November is just about over, so now is as good a time as any to write up my Nanowrimo-Memento. Overall, it was a great feeling to finish and “win” by writing 50K words in 30 days. The wet blanket of the whole thing is that I didn’t end up with much that was salvageable. I intend to post excerpts from my mess of a novel soon and include plenty of pokes and prods at myself. I’m definitely no Hemingway, Adams, nor Trout.
Here are some tips for trying your own Nanowrimo next November. (Or, “Hey Eric, do this next year.”)
In advance, come up with a single, cohesive idea for a narrative including setting and characters.
You would think this would have been an obvious step, but I avoided it and it cost me the opportunity to have something that could one day be a readable story. In the past, I’ve liked my stream-of-conscious writing style best, and I was excited to see what would pop out of my head this month. It turns out that I need willy-nilly writing and structured writing in more equal portions to produce something that is readable.
Research your setting before you start this whole thing.
It’s not really important to have all the names and details of cars and guns and cities, etc. ahead of time, but it can be fun to have that stuff handy and throw it in when it comes up. It makes you feel like you’re actually writing something legit, that might actually take a reader on a believable journey through something that you created. However, don’t do a single bit of research while you’re in the middle of a writing session. Google is not your friend during writing, and it will just send you on rabbit trails that take up your session time. I confess, I used Thesaurus.com a lot. My vocabulary is not nearly as … um … what’s the word … you know, the one that means “big”… as I once thought. But that was quick; I didn’t dwell too long on finding the “perfect” word. Just “the” word.
Tell a lot of friends that you’re doing it.
I had four friends in particular who took the time to ask about it. If not for that feeling of accountability, I can remember at least two times when I would have quit. Ed and Hope sent email and posted on my blog. Mike checked out my word-count, asking why it was so low, every day. Jen was an ever-present source of encouragement. She’s really good at making you feel like you can do anything.
So tell people that you’re going to try writing a 50,000 word story in 30 days and then post your word count somewhere where they can check on you.
Visit the website often. Read and Post.
Set aside time before beginning a writing session to check out the forums. The community that has been built for this task is incredibly positive and supportive. When I got into the 20Ks and 30Ks, the agony I felt when I sat down at my computer desk to write evaporated once I checked in at some of my favorite groups. For me, these were
* Reaching 50,000
* Horror
* Science Fiction
* Fantasy
* Columbus OH
* Writing 101
* Newbies
* Nanowrimo Ate My Soul
I had some good responses to a few of my posts, and that felt great. I also doled out encouraging words as much as I could. That felt good, too.
Find the right schedule, including time of day and length of sessions.
I started in the early mornings. Bad idea. Not only does the brain not work in the morning, but I could never get into the “mood” of the creepy story I was trying to write. By the end of the month, I was writing at all times of the day, but I wrote best at night. This was not merely a “mood” thing, either. For some reason, I just had better ideas at night, and felt more comfortable.
A post in the forums explained a process of writing in 15 minute bursts, and that worked well for me. Next year, I’ll write for 15 minutes at a time, multiple times each night. I’ll probably try that with my other projects, too. It’s important to experiment with different times until you know what’s right for you. Have enough self-awareness to know when a certain time of day is just wrong, (and don’t listen to your self-doubting shoulder-demon who says that you’re just being lazy because you don’t want to get up at 5:00 in the AM.)
Stick with the original idea.
My level of enthusiasm for projects ebbs and flows. Bluntly, I’m fickle. So, when the going got rough on Story A, I switched to Story B. (Then to Stories C through F.) This left me with fragments of unfinished stories that I, in such a lame manner, incorporated into Story A. If there’s a cloud over my parade, it’s this. I really wanted to have a story that I could illustrate throughout the year and publish to the web, but I’m no closer to that than I was when I started this. Instead, I wish I had pushed through and found the thing that would spark my interest in Story A and developed it further. That’s what I’ll do in 11/07.
If you have any hopes of having something that can be edited into a form that others will want to read, don’t stray. You probably won’t have time to finish multiple stories anyway.
I’ll see if I can scrape out some samples from the novel to illustrate some of these points and to provide you with some entertainment at my expense.
