Thursday, September 15, 2011

Get Ready for Writing Nanowrimo!!

Anyone Can do it and when you prepare - the results are awesome!

Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) from November 1st-30th. It’s the writing frenzy where you kick out a large number of words to hopefully finish a novel in record time. Many people start the challenge and end up with a sizeable number of pages by the end. Some are inspired to start writing for the first time. Others are inspired to finish something for the first time. Some, like me, find that writing at breakneck speed produces a lower quality of work that doesn’t reflect what is normally produced when writing within your own timing. Truth is, my natural timing is four months from start to finish. I tried to increase my speed and did it without much trouble. It increased by 3 weeks, and for me, that cooking time for a novel fits just right.

There are ways to make speed writing more effective. The overall goal, is to produce more in a shorter period of time. If you keep this up, who knows, speed writing may become a habit.

Prepare for it

When you set out to write a novel in a short period of time, outlining is your friend. Take a week to write a detailed outline of the story. It will help to work out most of the kinks before you even sit down to write. Create character profiles of the main characters and review outline before the start of your writing marathon.

Plan it

If you are going to focus on spitting out as many words as possible a day, then plan it. Block out your writing time for the month. Figure out when you are most productive. Is it in the morning, at night or midday? Make a rule – no sleep unless you have kicked out a minimum of a certain amount of words. Make sure you schedule extra time for working out of corners or temporary writer’s blocks. Make your schedule somewhat flexible so that you don’t get burned out and give up.

Write it

With a printout of your outline next to you and a bullet list of your character profile – start the race. Follow your outline. If you want to go rogue, go ahead, write until the roadblock. If you reach a road block – write anything, take some time off to think on it, then re-work your outline and get back to it. Also, if you took out writing time to think, add more blocks of writing time to make up your word count later. Whatever you do – don’t stop writing. Remember, you will always have to edit it.

Don’t look back

Whatever you do, don’t read over what you’ve written until you are finished. That is an easy way to get distracted. Remember, you’ll have to edit the thing many times before your piece of art is perfected. Just write forward, don’t make corrections, don’t read over it, just push forward and write.

8 comments:

Karen Jones Gowen said...

Motivational post with some spot on tips! Not sure I'll participate this year, I find it easier to do June but I'm going to see if I can work it out.

Diana Rajchel said...

This is great advice! I would like to add to that by saying that Nanowrimo is first draft month - write it out, and don't worry about whether it's just write. December is unofficial national rewrite month, where you can then go back and refine, revise and make it better.

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

Great tips! I'm teaching a class at the library next month about NaNo! Fun. :)

lufftocraft said...

This year will be my first NaNowrimo I'm half scared half excited. Glad to see someone else as crazy as me :)

Rene Peterson said...

Wonderful post! Last year was my first NaNoWriMo and I also mentored a kid's group through Youth NaNoWriMo. We had great fun! Looking forward to doing it again this year and finishing a novel.

brandileigh2003 said...

I look forward to hearing how everyone does this year, but I'm not participating--8 months preggo and moving :)

web design company said...

Happy to be here.Thanks everyone and good luck with the giveaway.

John Casanova said...

The best time for me to work is mid-day, morning and night time. I can work at any time of the day. As long as I'm motivated I can make it. Love the motivational Post. I think we as writers all need that once in a while.