Many a person has said, “I’m going to write a novel someday.” Someday… as in, when your work slows down, or when you can go on a fancy writing retreat, or when your kids are grown up. Someday is usually a day that doesn’t ever arrive, which is why National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, founded in 1999 by Chris Baty and friends) exists: to help you realize your creative dreams today.

The idea is straightforward. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 p.m. on November 30. You don’t have to take a novel-writing class or read how-to books; you learn to write a novel by doing it. In the words of NaNoWriMo: “Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.”

If you are considering giving it a shot this November, here are five ways Docs can help you get cracking:

1. Write everywhere - Get the app for Android or iPhone/iPad, and add new paragraphs or make edits anytime an idea strikes—on the bus, while you’re walking the dog, or even those times you’re caught without Wi-Fi, like on a plane. Of course, you can also tinker with your burgeoning masterpiece from any desktop computer by signing in at docs.google.com, so you never have to worry about having the right machine or device with you. 
2. Know your word count - You’ve got one month to make it to 50,000 words, so it’s critical to track your progress as you go. To grab your word count, use the shortcut command + shift + C (mac) / Ctrl + shift +C (pc), finding it in the Tools menu, or by clicking the three grey dots in the Android app. Once you’ve got your tally, update your progress by pasting your wordcount into the NANOWRIMO header menu. 
3. Get & manage feedback - Wrimos, as they're known, like to get feedback from each other as they write, and Docs makes that easy. When you’re ready for input, hit the big blue Share button, set permissions to “Can comment,” and the people you've shared with will be able to add comments or make suggestions that you can choose to accept or reject. 
4. See previous versions - Docs comes with revision history built-in, so you never lose previous version of your novel. Click on “See revision history” in the file menu, and you’ll see all your edits, grouped by date, so you can easily go back in time—or even revert to a previous version that you prefer. If you do invite others to give feedback on your work, click the “See new changes” button at the top for an instant look at any edits they made. 
5. Share your novel - Once you’re finished (congrats, BTW!), you can choose to publicly share your novel for the world to read. Also in the File menu, hit “Publish to the web” and you’ll be able to share the URL of your novel far and wide—on your favorite social networks, in email, or however you’d like. 

Good luck, and godspeed!

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager

Meet Marie Forleo. Named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation and one of Inc.’s 500 fastest growing companies of 2014, Marie's mission is to help people realize their greatest potential and their gifts to change the world. She’s the creator of the award-winning show MarieTV, founder of B-School and has been featured in Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine among others. After reading one of her tweets about Google Docs, we chatted to better understand how she uses the family of products to run her business. 

We want to know how you use the Google Docs family of products, too, so share your own examples at +GoogleDocs or @googledocs with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed. 

Hi Marie. First, tell us about who you are and what you do. 
I’m an unshakable optimist. I believe in a world where the vast majority of people wake up everyday excited to use their gifts to create a kinder, more meaningful life for all. My job is to help you reach your highest potential and use your unique talents to change the world. I do that through writing, teaching, and speaking each week on our show MarieTV, and through our online courses and programs.

How do you guys use Google Docs? 
As a virtual company, our team spans from Hawaii to Los Angeles to New York and more cities in between. And 99.9% of everything we create happens first in Google Docs. We constantly collaborate online and it’s all powered through Google Docs. We write our show scripts, craft and edit newsletters, generate all of the ideas for our free and premium content, brainstorm and execute strategies, track our priorities and goals, and review customer feedback. I’m not kidding when I say Google Docs powers our entire company. We love it and could simply not function at the level we do without it. We have a running joke that if anyone has an idea or initiative they want to bring to life, the first step is “Start a Google doc about it!”

What are three suggestions you’d have for other folks who are using or thinking about using Google Docs to run their business? 

