No More False Starts
I've seriously had plenty of these in the last year. but over the course of the past week, I've begun gearing up. After all, in order to make a novel-in-a-month possible, there's a lot of prep work to do. Because I've chosen something I've been kicking around, I have relatively less world building than normal.
What I'm Doing Differently
I generally spend time thinking of characters. I go through false starts, world-building short stories that end up in various of incompletion, but advance my knowledge of world/characters and the many players in the plot.
Right now, I'm composing written character outlines/backgrounds. Usually this bit evolves with the writing process. But in attacking a novel in a month, I have to have all my cards out. If feels like I'm composing a cheat sheet. When the whole novel comes together over the next few weeks, it'll be more akin to arranging puzzle pieces than my usual creative flow. Feels a lot more practical, I'll give it that :P
If you want to see the character cheat sheets, I can post them :) Let me know if you're curious.
Who else is doing NaNoWriMo? If so...how is the novel prep process for the event different from your usual prep experience?
I'm not doing NaNoWriMo. I've never done it before, so I can't offer any advice.
ReplyDeleteBefore you begin, please stop by my blog "Substitute Teacher's Saga" for my Halloween Haunting. There are prizes!
Good luck. I hope NaNo goes well.
Sure! Thanks! :D
ReplyDeleteMy character sheets, outline, and background history are ready! It's my first year participating in NaNo, and I'm using that time to complete the sequel to my book.
ReplyDeleteAt the Nano site, I'm under my full name, no spaces.
Drea, my advice, have as much fun as you can. let your mind play with words and see where the story goes, even if it jumps around like crazy. i'm using nano to finish my sequel. my username is michellegregory.
ReplyDeleteI'm doing NaNo... if we're not buddies yet, I'm Tessa C over there. This is my first ever NaNo so no clue what to expect (of myself, that is)...
ReplyDeleteNo NaNo for me this year, but I am committing to completing my rewrite/revision.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed by the speed at which your writing your novel! How do you do it? I barely have enough time to get out 1000 words a day (and I got nothing done on election day). D:
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am also totally cheating and working on my Anomalies story, which is currently at 61,660 words. I figure, this is the only way I can push myself to finishing it by the end of the year like I promised myself.
I'd say good luck, but it looks like you don't need it. ;)
I write 4-8 hours a day :P BIC. When I was @ SCC, I remember being pissed at myself for not reaching 40-60 pages a week. I think the fact that I have written 4 rough drafts before (though they are in various states of being 'shelved' or 'rewritten' or 'editing') helps. I am writing to the chapter-by-chapter outline (roughly) and doing my best to ignore how bad it really is. All the fixing, tweaking, etc comes in the proceeding drafts. One of the easiest mistakes to make with rough drafts is to aim for "getting it right." But oftentimes, with the interjection of characters, where the end winds up is not 100% where I-the-Writer expected it to. So why tweak it during the 1st draft? There's a strong possibility that the ending will inform changes to each of the scenes which I'd never expect were needed on the first write-through. So before any changes can be made (*should be made*) the end needs to be reached. I have had trouble getting into projects for awhile...mostly because I really work well with deadlines (see?) But also because rewriting is Not.The.Same. and I've had to employ much different abilities...'just writing' is the easy part for me :P As long as I have am idea where the story/plot is going...
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