The Keys to Nano Success (and Halloween Scarefest continues!)

31 October 2011 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 1 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Happy Halloween! The scary day is upon us! Made all the more scary by two things: the Halloween Scarefest wrapping up (you can add scenes with a character who’s afraid through today!) and what happens tonight at the witching hour:

NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH BEGINS!

Indeed, the time for Nano has come. And they’ve finally gotten the Writing Buddies feature working—feel free to add me as a buddy. You might be able to find me under the enigmatic name of “JordanMcCollum.”

If you’ve spent October preparing, you’re probably like me, champing at the bit (yes, it’s “champing” and not “chomping”) to get started, and maybe a little amazed you’ve been able to wait this long. You might even be planning to stay up until midnight to get a jump start on the month. (Or head to bed early to get a jump start in the morning.)

But even if you’re not participating in Nano this year, there’s sure to come a time when you have to up your productivity: writing for a deadline, a personal goal, a challenge among friends. We can even strive to make the most of our time and our writing efforts outside of Nano (gasp!).

To help with that, throughout November, I’m planning a series on NaNoWriMo success and inspiration: ways to help you get going and keep going, tips for the best Nano ever, and fun ways to reconnect with what inspired you to write this story in the first place.

What do you think? Are you ready for Nano? What areas of Nano do you need the most help with (other than, you know, actually writing the words)?

Photo by Andrew Skudder

Technique

NaNo success: scheduling

4 November 2011 Jordan 1 Comment

This entry is part 3 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

NaNoWriMo can be a pretty crazy time—crazier if you don’t plan ahead. No matter when you do it, doubling or even tripling your work time isn’t easy, at least not if you’d like your life to, you know, not fall apart.

Planning in advance—or RIGHT THIS MINUTE if you haven’t already—is one key to making it through Nano without alienating everyone around you. Plotting, of course, helps, since you don’t have to stop to ponder where your story is going next and how you’ll get there.

But there’s another kind of planning that can make or break your Nano productivity: your schedule. For me, I went through and wrote down everything that I needed to do in a day to keep the rest of my life from falling apart (and if my life falls apart, my three kids’ and my husbands’ lives most likely will, too, and that’s not fair to them, no matter what month it is). We’re talking meals, face time with my kids, and the bare minimum housekeeping tasks. I also wrote out some things I need to do weekly and monthly, and a few one-off tasks I need to finish (Christmas shopping for our Christmas-at-Thanksgiving celebration).

I assigned a time for the daily and weekly tasks—and I found I had a surprising amount of time left for writing once my schedule was in place—and if I follow the schedule, not only will it afford me more writing time, but my house will actually run better and possibly even be cleaner than it normally is!

But now I have to be careful not to squander that work time. My friend Kathleen Brebes won Nano last year in thirteen days and she had some tips on scheduling for success:

A big helper to finishing my novel in thirteen days was that I had made a pact with myself not sign on to the internet until my daily writing was complete; I didn’t even check AI stats [our writing group] or Nano stats until my daily writing was finished. But, I did keep up with my daily housework schedule and DayMinder Agenda. However, the second week of Nano, I didn’t walk or lift weights; I only stretched daily. And, I made sure not to neglect my spiritual and familial commitments.

from A Succor for Writing . . . by Kathleen Brebes: Succor: My First NaNoWriMo.

Now, if a first-time Wrimo can hit the goal in 13 days—and still make time to keep her house running smoothly—I hope we can all get inspiration from that.

What do you do to keep on your writing schedule? What do you let slip—and what can’t you let slip?

Photo by Dru Bloomfield

Technique

NaNo fuel: actual food!

9 November 2011 Jordan 3 Comments

This entry is part 4 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Food. I like it. I like making it. I like eating it. Jami Gold made me think of this when she asked, “What Food Fuels Your Writing?” And when I’m writing, food can play two very important roles: fuel and incentive.

Yes, incentive. I’m not talking about fasting until you hit your word count. No, two words for you:

Incentive. Chocolate.

I so want to do this, but I don’t know if I have the self-control. But the idea is that for every X number of words/pages/scenes/chapters you rack up, you get an incentive, like a piece of chocolate.