1. Make sure everyone on your team understands Google Docs and is comfortable with how the basics work (sharing, formatting, adding and replying to comments, etc.). A few minutes spent training each other prevents frustration early on and leads to massive gains in productivity down the line. 
2. Be aware of who your documents are shared with. Realize everyone can see comments so be conscious of how you frame feedback to avoid upsets and misunderstandings. 
3. Hot Tip: If you’re collaborating in real time in a super long document, you can quickly and easily “hop to” where a fellow collaborator is writing within the document by clicking on their icon in the upper right corner. It will bring you to exactly where their cursor is. This trick saves us a lot of time and helps us (literally) stay on the same page as each other while working in a virtual environment. 

Do you use Google Docs for anything in your personal life or around the house? 
Oh my goodness, yes. I use Google Docs for everything from tracking family expenses, mapping out home renovation strategies, brainstorming vacation plans and working on personal visions and goals. I seriously LIVE in Google Docs and I love it.

When you’re working with spreadsheets, it’s important to turn your raw data into a story. With today’s updates to Google Sheets on the web, you’ll find even more ways to visualize and analyze your data.

Customized charts, made easier 
Charts can make even the largest data sets digestible, so we’ve made a few improvements to help you highlight what’s most important.

Starting today, you can add data labels to display the exact value of bars or points. And when you’re using line or scatter charts, you can change the shapes of your data points. Choose from stars, triangles, pentagons and more.
Your data, your way
Today’s update also includes new tools for analyzing your spreadsheet data. For example, you can:

• Preview formula results—instantly—as you type. This feature is especially useful for catching formula errors quickly and is unique to Sheets. 
• Filter rows and columns by conditions, including “greater than” and “text contains.” This way you’ll only see the numbers, dates and text you need. 
• Add calculated fields to pivot tables when you want to apply formulas to pivot table data. 
• Use the GETPIVOTDATA function to more easily retrieve data from your pivot table. 

The more the merrier when it comes to collaborating in Sheets, but sometimes you need to take extra steps to preserve your hard work from accidental edits. With Sheets, you’ve been able to restrict editing to a specific set of users and a specific range, but now you can also warn folks who try to edit certain cells. This way you can collaborate with others, and remind everyone (even yourself) to edit with care.
Try these updated Sheets features on the web today and start telling better stories with your data.


Posted by Dan Gundrum, Product Manager

This post comes to us from Zachary Elkins, Director of the Constitute Project. The Constitute Project was launched in 2013 as a way for constitution-makers, scholars, and everyday people to explore alternative ideas in constitutional design. -Ed. 

Constitutional reform happens more often than you might think. On average, countries around the world replace their constitutions every 19 years and amend them every two years. It’s not an easy task, even if it’s common. Constitutions are often the result of deliberation, discussion and discovery—discovery that often comes from writing together.

But collaborative writing can be challenging. It’s hard to write something with other people and still make it cohesive, harmonic and readable. These pitfalls are particularly salient for constitutions—documents that are supposed to represent the aspirations and principles of a people.

That’s where Constitute comes in. A project of the Comparative Constitutions Project and seeded by Google Ideas, Constitute allows anyone to read, search and compare every constitution in the world, indexed by topic. Constitute is built for people to analyze text, but they can move from analysis to drafting by exporting constitutional excerpts directly to Google Docs—a shared space to create and debate a new “founding” document.
Today a new set of exhibits at the National Constitution Center helps bring this hands-on approach to the general public. Created in 1988, the NCC is an interactive museum in Philadelphia dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitute exhibit has two components. The first is an installation of Constitute that invites visitors to view the U.S. Constitution (and other Constitutions) in comparative perspective.
In the second component, select visitors can put this analysis to work in a space we’re calling the “Drafting Lab.” There, people can use Constitute and Google Docs to participate with fellow drafters in each of the stages of Constitution-making—from research to deliberation to drafting.
The Lab might be the first of its kind in the world: a space for citizens and drafters of all kinds to imagine, rethink and rediscover constitutional ideas. We don’t really know what happens when drafters work simultaneously on the same piece of “parchment” (a Google Doc) and share the same workspace. So the sessions in the Drafting Lab may be illuminating for both scholars and for participants.

If you're unable to visit the NCC and do some drafting in person, you can always give it a try at home by visiting constituteproject.org.

May the constitution-making begin!

Posted by Zachary Elkins, Director, Constitute Project