Tag Archives: nanowrimo

Technique

Nano Redux

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So, how was your November? I didn’t want to report on Nano yesterday because I didn’t want to put pressure on the people rushing for the finish line. I hope you made it, too!

As for me, I pretty much beasted Nano. I was actually trying to do Candace Havens’s Fast Draft method, with 5000 words a day, but I was too chicken to admit it publicly. I’d only ever written that much in a day once before.

But, with help from 27,000 words at a writers’ retreat the first weekend of November, I hit 50,000 words on November 8 and kept write right on typing until I reached 78,000+ and THE END on November 14. That’s an average of over 6000 words a day—and I took Sundays off. So that November 30 finish line didn’t mean as much to me this year as it did last year for my Half-no (25,000 words on a WIP).

Now, how was the experience? It would seem like writing that much in a day is insane, awful, grueling, leaving time for nothing else. Candace Havens actually addresses these concerns—you should see the list of all the things she did while pumping out 5000 words a day. Raising three kids five and under, fixing dinner every night and keeping us all in clean underwear doesn’t sound like quite the challenge.

The purpose of fast drafting is to tap into your subconscious understanding of the characters, to get the story on the page, to let the storytelling and character-creating part of your brain take over and run as fast as it can. And in that respect—and the respect of churning out a first draft in two weeks—I’d have to say this was a rousing success.

In fact, this is the most fun I can remember having in a first draft since . . . the book that will be my first published novel. I see a lot of parallels between the two writing experiences. The novels themselves are quite different (though I did manage to bring in an aspect of forbidden love again) but I can see that many of the things I had to work on and revise with that manuscript are the things I’ll have to work on with this one. Which is convenient, since I’ve got experience fixing those!

However, some things fell a part just a little bit too much in my real life—apparently, in November, it’s advisable to wear more than just underwear (okay, that’s advisable year-round), and my children need more face time with me. At this point in my life, the balance can’t go quite this far to writing for very long. I’d be plenty happy with a first draft in three weeks or a month—since my record before this was about two months—especially if it wasn’t quite so stressful on my family.

Oddly enough, though, I got up by about seven and to bed by about midnight every day I fast drafted, but since then—nuh uh. That I could do with a bit more of. I worked very hard to maintain some semblance of structure and routine in the house, and I’m thinking I might get back to that, even though I kind of hated it.

Aaand then there’s the book. It was a fairly decent first draft—easier not to leave too many loose ends when you only wrote the beginning two weeks ago—until I thought “Hm… my heroine’s inner conflict over X is kinda weak, and I’ve always wanted to have a character with X^4 conflict—waaaait a minute, that would work!” And I rewrote the confront-the-conflict scene at about the 5/8ths point . . . but the rest of the book doesn’t reflect that now, and there’s ZIP transition and resolution from that. I know this new conflict is right for the character—I just have to make the rest of the book reflect that. And also fix the boring parts, the confusing parts, the underdeveloped parts . . .

What? Oh, yeah. That’s called revision.

But, hey. I’m ending the month with a publisher, a completed first draft and a ton of fun in the interim. I’m WAY more than okay with that.

Now it’s your turn: tell me, how did your November goals go?

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Technique

Nano: the finish line!

This entry is part 12 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

It’s today! The final push! You can do it! In fact, you may have already. This month has been pretty much the greatest of my writing career. You still have a few more hours to make it yours!

Run Type, type, type!

We’ll share our successes tomorrow so anyone who’s still working won’t feel bad. And if you’ve already hit your 50,000—way to go!—don’t forget to validate on NaNoWriMo.org before midnight so you can claim your winner goodies!

Photo by Jayneandd

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Technique

Nano motivation: reconnecting with your WIP

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This entry is part 10 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

I’m sure that at least some of us took off a little time last week to enjoy time with our families. Even during NaNoWriMo, it’s okay—important, possibly even vital—to step away from the computer and connect with reality and the strangers living in your house for a while. It gives us perspective on people—and our work. Not only do we need more material for writing ;), but we all need some human connection at least sometimes. Plus, time away from our writing gives us time to think, brainstorm, and recover. (I take every Sunday off.)

But now it’s time to get back to work. If you’re thinking ahead, you can leave yourself notes for the next scenes—but sometimes I can’t make sense of or find inspiration from my cryptic notes. Over at Write It Sideways a few weeks ago, they had a great article on 6 Ways to Reconnect with Your Work-In-Progress. Most of them apply more to a work you’ve been away from longer—and have more than three days to finish. (By the way, you have three days left, including today.)

So, to adapt their suggestions to a Nano novel:

  1. Read the last chapter or two you’ve written: I know the Nano site advises not to read back and plunge ahead, but when you’re totally lost, it’s time to take stock of where you were going.
  2. Reread your outline: tell me you have one. (I do, but the entire first half went pretty far astray from the plan. Okay, and the second half did, too. Um… But hey, I’m totally on-cue for the ending from my outline: “Big, big set piece. Major battle. Looks like villain gets away. Slay the dragon twice, roll out the big guns, and come away victorious, rich, less emotionally scarred, and in love.” Yep. That.)
  3. Make sure it’s not a story issue: sometimes we have a hard time writing because there’s something wrong with the structure of your story or your characters, but our subconscious hadn’t clued in our conscious mind yet. Make sure that’s not what’s holding you up.
  4. Recalculating…: If your story or your outline has gone astray, look again at the milestones you originally wanted to hit, like the third plot point or the finale. If you really just want to finish, you could even just squeeze the last 5000 words out of those scenes, and fix it all later. Isn’t that the point of Nano?
  5. Brainstorm: just out of ideas? Try a brainstorming session like this one described at DIY MFA. Come up with as many ideas as you can. You’re sure to come up with some stinkers, some less useful ones, and some out there ones—but all you need is one or two good ones to get moving again!
  6. Tap into your inspiration: whether you turn to an image pinboard, a playlist, or a cover—or you can do any of those now!—or you just look back at the things that gave you the ideas that convinced you to write this story, tapping into your inspiration again is a great way to get the creative juices flowing again.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about pulling out an older novel in December to try to fix, and I’ll probably use several of these tips and the original six to get back into the right mindset for this book.