But there’s more to a balanced diet than chocolate. There’s chocolate with peanut butter, chocolate with caramel, chocolate with cookies, chocolate with . . . What? Oh, other foods?

When you’re trying to write as fast as possible, one thing that also helps your life not fall apart: healthy snacks. I’m trying not to gain the “NaNo Nine”—and also not starve my children—so I’m planning to stock up on quick and easy snacks (for me and the kids!). Also, if I don’t have readily-accessible food around, I’m liable not to eat altogether, so emphasis on the quick and easy:

Baby carrots (with hummus!)
Celery sticks—prepare them in advance—with peanut butter
Apple slices with peanut butter or cheese
Grapes
Cheese sticks
Pretzels sticks and crackers (with hummus, peanut butter, cheese—you get the picture)
Popcorn (especially air-pop)

That’s just a start, of course, but those are some of my favorites! Preparing them in advance is one of my tricks to keeping my family—and my health—from falling apart while I’m writing like crazy.

I also planned a month of meals in advance that are fast and easy to make that we like—like leftovers I squirreled away in the freezer this year that I never got around to using. Add in breakfast cereal and peanut butter sandwiches, and we’re all set. (Plus twice weekly mini grocery store runs for milk, produce and bread give me guaranteed face time with the kids!)

What fuels—or rewards—your writing? Did you do anything to prepare food-wise for NaNo?

Photo by Brent Miller

Technique

Nano: Moving forward

11 November 2011 Jordan 1 Comment

This entry is part 5 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

I’m at a point in my novel where I know on a high level what I want to come next (characters D & K turn to O for help, character X will actually turn out to be good, etc.), but I have no idea to get from where I am to there.

As I was preparing for this series, I saw a great post on tips for marathon writing by Kaye Dacus. I just might have to put one of her tips to use today:

. Write Something . . . Anything

When you sit down for that scheduled writing time and you stare at that flashing cursor waiting for the words to come, and they don’t, DO NOT walk away from it and give yourself the excuse that you’ll just double-up on words tomorrow. Why do you think I’ve ended up writing the bulk of two of the last three novels I’ve finished in two weeks or less?

When I was writing what would become my first completed manuscript a little less than ten years ago, I got to a point at which (being a seat of the pants writer with no synopsis, only a vague story idea) I had no idea where my story was going. But I wanted to write. I needed to write. So since I’d just gone to the grocery store that evening after work, I wrote one of my characters doing the same thing. I had him get his basket. I had him pick out produce. I got him through the store all the way to the frozen-food section—where, surprisingly, he ran into another character; and, all of a sudden, I had a scene that moved the story forward again.

It sounds mundane and like bad writing (and it’s probably something you’d end up cutting most of in a revision), but not only are you working at that creative pump, you can also learn more about your character by doing something like that.

(Kaye has more great tips in her post!)

What do you think? What do you do to “prime the pump”?

Photo by Polycart

Technique

NaNo “Pinspiration”

14 November 2011 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 6 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

It’s week three (almostish). Tomorrow the halfway point, and you might be starting to lose steam. This week, we’re looking at things we can do in about 20 minutes to help remind us why we started this story, and fall in love with it all over again.

One recommendation I’ve seen several places is to make yourself a collage of images that speak to you about this book. Several people say that you can look at these collages for inspiration when you find your writing lagging. I love seeing these collage posts on friends’ blogs, but today I’m talking about a different way to do this.

Have you heard of Pinterest? It’s a website where you can virtually “pin” (save) any image or video that inspires you. It also shares these pins with your friends and displays them all organized into separate “boards.” It’s pretty fun. I use it a lot for my craft blog, but every once in a while, I use it for writing.

Now, my friends’ collages are a little more abstract, it seems, but this is my interpretation: some images of character inspirations and major plot elements (okay, and at least one character quirk) in my WIP:

(I edited out the pictures from my last couple projects, but the pins are still in there if you follow the link.)

You need an invite to sign up, but if you’d like one, just contact me and I’ll pass one along. (I think you also need either a Twitter account or a Facebook account to register at Pinterest.)

How do you make collages for your WIPs? Or do you?

