October 29, 2019 - 46 - "National Novel Writing Month"

Crazy Schemes

     October is feeling really strange this year.   For the last two years by now I would be working furiously on Prep-tober.  

     What the heck is that?

          Prep-tober is designed to get you ready for NaNoWriMo.

     And what the heck is that?

          NaNoWriMo is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month.  This is where people around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in 30 days.

     Crazy scheme, huh?  Fifty thousand words works out to 1667 words per day, and you're supposed to pump those words out every single day of November.  

     The founder, of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, started in 1999 with a group of 21 friends.  They worked out the rules of the challenge; it must be an original work, no co-writing, and you have to get to 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. 

     In 2000 it was moved to November "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather.", says Baty.

Crazy scheme?  Count me in!

     In late October of 2017 I heard NaNo mentioned somewhere and thought it sounded intriguing.  Good ol' Google revealed their website. I read about the challenge and, on a whim, went to sign up on their site.  

Huh?

     Here's a strange thing:  I already had an account!  

     It felt like some sort of gag.  I had zero memory of doing it.  I was thinking someone else must have signed me up.  But after I got an email to reset the password I could tell by the information on the account that it was definitely me who'd done it.  Four years earlier!  

     Isn't it so funny (/cool/bordering on the miraculous) how we are continuously nudged in the direction of our dreams and goals?   

     I took having an account as 'a sign'.  Though I guess, really, it's a sign that I am a) forgetful and b) freakin' need to write already. 

     I only had a couple of days of Prep-tober that year but figured I'd just jump right in. 

     The whole thing is a big experiment anyway, right? 

     Why not?

Micro Prep-tober    

Here's the pretty tracker from Kara Benz at Boho Berry

  In the last four or five days of October 2017, I did some brainstorming about possible plots and characters, tried to come up with an outline, but pretty much just ended up just writing the story as it came to mind.

     I later learned there are two types of NaNoWriMo writers:  plotters and  pantsers.  

     A plotter carefully plans out the plot and character arcs and fills in the details during the writing phase.  A pantser figures out all that as they go along.  (Writing by the seat of their pants, as it were.) 

     That first year I was definitely a pantser. 

     I also created word trackers.  (You know I just dearly love to track stuff!) 

A Breakthrough Moment

     On November 1, 2017  I wrote my first 1667 words.  Plus a little bit more! 

     Even though it was 'only' a couple of thousand words, it felt incredibly exciting to me.  I'm learning the feeling of a habit or plan that will really work for me. 

      I hadn't gotten anywhere that impressive that day.  I'd written many more words than that in a day in the past.  The difference was I was doing something that broke down the work into manageable chunks. 

     It's like that old line:  "When eating an elephant take one bite at a time."  (Creighton w. Abrams, Jr.)  I'd taken my first bite.   But, unlike in the past, I now knew how big my elephant was, and exactly what day I'd take the last bite. 

Lessons Learned

     It was exhilarating.  It made me realize how to solve some of the problems I'd always had with writing:

     1)  When can I say I've written 'enough' for the day? 
              For this month it would be when I completed my 1667 words for the day.
     2)  How can I stop editing myself, ruminating about how bad it was, wrestling with the details?   
              For this month there was no time for all of that.  I simply had to set aside all thoughts of the work being any good and just write.  

     It was so freeing.  My inner critic slunked off in a corner and pouted while I just got the words on the page. 

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     I knew that first day I would get to the goal.  No doubt at all.  

     It wasn't that I didn't want to do the work, it was the inner struggle of killing all my good (or even so-so) ideas before I even got them out.  It was self-criticism and wondering how it would sound to someone else. 

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     As I write this I'm realizing this is what I'm doing now by writing a blog post every day.  It gets past the critic and lets the ideas loose. 

Newborn Novelist

Here's my daily word sprints (timed
writing sessions) tracker.  Messy,
but so helpful!

     On November 25, five days early, I went past my 50,000 word goal!  

     I, officially had a first draft of a book!!!  

    Wow.  
   

Another motivational tool:  Buy the t-shirt before you
win, then you HAVE to do the work or feel like a
loser every time you see the damn thing.

       It wasn't good.

     It needed work.  (More on that later.)
     But I had created characters and plots and they were contained in the 53,105 words I wrote that first November!  

  Do you have a novel in you?  Try it.  You might like it:   nanowrimo.org

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"A deadline is, simply put, optimism in its most kick-ass form.  It's a potent force that, when wielded with respect, will level any obstacle in its path.  This is especially true when it comes to creative pursuits."

-Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo

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"There's a book in you that only you can write."

-Chris Baty

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