Arm Yourself. The NaNoWriMo Battle is About to Begin.

If you have any inkling of what NaNoWriMo might mean, you may be among the many preparing to take on the challenge that comes with each November: writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. You might also know that participating in NaNoWriMo can, at times, be equated with going to battle. You know your opponent is coming. You prepare. You lay out tactics and strategies and time your blitzkriegs with care. And most importantly, you arm yourself with the tools and weapons necessary to take down the beast and emerge in magnificent, stinking victory. But if you’re new to this quest for glory, you might think your laptop or notebook and a few thermoses of coffee are the only things you’re going to need. Those, and your lovely lil' imagination. Right? And for veterans, we might be thinking that there are no more appropriable poisons rattling in Pandora’s box. So as we enter into the season of self-flagellation (otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month) take stock of the weaponry below. NaNoWriMo winner? Thy name is conquerer.


Scrivener
Tons of people use and love Scrivener. The bonus to this, versus a traditional writing program, is that you have multiple, combined tools to outline, storyboard, and collect notes and miscellaneous research into a single, searchable location, among tons of other useful stuff. Try downloading the FREE NaNoWriMo trial version, which is good from whenever you start using it until December 7th. After that, winners are rewarded with 50% off the regular price, and if you don’t quite make it, you still get 20% off.

Ommwriter
This writing environment is the king of calm. Ommwriter doesn’t even give you the chance to be distracted—it opens in fullscreen mode and there are several backgrounds and audio options to choose from to make your writing environment as good as it can be. The program is available for Mac, PC, and iPad, and their Dana I version is free.

Dropbox
There’s not much worse than being 20,000 words in and losing everything you’ve written. (Trust me. I’ve done this.) To save yourself a heart attack, keep your novel in Dropbox. With 2GB of free storage space, you’ll have plenty of room to let your novel sprawl. The second-worst thing to happen to your writing is saving a crappy version over a version you were happy with. The good news is that you’ve got the failsafe option of retrieving any past versions made in the past 30 days. (These guys. They’re totally on NaNo time.) The other bonus of entrusting your creative genius with these guys is that any time you forget your laptop, you can use any computer or mobile device to access your Dropbox account and keep working without losing a day in your 30-day quest. Want an extra 250MB? Heck yes!

Google+ hangout
Love it or hate it, Google+ has one feature that could be any writer’s saving grace: hangouts. Sure, NaNoWriMo has groups and forums throughout the site, but can you get realtime interaction and reactions to your writing? Try Google+ hangouts to chat with fellow writers all over the globe about plot troubles, dialogue minutiae, and everything else we writers obsess over. Even if you don’t get much productive writing talking done, you just might come up with the next “in your pants” joke.

Your Local Library
Not only could your local library use some love, but many libraries host events for NaNoWriMo. Check this list for Come Write In! events. And if you’re a library staff member, find out more about holding Come Write In! events at your library. Being surrounded by books while writing your own? YEP. I’ll bring the Swedish fish. You bring the coffee.

Piper Writers’ House (Come write with us!)
If you live in Tempe or are passing through, stop in to the Piper house on ASU’s campus for a quiet place to write. Our historical house is full of comfortable couches, tables, and chairs, and if you’re in need of some inspiration, you can wander our resource library or step outside to the writers’ garden. Come write with us Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. We might not have the answers to what your main character should do next, but we love a good story.

If you’ve got some secret weapon stashed away, why not share? After all, strength in numbers, right?

NaNoWriMo: Fin de mes

I don’t know how they found the place so quickly; it was as if they’d been in the market for asylums all their lives, and choosing the one to ship me off to was something they seemed overly prepared for.

