Getting Excited for NaNo & What I'm Writing for It

It's that time of year, when writer's across America get revved up for National Novel Writing Month in November. We call it NaNo for short. Otherwise the month is over before we can even tell you what that means. 

It means, those of us crazy enough to participate attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days or less! 

For me it's always less, due to weekends and holidays. I don't write during those days.Which begs the question, why do they pick a month with a major holiday in it? *scratches head* Not to mention Black Friday and the count down kick off to Christmas when we all start putting up the decorations, etc. Why not pick January and give us the extra day? 

Anyhow, this will be my third year to participate. I've pulled it off twice now successfully (and have 2 completed novels to show for it) I've marked on the calendar how many thousands of words I have to write each day, taking into account the aforementioned, plus kids appointments, husband's days off, etc. It's a little daunting, but on most days I only have to pound out 2-3K so it is doable. And I've started the outline. 

I'm actually excited about writing. It's been nearly a year since I did. Editing and formatting don't count. Necessary to producing a book, but not at all the same as writing!

But what to write about with so many ideas swirling about in my head?

I put fingers to keyboard (instead of pen to paper) and typed out a few cover blurbs to choose from for this year's project. 

I settled on Silver Star. Can't steal my title, it's already copyrighted. ;)

Here's the rough version of the blurb I'll submit to NaNo:

Country superstar Sara Silver has it all: fame, fortune, and a mantel full of Grammys. She also has a string of chart topping heartbreak songs to go with them -- all based on her bad luck with romance, which makes for great songs, but a miserable love life.

With her parents example of a working happy marriage as a guiding star, Sara should have no problem finding Mr. Right. Except, there seems to be a gap between finding a guy and finding the right guy to call hers forever. Somehow, that bit of wisdom wasn’t imparted to her before her mother’s death. And now Sara wonders if maybe she’ll never find love. Maybe she is destined to walk this life alone.

There’s also the problem of her recording label considering moving onto the “next big thing” if she doesn’t come up with another hit album and soon, like yesterday. After all, she’s been at this for ten years. Maybe she’s all washed up.

Exiled to a ranch in Wyoming to work out her music, or else, Sara determines not to let anything distract her...and then she meets Cal. Could he be the one to inspire her music and fill the empty hole in her heart or is he just another broken heart ballad waiting to happen?

Sound like something you'd want to read?

Comment below with a yes or no. Or better yet, share your own NaNo project. Good luck on your 50K!

Be sure and check out my NaNo tips on my blog:

http://www.lisaswinton.blogspot.com

All's Quiet on the NaNo Front?

As the self-proclaimed, Mommy Author resident NaNo WriMo expert, you all might be wondering why I've been so quiet on the subject lately. Do I not realize that it's mere days away? Surely I have a plot and outline all ready? I probably did it in September!

I do. I don't. I didn't.

I'm not doing NaNo WriMo this year.

*Gasp.* What? After last year when I bugged out early because my novel flopped and then I decided to make my kids presents for Christmas, leaving no time for last minute scrambling to meet my word count goal?

Yup. And I have a pretty good reason for failing two years in a row. If you hang around my twitter, blog, or Facebook, you might have picked up that I have some exciting things happening in the coming weeks. (I'm writing this post early and crossing my fingers that by the time it actually posts, it will have already happened ...)

I'm expecting Clark Baby #3. (And I'm not just being vague about the name because this is the internet and all -- well, that too -- we actually don't have a name locked in yet.)

That's no excuse, you say? Yeah, normally I'd agree. I wrote my first full-length NaNo WriMo (and first finished novel) when my second was only six months old. But this baby is different. I waited a long time for this baby (without getting into specifics, it wasn't related to my health. :D) I really just want to spend November (and December, January, February, March ...) sitting in a rocking chair and staring at him. So I'm going to. Because I can.

But you guys should all do NaNo. Really! I'm here to cheer you on and we even have a NaNo Mom-O forum for you over at the Goodreads group, so you should go check that out. I'll stop by to shout encouragement from my rocking chair. And perhaps toss out an idea or two, since I won't be using them. :D

And, because I have to know -- What's your bright NaNo idea this year?

The End of NaNo

So this year, I pretty much sucked at NaNo, and I'm totally okay with that. You can't ask for a story to write itself every year! Admittedly I had a really great outline and an amazing idea, but for some reason it wrote itself out at 22k. I could've gone the phone-book-quoting route to add many more words, but I liked "High School Revolution" too much to add filler. So I made the decision to set it aside. I'll go back in a few months and see what needs developed and fixed to make it into a great novel.

