What I’ve Got To Work With
I’ve got a lot of writing to do if I am going meet the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. I have one week to prepare. How do I make this work?
Here is what I have decided upon to help me make this happen:
- Empty Notepad and Pen - I do my best creative thinking on paper and often when I am out and about—eating dinner, chatting with a friend, people watching in a diner, etc. Moments of brilliance that I can flush out later. I am very fond of the notebooks that are about the size of a half-page. While it is a little big to take around everywhere, It is small enough to take most places and has plenty of space for me to flush out my creative impulse. I also have to use a pen. Not only do I have a weird neurosis with wood pencils (using them makes my mouth dry and my spine shiver), but pencil just feels to ephemeral and wish-washy—a good, solid ink pen is what I desire.
- Scrivener - Brainstorming and creative ideas on paper is one thing, but it is only rarely that I will actually write my story out on paper. I might do that for a particular inspired page or three, but in the end, I want to be at my computer. There are a lot of word processors and tools out there. For NaNoWriMo, I have decided to use Scrivener. I’ve looked at it before but it didn’t really inspire me last time. Either because of the changes or because of the nature of this project, I am pretty excited to use it this time around. I’m already quite fond of the ease at which you can separate elements and how the authoring of text is separate from the compilation and presentation formatting. Mac only.
- My Workspace - I’m basically setting up at my kitchen table for my work at home. I live by myself, so it’s rarely used anyways. I’m scoping out places I can get out to, because sometimes working from home is not easy or productive. I want at least three places I can go to, so I’ve got not only options, but fall-back choices if one place is busy or closed.
- Character outlines - The week of prep allows me just enough time to outline major characters. I don’t want to do more than outline because I’m going to let the characters find themselves and the story. Right now, my characters are outlined in the following manner:
- Name
- Summary - a brief paragraph or two about who I think this character is.
- Gender
- Age
- Race - Hey, I’m writing an absurd fantasy novel; I need to keep track of who is a human and who is a troll.. it’s just disaster if you confuse these things.
- Keywords - trying to stick to three or four words or phrases to help keep my character boundaries
- Important background events - motivation for the character
- Plot outline - Okay, so this is where I really need to do more work. I’ve got my synopsis written and I’ve got some basics on my characters, but I really need to define some of what I see as the major points of the story. Really, I only have a beginning. That might be enough, but I would like to at least see a goal in sight as I begin this crazy journey.
Besides plotting food and snack strategy and trying to do some actual time scheduling, I think that’s about it. I’ve got some time to work out some more major plot points / story events and characters, but I think I am just about ready to take this on.
I decided to not pick up a slew of reference books or how to write or anything of that nature, though I did convince myself to purchase Chris Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem! A low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days. Chris Baty started NaNoWriMo and this is his sort of definitive guide—it is short, accessible, and good. I was pleasantly surprised to see his list of essentials closely matched mine, though I don’t think I’ll be wearing a plastic Viking helmet.