That was how my month began. With a girl being sent off to a mental institution for all the wrong reasons and a set of other characters I didn’t know so well. I know I’ve talked up how much more prepared I was this year, but the truth is that every creative endeavor involves some preparation and a whole lot of seat-of-your-pantsness that can later be tamed down into something that really works. Half the fun is finding out who your characters are, and if they’re actually going to do what you want them to. I’ll have to try to tame this monster later, though. Right now, I’m kind of feeling at a loss for words (in a good way, of course!). Being able to track friends’ progress and see other people posting about NaNoWriMo throughout the month is a great thing because you realize that there is a whole, unseen community of writers out there. (Yes, writers. Not aspiring writers. They’re writing. Give them credit.) To me, it’s awesome to know how many of them have given themselves over to a month of creativity that has no reward other than the fact that they can say that they’ve made it. My best day, I wrote 4,161 words. My worst? 314. (This is not counting the days I didn’t even write. Shame on me.) Some days are just bad for writing. Some are awesome. Most of us will never get published and might not even want to be, but we’ve written. No matter the final outcome, it’s gratifying just to finish something you set out to do. If you won this year, congratulations! We’ve survived, and have something to show for it! If you didn’t, who cares? You tried it, right? No one made a hard and fast rule about November being the only month for novels. I mean, December is looking pretty good . . .

NaNoWriMo Countdown: 10, 9, 8, 7 . . . 7 . . . 7 . . .

One week left. If you haven’t hit the golden mark yet, refrain from searching #nanowrimo on Twitter. Who are these people, killing it left and right? Everyone is saying, “54,000. It’s been real, NaNoWriMo,” and “Woooo! Just submitted my NaNo!”

I’m still 2 days behind. After a day when I hit over 4,000 words for my daily count, I’m checking the bottom of my Mac to see if there’s a hole all these words are falling out of. I mean, come on. 4,000 in one day and I’m still behind? Ugh. As with all things difficult or demanding, I’ve obviously been learning as I go. I know I did this last year, but I feel like that was, comparatively, a brainless slide down the mountains on a flimsy piece of cardboard.

I’m trying to make something good this year, which means I’m actually thinking about what’s working for me and the story, and what’s not. What’s working, it turns out, is that I’ve mentally committed not just to finishing on time, but to finishing on time with something that doesn’t completely suck. (Well, we know it’s going to suck. There’s just less suck than there might have been if I really hadn’t given a flip what the words were saying.*) What else is working for me is that I’m paying attention to my characters. When they’re getting bored, that means I’m getting bored. When I realize that, it’s so nice to move on from that scene. I don’t even wrap it up nicely anymore. I just shut it down and get on to the next interesting bit because I figure, if I’m going to revise and rewrite this later, I’ll get the bricks down now, and add the mortar later. (Someone give me more cereal. It makes the metaphors stop.)

The thing that is not working for me is basically what I talked about last week. I’ve overestimated my ability to spontaneously construct a complex, multiplot story. Which is, you know, totally forgivable, considering that . . . ummmm no, sorry. No good excuse for that. But however much that fact might suck right now, this is actually great news. Now, when I start my next project, I know that I need some sort of system–color-coded sticky notes!–to construct and keep track of my plot. Also, all that ‘research’ I did to prep? Not real. Reading a few articles on the Black Forest, Mayan hallucination practices, and traditional muses doesn’t cut it, sweet cheeks. Next time, there had better be pages of good stuff to pull from.

It’s taken me two tries at NaNoWriMo to realize those things fully. Which means progress, even if it’s the sluggish, lurching up from the primordial goo, first steps with your fins sort of progress. Tonight’s goal is to hit at least 3,000 words, and by next Tuesday, I promise you, this thing will have its pants kicked in and I’ll be down at Rula, if you need me.

*For more info on why it’s good to allow yourself to suck, I suggest you go here: Dare to Suck. Also: More Serious Research.

NaNoWriMo: The Middle

We’re officially over halfway through this thing now. Congratulations! According to my stats, I’m no longer looking at a December 30th finish date, so I’ll at least be able to enjoy Christmas! (Thanksgiving is looking grim. I should have bought that inflatable turkey I saw at the record store). I’m feeling better about my progress, but I keep thinking about all the pep talks that focus on getting you through the most tiring portion of your novel: The Middle. It’s such an energy-sucking swamp because this is the point before your second wind, when you’re coming off the high of starting this thing and getting down into the grit of it all, when you’ve got to WORK to get things where you want them. It’s tough, coming up with 25,000 words and knowing you’ve got another 25,000 to go. But this big, bad Middle business? I’m kind of enjoying it.

