NaNoWriMo: Slow Beginnings and Everything Else

One week before NaNoWriMo began, my uncle was murdered. And everyone in my head went silent. I have never felt so completely drained of creativity and imagination. The entire week, as I spent time with my family, avoided reading increasingly negative news articles, and prepared to attend the funeral, I was also thinking about the lack of anything coming out of my fingers. I’d already scheduled all but two of my Prewriting posts, so after I finished those last two I basically had nothing going on in the writing department. Needless to say, I was worried.

Then, Halloween came. We dressed up the kid and went to visit the grandparents. After making the rounds, we were invited back to my mother’s to watch Drag Me To Hell. So my first NaNoWriMo words were written while watching the movie (not really scary, more Army of Darkness than The Grudge). My grand total during the two hours? A whopping 100 or so. After a full night’s sleep and some breakfast, I was only able to add an additional 50. Basically, the characters for that novel refuse to be roused.

So, for the first time in my NaNoWriMo history, I’m considering changing novels. Which means I basically have to speed prewrite. But luckily, I have an entire box of story starters and sketchy outlines that I’ve written down over the years. So at least I won’t be starting completely from scratch.

Before I finish this post up, I had some requests for info about POV and Voice. I feel like those things are decided organically as I prepare everything else for my novel, so I’m not so great at them. Thus, some links:

POV:

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art36814.asp

http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/read/pov1.html

http://fiction-plots-pacing.suite101.com/article.cfm/points_of_view

Voice:

http://www.write101.com/lethamfind.htm

http://www.ttms.org/writing_quality/voice.htm

http://efuse.com/Design/wa-voice.html

I know it’s a little late, if you want to have that information for prewriting. But I find that those are things that can easily be taken care of in revising instead of prewriting.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 30

Today’s Link: www.nanowrimo.org

First of all, if you haven’t signed up on the NaNoWriMo website, go do it. I’ll wait. Really. I’ve got time. The fact is, everything that I’ve said, and probably more can be found on that site. It’s also the way you win (by reporting your word count to the site). And, best of all, once you sign up, you get a whole forum of information and ways to procrastinate. At your fingertips! Plus, pep talks every week, not only from the founder of NaNoWriMo (who’s written over 10 books by now), but also from other well-known, published authors. Every year, I look forward to seeing which of my favorites is going to be pepping us.

And best of all, you’ll have an entire site full of people that are interested in nothing more than watching you succeed at writing a novel in November. And if you really, really get stuck, you can probably find someone who’s willing to procrastinate for a few hours to read your novel and give you some advice. Or maybe just tell you something random like “Add a talking frog.” You never know, but there will always be help.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 29

Today’s Link: http://www.jennymeyerhoff.com/writers.html

This author has a lot of good advice on her page. But the really great stuff is her worksheets. She says that she’ll pull them out and go through them whenever she gets to a tough spot and I have to say, they probably work for that. I think they’d also work great for prewriting. And I’m looking forward to printing off several of the character worksheets. I like that they’re two pages, so they’ll fit nicely front to back on a single piece of paper. I can fill them out and stick them in my notebook, then if I need to add stuff later, I have a sheet for each character and I can just add it on. For me, it might work better than adding to the excel sheet. I love excel, but I’m a tactile person and sometimes I just need something to be on a piece of paper. And I like the handiness of having a front and back sheet. The worksheets that I’ve used in the past were multiple pages. This is more compact, and I like that.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 28

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Participate-in-NaNoWriMo

So I realized that we’ve been spending all this time preparing for NaNoWriMo and maybe not everyone knows exactly what it is or how it works. So today’s link helps with signing up, figuring out your novel, preparing for the month, staying motivated, and even winning. It’s pretty important stuff, and the closer you get to being 100% prepared to write your novel, the more important it is to think about how you’re going to accomplish that. I have a couple more worksheets tomorrow that might help with getting unstuck, since you’ll most likely get stuck at some point. Everyone does. That’s why they send out pep talk emails and encourage you to go to events. And, on the topic of events, now is the time to visit the forum for your region and check out the calendar. No one can go to every single event. But everyone should try to go to one or two. Trust me, being around other people when you’re stuck can be the difference between being stuck for the rest of the month versus being stuck for the rest of the minute.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 27

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Plan-out-a-Novel

I like this link, mostly because it’s a whole different system of planning than anything we’ve looked at so far this month. Though, it’s the sort of system that works better if you have more time, it could easily be used to maximize the last few days before November begins. It pretty much assumes that you’ll need to do research, which may not be true, but if you do need to do research, it’s great. Or, for those people who only just found out about NaNoWriMo, it could be used to prepare for next year’s novel. Since sometimes, you just don’t have enough time to prepare for the first idea that you have.