Technique

NaNo inspiration: music

16 November 2011 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 7 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Images are one great way to recapture some of the initial inspiration behind your story, and music is another. It does more than just soothe the savage beast! (Which is a misquote anyway.)

Music is a great way to get yourself in the mood to write a specific scene. I know, I know, that sounds like I mean you should be listening to “Let’s Get It On” when you’re writing love scenes. That’s not quite what I mean (but if that works for you, great)—or, rather, it’s not just what I mean. There are songs about other things, you know. Sort of.

For a long time, my favorite music for just about anything was classical. Still, when I need to be creative on demand, I’ll pop in my James Galway (flute) album (Serenade). This is a big help still because I often have trouble writing to music with words without singing along. Okay, I have trouble grocery shopping to music with words without singing along. Audibly. (I’m just lucky my kids aren’t old enough to be embarrassed. Tired of listening, yes. Embarrassed, not yet.)

But sometimes, I have a perfect popular song or soundtrack I listen to on repeat while writing. I wrote a novel with a bunch of oblique references in the text to current songs—but it was set in 1974. So I listened to those songs on repeat. In another novel, I wrote a car chase chapter listening to “Life in the Fast Lane” on repeat. (No endorsement for the content or even musical quality. I just like it.) A song with a driving beat is a great for a high-tension scene—or for a high-tension writer.

Need music without words? I hear you, and I’ve found something that I love: movie soundtracks. Think of a movie in your genre that you like, and pull up the soundtrack for it. The various songs are already designed to be the backdrop to the different types of scenes you might be writing.

You might already have a good site for listening to music, or maybe you actually spring for your tracks on iTunes or Amazon, but if not, I’ve found Grooveshark is pretty nice for individual songs and playlists. I’m still devoted to Pandora for building a radio station around a song or two (yes even with the ads).

So what’s in my playlist this time around? “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin and the soundtrack to Indiana Jones. Also, Queen. They have nothing to do with my story. I just like them. I’ve really shattered your illusions of me now, haven’t I? John Williams, Eagles, Zeppelin and Queen, and yes, I’m under 30. You just don’t know what to make of me, do you?

What songs do you write to?

Photo by Colleen Lane and unknown

Technique

Nano motivation: Twitter

23 November 2011 Jordan

This entry is part 8 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Despite its reputation as a time wasting distraction, Twitter can be a great help for productivity during NaNoWriMo. This particular tool can be a double edged sword: it’s easy to get drawn into the time-suck that is Twitter, but if you’re careful about how you use it, Twitter can be a big help.

Twitter can be a great place to find little bits of encouragement, but my favorite use for Twitter during Nano is finding sprint partners—and better yet, partners for word wars!

About 20 minutes seems to be a good length for a sprint, and the faster your sprint partners, the faster you seem to go. At my writers’ retreat earlier this month, I had periods where I’d struggle to get a couple hundred words written in an hour or two—and then with a twenty minute sprint, I’d pound out almost 1300 (almost: 1299). I didn’t win, but I didn’t care! That was a heck of a lot better than I’d done in the last hour! The sense of accomplishment from pounding those words out makes it all worthwhile.

Since most of us don’t live with twenty writer friends full time, finding sprint partners can be a challenge, unless you turn to a place like Twitter.

If you’re worried about using writing as a competition, note that I actually really hate competition and the feeling of competitiveness. It’s a rush, but for me it’s not a good one: usually. But when I’m sprinting with someone—especially someone whom I know can write a LOT faster than me—it pushes me to go faster, and gives me a productivity boost that’s pretty hard to beat. And yes, it’s just plain fun.

(Side note: my friend Karen Hoover also has a great site called Sprint Writers’ Central with an open chat for anyone who wants to sprint or race in word count.)

Do you sprint? How do you find partners?

Twitter image by Marcos Xotoko

Jordan McCollum

Archives

The Keys to Nano Success (and Halloween Scarefest continues!)

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

NaNo success: scheduling

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

NaNo fuel: actual food!

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

Nano: Moving forward

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

NaNo “Pinspiration”

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

NaNo inspiration: music

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

Nano motivation: Twitter

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

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