National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) ended last night as writers around the world counted a collective total of 3,288,976,325 words this year–215 million more words than last year.

As these writers toiled away, we published daily links to writing tools and tips. We’ve collected the individual posts below–the advice will work all year round.

Here is our final piece of advice: Take a break and then edit like crazy. Remember your NaNoWriMo manuscript is just a draft and it takes  A LOT more work to publish.

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David Ritz has had a successful ghostwriting career, collaborating with everyone from Ray Charles to Joe Perry, and written quite a few novels too. In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s Hey, How’d You Do That? series, the prolific writer tells how he landed some of his biggest clients, and how gives tips for aspiring ghostwriters.

“When I first met Ray Charles, I didn’t know about ghostwriting; I was just going to do a biography of him,” Ritz recalled. “And then his agent asked me, ‘Which book would you be more interested in reading: a book about Ray Charles written by an egghead or a book written in his own voice?’ I told him that I would much rather read the book written in his own voice, and he told me, ‘You should write the book you would want to read, not the one you believe you should write.’ And that was a big turning point for me.”

For more, read Hey, How’d You Build a Successful Ghostwriting Career, David Ritz? [subscription required]

At the Brooklyn Book Festival, Red Flags author Juris Jurjevics, Beaufort author Ron Leshem and Beneath the Lion’s Gaze author Maaza Mengiste participated on a panel about writing war stories. Throughout their talk, they shared these four handy tips to keep in mind when practicing this particular style of writing.

1. A lot of war stories are highly romanticized; be careful with your language to maintain authenticity.

2. In war, there is no good and there is not bad. The lines become blurred during war. Make sure that human complexicities are well incorporated into the story.

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