What are your best tips for approaching NaNoWriMo?
I love short stories
I love writing them, reading them, dissecting them.
…but for the past 10 years or so I’ve been tempted by National Novel Writers’ Month: Write a novel in a month.
I’m put off by the time commitment – with two small, demanding kids, a part-time job and a husband i actually like to spend time with – I can’t imagine making time.
But now I have writing friends from Story A Day who are urging me to try it for reals this year. And, for the first time, I don’t have a baby, visitors or crisis hanging over me.
So what are your best strategies for approaching NaNo, all you veterans and pushers?
What do you do before November, during November, when things are going well, when things are going badly? How do you pace your novel? What are the absolute must-do tactics for you? What are the traps and time-sinks?
Please comment below, or write your answer on your own blog and leave a link here. Remember: complete newbie here. Tell me anything, even things you’d forgotten you once didn’t know
Writing and taking care of small children are two not-entirely-compatible aims in my life, how about you?
Take today: I got up early, started to write… The kids started to ask me for things and I started saying, ‘In a minute,” and “hold on” and “Just ‘shhhhh’ a minute, would you?”
I was getting frustrated with them, they were getting frustrated with me, and no-one was getting what they needed.
Something had to give. So I came up with a technique that has been working out really well…
So it’s the summer holidays here in the US and that means fun with the kiddies for we stay-at-home parents.
Some days I just watch ’em play in the dirt…
Which is all great, of course, but sometimes you still want (NEED!) to get some writing done. It can be incredibly frustrating to try to write and take care of a family, especially if you have small children at home with you all day. But it can be done.
I know some people can get up early or stay up extra late, or write while their spouse watches sports. That’s not me. Or if it is, everyone else wakes up early too!
Take today: I got up early, started to write, got all inspired and came up with tons of great ideas. The kids got up and started to ask me for things and I started saying, ‘In a minute,” and “hold on” and worst of all “Just ‘shhhhh’ a minute, would you?”
Oh, the guilt. I was getting frustrated with them, they were getting frustrated with me, and no-one was happy.
Something had to give. So I came up with a method, that has been working out well.
Getting Stuff Done With Little Kids In The House
My sons are 5 and 7 so they can’t be left alone (or together) for too long. They can, however, be set up on different floors of the house (or different rooms if you don’t have floors) with whatever toy/activity has captured their attention recently.
Today, for us, that means the eldest has a project making his own versions of Pokemon cards, while the 5 year-old makes a massive messHot Wheels track in the basement.
They both inevitably needed help, sometimes at the same time, (leading to more ‘just a minute’s and frustration). Finally I struck a deal with them.
I took the time-out clock (a kitchen timer) and set it for 10 minutes. They agreed to leave me alone until the timer rang so that I could get some writing done. When the timer rings, I go and check on each of them and ask if I can help or see what they have been doing.
I get what I want (writing time) and they get what they want (an attentive, engaged parent).
Then, depending on how things are going, I negotiate another 10 minutes.
KEYS TO MAKING THIS WORK
-Pick a time of day when the kids’ energy levels are right (that might be ‘high’ or ‘low’ depending on their personalities. When you know they can concentrate on their favorite activity for a while, pounce!
-Work to an outline. I’m not sure that trying to do any brainstorming or really creative work could happen in 10 minute bursts, but writing a paragraph or two of a piece that I had already outlined worked brilliantly.
-Stretch the sessions to more than 10 minutes if it is safe or makes sense or if you find the kids can handle it.
-Sit where you can hear them (I’m in the dining room, and they are in rooms with doors open, where I can hear frustrated whining winding up or, worse, suspicious silences)
-Be willing to stop after two or three sessions. You can’t push this too far. Try to remember that they’ll be out of your hair entirely one day (if you do your job right) and that even these long summer days will be over sooner than you expect. Take some time to enjoy the kids — secure in the knowledge that at least you got a few things accomplished today.
When I said I was going to write a Story A Day in May, plenty of people looked at me with *that look* in their eyes, or said thinks like,
‘Well, good luck…”.[1. I expect if you’ve ever taken on any kind of creative assignment (not directly related to a paycheck) you know what I mean by *that look*.]
“Why?” was the most common question. Good question. If we’re not writing for money, then why do we write?
“How ?” was the second most common question.
I wasn’t 100% sure about the answer to either. After a month of attempting to write a story a day I do have some answers.
How To Be A Prolific Writer – Even When You Don’t Have Time
I’m not going to lie and say it was easy to find time for writing this month. In fact, I almost never ‘found’ time. I ‘made’ time.
Making time means something else had to give. Sometimes it was housework, but more often it was the relatively random consuming of information that I do. The BBC news website might have been minus a few thousand hits this month, my personal blog was updated less. The grocery shopping got more, er, targeted.