How do you reconnect with a story after a break?

Photo by Samuel M. Livingston

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Technique

Nano motivation: Write or Die by Dr Wicked

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This entry is part 11 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

Twitter can be great for sprinting with a writing friend. But sometimes, I just don’t feel up to publicly admitting my word counts, and other times I just can’t turn off the distractions.

When I just have to power through some words to hit my goal and the rabbit hole of the Internet keeps sucking me in, I turn to Write or Die by Dr Wicked. (I think the name pretty much illustrates the concept, eh?)

“Dr. Wicked” offers an online version and a $10 desktop version of his Write or Die app. The concept is pretty simple: it’s a text box and a timer. You can program it with a time goal or a word count goal, and then you get typing. You can also get it for the iPad for $9.99. To use the web app, go to the site, click on the Web App tab in the sidebar and enter your goal.

If you stop for too long (the exact length of time depends on what “level” of punishment you pick), the screen background turns pink, then red—and then an annoying sound begins to play (a crying baby, “Mm Bop” by Hanson—seriously). I’ve heard that in the strictest mode, if you stop too long it starts erasing your words.

It’s kind of a last resort when my mind is on the fritz, but looking at my outline to figure out where I’m going and forcing myself to get those words down is the kick in the pants I need.

The only drawback: the online version has to be formatted when you put it into your manuscript. Here’s how I do it. Since I’m writing on the Internet, I skip lines between paragraphs. I paste the words into Notepad, and make sure Word Wrap is turned off. Then it’s easy to take out the extra returns (and insert tabs if you’re putting those in). Then I paste into Word and Find and Replace the quotes (just use the plain quotes in your Find and Replace box; it turns them into Smart Quotes automatically) and apostrophes, and if you used em dashes (convert two hyphens to —). And voila! It’s pretty again!

What do you think? How do you force yourself to get the words out when your brain wants to wind down?

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Technique

Nano motivation: Twitter

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

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Technique

NaNo organization: Evernote

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This entry is part 9 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

The Internet is a fabulous thing. I do a lot of my research for my books on the Internet, from looking at historical sources to contemporary locations to costumes to fact checking and even some plot ideas. I used bookmarks for years to try to keep track of these disparate sources, but frankly it was too hard to find what I needed in my notes, especially when I only had one or two sentences that I really needed from a long article.

And then I found Evernote. It’s a website where you can store all kinds of information: pictures, text, whole websites. It can also “clip” these notes from your desktop, or, via a smartphone app, your photos, etc. You can not only tag the notes you add, but also group your “notes” by topics, separated into “notebooks.” Probably the best part is that you can search your notes to find just what you’re looking for I *think* there are other good programs that can do this, but this is the only one I’ve used, and I like it.

So what’s this got to do with NaNo? When you’re writing as fast as you can, and you need to stop to look something up, or to find something you know you looked up when you were plotting on or around October 23, or to remember that one really cool idea you had from that weird news article that would be perfect right here, instead of trying to dig through your bookmarks or search your web history, you just go to your account, and either search your notes, or look through the notebook for this book, and you’re set!

I also like this because I’ve used it to save research on ideas I might write later—much later. Like this NaNo, I’m writing an idea that I’ve been thinking about for probably two years. Some of my notes on the pseudohistory I’m unapologetically using were clipped in July 2010. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to remember a lot of the things I’d need when I was starting my research, until I saw the name of the notebook on Evernote. Voila! Lots of cool facts that I wouldn’t have to hunt down again!

How do you keep track of your research so you can find it when you need it?

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Technique, Publishing

NaNo inspiration: covers

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

Once upon a time, I was anti-mock covers. I thought it was a little weird to put up a fake book cover on your site for a book you’re drafting or trying to sell. Then I wrote up my projects page, and it looked . . . bare. So I made up some passable mock covers (some obviously more time consuming than others).

Usually, I’ve waited until I was done or nearly so to make these. But since October was a “planning” month for NaNo, and I was only doing 50,000 other things, I spent a day making the “ideal” version of the cover:

Not 100% perfect (or, you know, licensed), but pretty dang good. Just looking at it gets me excited to write!

Obviously you don’t want to take off a day in the middle of NaNo to play around with a graphics program to make a cover no one else might ever see—but in about 20 minutes, you can throw together something that can inspire you.

Seriously, I tried it. I used a picture I pinned of one character, and Googled screencaps from a movie the other character was in (screencaps found here). Then I turned to Flickr for pictures of a rune stone (by Paul W. Locke). Some Magic Wand tool, cut/paste, resize, color balance, and add text, and voila! I put together a crude version of the above.

Inspiration in twenty minutes? That’s a bargain.

How do you find inspiration quickly?

Photo credits: Maggie Lawson by unknown (via listal), Garrett Hedlund from TRON: Legacy (found here), Viking coin by Ancient Art, Kensington runestone monument by Paul W. Locke

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Technique

NaNo inspiration: music

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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

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