She’s Write About That Vol VII – Prepping for NaNoWriMo

If you’re reading this, you’re saying to yourself, “Wait! Did James have a crisis of identity? Did he…get a sex change?!”

“HELL NO!” would be my response.

I’m not a female, but my fiance, Jennifer Hudock is, and she’s been having some problems with her website as of late. Therefore, I am hosting her weekly writers column here, on my website. What a nice fellow I am. So what is ‘She’s Write About That?’ It’s a project between two writers, Jennifer and Michelle Bekemeyer, where each week they pick a topic, and write two different blog posts. One doesn’t see the other before it goes live, so you get a fresh point of view. Two different opinions, two different writers, same topic. Pretty cool, eh? Without further ado, I give you Jennifer Hudock’s side of this weeks, She’s Write About That.

It’s NaNoWriMo time, everybody. In just one week, mad writers all across the world will be scrambling to get the lead out on those wordcounts in hopes of making the 50,000 word novel end goal by November 30th. For those of you who think I’m talking jibberish, NaNoWriMo stands for November is National Writing Month, and you can bet your sweet petunias that I’m diving in again for year number four to try and finish up Running Down the Moon. When Michele Bekemeyer and I started fishing for topics for this edition of She’s Write About That, it struck me that with just one week to go before NaNo, maybe we should blog about how we’re prepping to meet this year’s novel goal.

As I mentioned above, this is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo. In the three years prior to this one, I managed to hit the goal only one time, but that wasn’t for lack of meticulous planning and strategising beforehand. No sir. The first year I entered into NaNo, the only year I won, I had some hardcore plans. Full character sheets, statistics and everything I ever wanted to remember about life in the 80s. I had dates on my favorite comics books all ready to add to the plot, and a serious vengeance to get out some personal demons. What I also had was an intense love for and need to tell the story. Needless to say, it worked. During the month of November in 2006, I wrote 51,467 words and won a big fat NaNo medal. Go me!

Then in 2007 and 2008, I barely made it past the 15,000 word mark on both of my projects. While the ideas felt solid when I started, and my plans were pretty strong, once I started writing, the flare for the project just wasn’t there. I could blame a whole list of outside forces, from UFO sightings to exhaustion from work, but the truth of the matter is simply that my heart just wasn’t in either of my projects. So I slacked off, and they fell off the back burner into “never to be worked on again” hell.

So where did I go wrong? The ideas I started out with her exciting at the time, but in all truth, I don’t think I gave myself enough time to get excited about and fall in love with them. Sure, I was excited about doing NaNo, but in both 2007 and 2008, I really didn’t decide to dive in and try NaNo until the last minute. I barely gave myself plenty of time to start plotting and researching, much less time enough to really wrap my head around what I wanted to do and the people I wanted to “do it to.”

Writing for me has always been about creating believable characters and their translating their experiences. If I can’t find some way to relate to my characters on an emotional and mental level, the story stalls. Sometimes I can give myself a few weeks to get to know them better, but with NaNo you don’t really have that kind of time once the ball starts rolling. My first bit of advice, then is that you give yourself time before November to really get to know your characters. You can have a vague idea where you plan to take them, but if you don’t know the people you’ll be carrying along on the journey, the plot itself will stall out and you’ll be left standing there with an empty NaNo word count wondering where you went wrong.

Beyond the basics of character mapping, you might want to try a few short sample endeavors with those characters so you can get a feel for their voice and experience. Short stories and vignettes work wonders here, and let’s face it, you’ve got eleven other months before November to do this. Maybe you have characters and short stories you want to expand on. NaNo is a great time to do this because you’ll be working in a familiar universe with people you have already journeyed with.

That’s just one approach, of course. You can also wing it. Just start writing and see where it takes you.  Some of the best ideas come from that type of writing, and there is no rule in the NaNo handbook that says you have to write a perfect novel. You just need to write 50,000 words–and of course, do your best to make them semi-coherent. Then in January or February, you can go back and edit and rewrite and put it all together the way it was meant to be written. Remember that all ideas have to start somewhere, and if yours happens to pop into your head at midnight on November 1st, get writing and worry about the fine tuning later.

Which is really the greatest piece of advice I have for the NaNo writer. Don’t take this whole thing too seriously. Yes, you want to write a novel, and of course you probably would like to eventually do something with said novel, but if you go into this fun activity with the notion that it has to be word-for-word perfect as you’re writing, you will fall flat on your NaNo butt and completely exhaust yourself. I promise you that much.

Since this blog is coming out just one week before NaNoWriMo, here’s hoping you’ve already done the important research and planning you need to do because most of us have dayjobs and lives outside of novel writing. You need to reach a minimum word count goal of at least 1667 words every day. While some can sit down and pump out 2000 words in an hour or so, not every works at that pace, and it may take everything you have in you to hit your daily word goal. Having notes and plans at your fingertips will save you a lot of time during the actual writing process. If you haven’t done the planning and research yet, you’ve got one week to get organized, and if you’re someone who needs outlines and plot points and little sticky notes, get to it yesterday so you spare yourself a lot of unnecessary stress while you’re writing.

Again, this whole thing is supposed to be fun. An exercise of your talent and your will, if you please. Make sure that as you’re reaching your goals each and every day, you’re doing it because you’re enjoying it and having fun. Don’t pressure yourself, or you’ll wind up with a big fat work of crap you resent every time you try to open the file to work on it.  That being said, I really don’t think there is one set way to approach the NaNo competition. We each have our own methods, and since this is MichBek’s first year as a NaNo participant, you’ll definitely want to tune in to see what she has to say about her own process for preparation. Whatever it is, you can bet your old man’s T-bird that She’s Write About That!