Now, this might be a result of not having thought things through, but it seems like I’m finally, really figuring things out in my story. Characters are starting to settle into their personalities, and interesting situations keep popping up–just two days ago, my protagonist was breaking into the asylum she lives in (right, maybe we’ll get to explaining that later) and crashed a poker game where she won extra meds and an apprenticeship with the groundskeeper. Now she’s free to blackmail everyone because they were drinking on the job at the mental institution. Yippee! The BAD news is that my story is rapidly approaching the main event, and I’m not sure how much more story I’ve got left to tell once that’s over. In short: the pacing is off.

After searching through the NaNoWriMo forums, I see that many people seem to have done some serious prep work in anticipation for their month-long writing marathon. They’ve got all sorts of stepping stones to hop around on in their stories due to the fact that they actually PLANNED their novels out, and no one seems to be concerned with pacing. Everyone’s talking about their writing software and their electronic storyboards, and I’m thinking . . . there’s something about storyboarding that intimidates me. It shouldn’t, though, because I probably need it for navigation purposes, and to get myself out of those dead-end scenes that come out of nowhere every so often. For me, The Middle lacks stepping stones, and is actually kind of a bog/quicksand trap with boggarts in it. Everything looks fine on the surface, but at the same time, it makes me wonder how many now-mummified bog ponies have gone before me. (Shhh. Ponies don’t write, we know. Just go with it.)

I don’t have the foggiest idea as to how to begin a storyboard. Wait, retract that. I have a foggy idea, but I’d like to think there’s more to this magical storyboarding than putting each event of your novel on separate pieces of paper and stringing them out like beads. Is there more than that? In my mind, a storyboard should have those events, but should also include details about the scene, what people are wearing and acting like, the weather–the kind of things you’d expect to see if you were writing a screenplay. Which brings up another question. If you’re writing a novel, are you supposed to write it as a screenplay first? Is that what this turns into? If I write a NaNo novel that way, can I also enter it in Script Frenzy? (I’m scared you might be raking at your cheeks now. Pull your hands away from your face and take a deep breath.) I love the apparent functionality of the storyboard, but when it comes down to it, it makes me think I’ll be writing a separate, more visual sort of story, which seems like it will get me off track more than anything. But it apparently is working for loads of people, many well-known authors included, so I will definitely have a try at it some time soon.

Regardless of how great (or awful) an idea storyboarding might have been, it’s a little late in the month for me to be changing tactics. I’m sticking with the mapless approach to tackling The Middle and plan on wandering through the rest of this year’s novel, directionless and scouting for stepping stones. With luck, I’ll see you on the other side.

NaNoWriMo Day 9: Hermits and Pavlov. And Writing.

Day 9: I am 6,988 words behind schedule.

In my defense, I was out of town for three days. And no one likes dealing with a laptop through airport security. And writing in a notebook is so much slower than typing. And I’ve gotten almost every achievement in Plants Versus Zombies! Aren’t you proud? Oh, come on. That kind of impresses you.

Alright, then. Here’s the deal: I left in the middle of Friday, notebook in tow. I made sure I had a pen I could tolerate, and spent half the flight scribbling away in what has become horrible handwriting (I’m talking illegible–What does that say? She held a gerbil to her ear . . . what?). I moved my main character into a new scene and gave her a sidekick to adventure with. There was some progress. But for the rest of the weekend the notebook stayed shut, and on the flight back I didn’t write, I slept. But whatever my progress, the fact is that it is now the 9th day, and I’m still writing. I haven’t mentally given up on this thing and I hope, if you’re writing, that you haven’t either.

