All Fired Up for NaNoWri: How I’m getting ready

NaNoWri or National Novel Writing Month starts on Tuesday. This will be my third year participating. I don’t know why, but somehow tracking words and trying to attain the 50,000 word challenge in 30 days just gets my blood flowing and the creative juices oozing.  So I am getting set for the race to the finish.

NOTE: If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo stands for, here’s a brief overview. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea was born when some writers in California got together and gave each other the challenge to write a book in a month. Today, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel during one of the hardest writing months of the year, November with all the holiday preparations going on. The idea is that if you can write a book in November, you can write a book at any month of the year.

NaNo is also unique because a huge group of people are aiming at this goal at the same time! The energy is tremendous. People everywhere in the world are banging away, struggling to write their story all at the same time. There are Facebook groups and RWA groups and local writing groups all participating. Although there is a 50,000 word goal, many people use Novel Writing month to edit, to write multiple short stories, or to finish a story they have already started. Learn more at the website at http://nanowrimo.org

So this is how I’m preparing for this year’s challenge.

1. In October, I took a course in using journaling to develop characters and used my journal entries to dig into the psyches of my main characters. I have many, many pages of notes and a whole lot of tidbits in my head about the strengths and foibles of my people,. And I do mean people. By this piint they are like a real friends and enemies running around in my head.
2. I wrote a very sloppy synopsis- kind of like telling the story to a friend. This happens and then that happens and so on.
3. I pasted the synopsis into my NaNo draft and broke the events/actions into pseudo chapters. I can’t seem to get myself to drop the chapter format. But since I alternate POVs in every chapter it does work out okay. And I don’t number them. I make them HEADERS. That way if the find panel is open you can see the chapter and POV and setting right there.
4. I write the Goal/Motivation/Conflict and the Dilemma for each “chapter” and make those Header 2s. I find the Dilemma is very important. This is the choice the POV character has to make by the end of the chapter/scene. Like – Will I kiss him or not? Will I hide from the bad guy or attack him? That choice will drive what happens in the next chapter.

And that’s it. On November 1 I will sit down and start hitting the keys as fast as I can. If I go blank or get stuck I stick in 4 XXXXs and move on. Later I can search out those XXXX spots when the thought hits on what to do.

So for now. I am dreaming my story and getting my fingers going by writing this post. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know by posting a comment.

Are you doing NaNoWri? How do you prepare?