But the biggest lesson I learned about the “How” was this:
How To Write Anything
Start writing.
Write until it is finished.
It is one of those annoying pieces of advice that mean almost nothing until you try it.
Sitting down to write can be paralyzing. It is so much easier to get up and walk away — tell yourself you don’t have time — than it is to start writing.
I had to, so I used story prompts, memories, jokes, other people’s stories, to get me started. I put my pen on the page (quite literally) and told myself to write a sentence. Anything. One day I started by simply describing where I was sitting. It turned into a story about a homicide detective!
So, the answer to ‘how to write’ becomes quite simply:
Commit to doing it. Make time. Start writing.
(I did learn a bunch of other trick for helping with that, which I’ll be writing about soon.)
Why Write?
Once I had started figuring out the ‘how’ I was amazed to discover a n amazing set of benefits in the ‘why’ column – some that I had not expected.
I found that, if I sat down and got a story started in the morning,
It energized me. I was more (not less) likely to take care of the laundry, the dishes, the 1001 other mundane things that we usually blame for getting in the way of our writing.
I became more responsible and attentive to all my obligations, from family to my business.
My brain was less fuzzy. I spent less time worrying about all the things I ought to be doing, and, instead, started crossing things off the list, prioritizing better than ever, in order to get back to my writing (to make time for it).
I paid attention to the world around me. I was doing that thing people talk about as ‘living mindfully’. I was doing it in order to gather ideas and snippets for stories, but no matter why you do it, mindfulness is acknowledged by religions, psychologists and hippies, to be A Good Thing.
I found I had more time to give to people, because I wasn’t constantly feeling like I ought to be doing something, or resenting the time they were taking from things I really wanted to do. I had made time for myself and my thing, and now I could take an interest in you and yours.
I even wrote my way out of a really foul temper one day, just by letting my characters do and say things I never would, in real life, being all well-brung up and all that.
So the sort answer to ‘why do you write?’ is just this:
It makes me a better, happier person.
As an added bonus, posting some of my stories, made some readers happy. Granted,a lot oft hem were related to me, but some were complete strangers.
If you have ever thought about doing one of those creative challenges like NaNoWriMo, or The Artist’s Way or any other challenge, I highly encourage you to commit to doing it. What you gain will be so much more than you sacrifice. What you learn will be so much different from what you expect.
OK, so ten days to go and we’re all at various stages of “success” and we’re all still turning up.
It’s getting harder though, isn’t it? …
(Wow, it seems like no time at all I was posting that headline in my promo efforts for the yet-to-born Story A Day challenge!)
OK, so ten days to go and we’re all at various stages of “success” and we’re all still turning up.
It’s getting harder though, isn’t it? Finding a whole new story every day drains the well pretty quickly. We need to work on staying encouraged, finding new ideas, new angles, and remembering what inspires us to write.
@CidWrites wrote this really helpful self-pep-talk that I certainly benefitted from reading (so thanks, Cid)
(and then she went on to write a really fun and intriguing story that day)
@AdorablyAlice wrote a great blog post on writing during slumps, that I’m sure you’ll find something of use in.
@dorlamoorehouse has an upbeat, celebratory post here that makes me grin and think: I want some of that!
Don’t forget these posts from the Story A Day Blog archives:
and the Resources page which includes links to sources of Inspiration, Prompts, Productivity Tools and Tips from Great Writers.
If it helps, why not take a few minutes to read other people’s stories right here at Story A Day. OK, you might get intimidated, but on the other hand, you might just get inspired.
The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.
A short story is not a novel…
The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.
Writing a story a day is going to be a huge challenge. Inventing characters and settings and inhabiting them for just one day? Huge.
Don’t try to do too much.
We don’t have the time or space to tell wandering epics.
We have time for one incident or one central character or theme [1. by the way all of this is also not true. In writing rules are made to be broken. Except that one about the apostrophe. I will hunt you down and smack your palm with a ruler if you put an apostrophe before the “s” in a plural!]
If your story starts to wander towards an interesting side character, slap that character’s hand and promise him he can be the hero of tomorrow’s story. If you find yourself backtracking to show too much of what happened before the ‘now’ of your story, file the idea and write a prequel tomorrow.
The beauty of writing aevery day is that you don’t have to do it all today. You can write tomorrow. In fact, you have to!
Finish Today, Plan For Tomorrow
So finish the story you started (even if you’ve fallen out of love with it) and make note of all the other ideas that were so good they butted in today.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
-Ezra Pound
Here’s a secret weapon to keep you writing every day:
Rewrite the same story in different styles.
How?
Is your story refusing to sing? Are you sick of the sound of your own prose?
There are times when every (good) writer feels this way. It could be a moment of great despair, but it could also be an opportunity to try something new.