I also like this system, because it gives you an excuse to buy file folders, hanging files, and other fun new office supplies. And I happen to have a slight addiction to anything found at Office Depot or their competitors.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 26

Today’s Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Come-Up-with-a-Topic-to-Write-About

Okay, I know I said I’d given you as many as you could possibly need. But just in case, I found a couple more. For those of you that still still still don’t know what to write about, here’s an article about finding a topic. Basically, it’s brainstorming, but it’s a little more specific instruction on brainstorming for writing. So if nothing else, you can come up with a list of things that your main character might like to do. For NaNoWriMo, having a really detailed outline isn’t always required. It depends on the kind of writer you are. If I get stuck, I like to know where I’m going, so I can get unstuck. But if you have enough other tools, you could maybe get unstuck without knowing how you’re getting to the end of the book. I know I’ve allowed side tracks in my novels, or I’ve added things based on random plot helpers that are designed to get you unstuck. But generally, I like the comfort of having an outline. But if I manage to finish my first novel this month (I fully expect it to be 100k before it’s done, so I doubt it), I have several other ideas that aren’t outlined that I may tackle. Without an outline, though, I’m much more likely to become really really stuck. For a long time.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 25

Today’s Link: http://procrastinatingwritersblog.com/2009/09/get-ready-for-national-novel-writing-month/

I’ve pretty much linked to as many sites as you could possibly need for NaNoWriMo. Now, it’s time to talk about the other things you’ll need to think about in order to prepare for the month. Like stockpiling chocolate. Or figuring out what 1667 words looks like and how long it takes you. Personally, I know that I can hit that wordcount in an hour, if I’m inspired. Am I inspired every day of November? No. Not generally. But if a scene is going well, my fingers will fly and it’s wonderful. And then, usually, the next scene sucks the life out of me and I hate it and it’s like typing through mud and takes a couple hours. But after 3 years of NaNo (and two wins), I know that those scenes are not the majority. So I push through. And then there’s a scene around the corner that’s not completely evil.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 24

Today’s Link: http://www.davidniallwilson.com/?s=nanowrimo%2Bscheduling&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Search

We’ve been working hard. We either have an outline, we’re working on our outline, or we’re still desperately behind. That’s fine. Whatever place you’re at, now might be a good time to take a day or two off. Take this writer’s advice and start thinking about scheduling and time management now. I know I need to finish up a bunch of laundry and do some marathon dish-washing and kitchen-cleaning. Not because I care about how fast these things build up in November. Or even because I won’t have five or ten minutes to do them in November. But because it will make my husband slightly happier about me doing NaNo again if I make sure the house looks good while I do it. You might have different reasons for doing your own pre-NaNo cleaning/scheduling/junk-food-buying preparation. But while you’re working on preparing for your novel, don’t forget to also prepare for the way your whole life is going to rearrange for 30 days.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 23

Today’s Link: http://www.writing.com/main/forums/item_id/1474311

It might seem like it’s too late to start doing pre-NaNo activities at different sites. But I don’t think so. Maybe I’m optimistic. Maybe I just don’t think it’s ever too late to get started on prewriting stuff. So this site’s challenge month sounds fun to me, even this late in the month. Granted, I plan to finish these blog posts before I start on the challenges.

I officially finished my outline. I decided to go Google docs this year. I opened up a spreadsheet for my outline and notes. Since my novel will jump around in time, I had a little trouble deciding how I wanted to format my outline. But I eventually decided that I would have the years across the top and I would create an outline that would be placed in columns based on when the scene takes place. I ended up with something a little like this:

I’m hoping this will work. Though, if previous years are indication, I will probably decide not to write some scenes and I’ll add others. But the beauty of an outline is that I always have somewhere to go if I get stuck.

30 Days of PreWriting, Day 22

Today’s Link: http://www.silveragebooks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mag/ns/ns_2006.htm

While we’re on the topic of workbooks, this is another nice one. They have updated versions, but I was partial to this particular one. I like the discussion of plot formation. And I especially love the page for keeping track of things you need to fix. It’ll keep you a little less editing obsessed in November. That’s always something I struggle with. If I happen to read back a little in order to get caught up with where I am, that’s inevitably the day that I had a typo at the end of my work. And in November, editing is your enemy. Though I pretty much believe that in any first draft, editing is your enemy. You think you’re making things better, but really, what you’re doing, is making it so you most likely won’t ever finish.