place every November. Writers and aspiring writers register with the Web site, www.nanowrimo.com, pledging to complete at least 50,000 words toward a novel within thirty days. "Some come armed with extensive outlines, and others start only with a vague idea of what a story even entails," explained Lazette Gifford on the Forward Motion Writers' Community Web site. "Some come hoping to write the minimum number of words needed to 'win' and others start out intending to write an entire novel. Many people from both groups fall short of the goal of 50,000 words, but that doesn't diminish the fun of joining in with thousands of others on the starting line at midnight, November 1."

Drawing on his experience with this project, begun in 1999, Baty has written, No Plot? No Problem: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, which "is filled with sound advice on how to write the first draft of a novel, even if you don't adhere to the 30-day rule," according to Reviewers' Bookwatch contributor Emanuel Carpenter. "Baty's humorous writing style makes reading the book a fun way to learn all about the writing process without necessarily taking the task too seriously." Library Journal contributor Dale Raben felt that Baty's "original approach will appeal to anyone up for a challenge."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, September 1, 2004, Dale Raben, review of No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, p. 164.

Reviewer's Bookwatch, December, 2004, Debra Hamel, review of No Plot? No Problem!; March, 2005, Emanuel Carpenter, review of No Plot? No Problem!

Writer, November, 2004, review of No Plot? No Problem!, p. 8.