Compared to last year’s slave-driving approach, this year I’ve been less intense in my writing schedule. Last year I committed fully to being a hermit. I went to work in the morning and in the afternoon I came home, changed into sweats, and sat down to write. I didn’t get up until I met the word count. I didn’t go grocery shopping if I was behind. In short, I was the creepy, greasy neighbor you hope you never run into. This year, though, I’m taking it a little easier and have started up some habits to keep me on track. The more I read of other writers and the more I write, the more I realize that writers are like baseball players–notorious for those weird superstitions that are supposed to bring down the Good Luck Chihuahuas and the Rainbows of Incredibly Awesome Feats.

My first best habit this time around is not original at all, and no one is a stranger to it: unplugging from the internet. I do this for real. I don’t have a wireless router, so I can just snap the cord out from my laptop, and it’s like magic. Instant focus. The second habit is a sort of Pavlovian thing that is sure to mess me up for holidays to come. I bought an enormous pumpkin caramel–butterscotch toffee–maple walnut candle (I’m not even kidding) and held off on firing it up until Nov. 1. And now, I only light it when it’s time to write, and as soon as I’m done, I blow it out. My hope is that this plays out with a subconscious link between pumpkin spice things and writing. “Pumpkin pie? No thanks, but I’ll have that pad of paper over there! Yeah, thanks!” Ding! It’s probably more like having a crusty, lucky rabbit’s foot, but I’m still hoping to sear writing as a daily event in my brain.

I’ve definitely got a lot of catch-up work ahead of me this week. I’m also going to be out of town next weekend, so if you’ve got any lucky habits (or foods–anyone have suggestions for a lucky snack? Lucky pizza bites?), I can use all the help I can get. Suggest away! My pumpkin spice candle and I will be here.

National Novel Writing Month!

It’s that time of year again: pumpkin spice, Halloween costumes, and hanging out with friends in the fall weather. That last one might be difficult though, if you’re considering the other thing it’s time for: National Novel Writing Month. (NaNoWriMo means you will become a temporary hermit. In a good way.). Sure, it’s not until November, and we’ve got a good week or so, but if you want to make it all the way through November, you’d better start considering what your 50,000 words are going to be about, and how you’re going to manage to fit in enough time to write coherently for 30 days straight. When you think about it, it doesn’t sound like such an enormous undertaking. Writing every day. Meeting a word count. But if you’re anything like I was last year, you think plotting your story is a waste of time because, hey, it will just come to you as you go, and by the time you hit day 6 you realize that you’ve been ‘writing’ for hours (read: opening the document, thinking you need to research some stuff, and then spending the next three hours reading about geoducks and murder ballads), but your story hasn’t progressed—in word count or in action. And then you have the horrible realization that there are still 24 days to go and that if you can’t continue writing now, you will suffer the shame of having failed at your NaNo escapade after annoyingly trying to con all of your friends (and some strangers) into being your NaNoWriMo buddy by telling them how easy it will be.

And we just can’t have that.

So this year, plan on doing NaNoWriMo, and plan on winning. Continue your recruiting, but go out there with some weapons, like the official site itself (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), where you can register and track your progress against your friends’ and your region’s progress against any other part of the world. Check out local events, and read some of the pep talks by authors of all genres, like Maureen Johnson, Neil Gaiman, and Sara Gruen. Start thinking about your story, and prepare for a month of the most rewarding self-torture you’ll ever experience.

Who: You and some friends (hopefully)

What: National Novel Writing Month – 50,000 words by midnight, Nov. 30

Where: At your desk, in a closet, in a bouncy house castle, wherever

When: November (Yes, all of it.)

Why: Why not?

How: However you want (I work best with a full pot of coffee and a Costco-size bag of Swedish Fish and nonstop Christmas music. Maybe you work best in striped toe socks, snacking on Bugles in a soundproof band practice room. No one’s judging.)

I’ll be posting regularly on my NaNoWriMo experience, and I hope you’ll join me, because nobody likes to write alone. (A completely false statement. Still. We’ll be interacting online. Come on!)