There's another big reason I'm okay with not getting 50k this year. This NaNo Mom-o made a crazy decision in the middle of November that she wanted to make her kids gifts this year for Christmas (for a more detailed explanation of this wildness, check out this post). This kind of decision happens for us every day. We decide to  use that extra few minutes we have every day to write to do something for our kids instead. And honestly, crafting has helped me. By not forcing my brain to come up with words, scenes, dialog, conflict -- it cleared a lot. When I hit writing hard again in January -- no fear, I haven't quit completely for December, just cut back A LOT -- I'll be READY! It's like when you edit for months and months, and by the time you're done, new stories are practically spilling out of your brain.

So, my question is, what NaNo genius did you all create last month?

Clearly a Guy Chose November

Like any other NaNo Mom-o, I have a million things going on in November. Randomly odd things that may or may not have to do with the approaching holidays. I could say that no other November was this busy. That might be true. For instance, I've never taken a week long hunting trip in November in years past that cut me off from cell and internet service. Because obviously that was a big problem despite having a perfectly capable laptop. (Perhaps wasting time by messing around on Facebook is actually productive in some way ...?) And I always come back from the Thanksgiving weekend seriously behind on my word count. But I've always bounced back. It just feels like this November does not have enough days, which caused me to ask the question: Why the heck do we do NaNo WriMo in November? There's Christmas to think of. It's just over a month away, and I just got some wild hair to try and do homemade presents for my boys. And there's Thanksgiving. Everyone's going to lose at least three days there. (Well, in my family we do.) And now is SO not the time to cut back on my exercising since if I do I'll have like 20 pounds to lose in January instead of maybe 10. As Valeri so expertly pointed out, the holidays present a serious challenge to writers because our work times get annihilated by other things. 

So instead of just throwing that question out into the void, I went to the NaNo website to figure out what the heck is up. The reasoning? "To take advantage of the miserable weather." Yes, clearly a man made this decision. Originally NaNo WriMo was held in July. I could so do July. My older child would be home from school to entertain my younger child. Writing at the park anyone? The ability to send my kids outside to play? Um, sure, there's the Fourth of July to contend with, but that's just one night. 

Then I realized, I've been in worse positions than this for NaNo and I've come out on top. So what's with my doom and gloom this year? Well, that would be because I only have 16,926 words and my story is finished. Literally done. I know there's some character development and some relationships to beef up. But there is DEFINITELY not 30-plus words to add. Nowhere. Unless as I once read in one of Chris Baty's (NaNo founder) pep-talks, I start letting my characters read out of the phone book for kicks and giggles. I just happen to be the girl who can't write filler. I know I can cut it later to streamline a book I really want to go somewhere, but I can't bring myself to. It would mess stuff up.

So I might flop for the first time in a couple years. And that's okay. I'm going to try really hard to keep my goal because I still believe in the power of NaNo WriMo. If I come up short, I can live with that.

But if I made it--that'd be one for my record books. :D

Is it a sign?

At the time I wrote this, NaNo Wrimo was only four hours and 15 minutes away, and yet I was indecisive when it came to what novel to write.

What novel to write? You ask ... I thought you had yours all planned out weeks ago. That you were too ready to pull this thing off. It's all part of Murphy's Law, I suppose. The more ready you are, the less likely things will go according to plan. I already saw part of this coming. Just days after the blog post where I bragged about how ready I was posted, I had a minor glitch and lost my entire outline -- my entire, detailed, more-specific-than-I've-ever-written outline. Luckily, thanks to iCloud backup, it came home safely.

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when, while driving to my son's school to watch the Halloween parade, more craziness attacked. I was pondering how much I wanted to write my latest idea for NaNo WriMo (sometimes having a wildly active imagination is more of a curse than a blessing -- like when you turn a harmless plunk in the middle of the night into terrorists attacking your house to steal you and your children). In a nutshell, it's about a girl who dies before her time and gets a second chance to come back and help someone she loves. Right now I have four points on the outline -- four points as compared to seventeen! So why would I even consider it? (Besides the fact that scenes keep coming to me, and it seems like it will be SO fun to write) Because right in the middle of me recklessly pondering changing gears with only hours left The Band Perry's song "If I Die Young" started playing. 

It was like a sign!

But I can't put aside my original idea, one that I'm also SUPER excited to watch play out. Then I considered trying two novels. Two novels in one month? Clearly, NaNo WriMo hasn't even started, and I'm already losing my mind. But why not? There's no way I'll complete two. Realistically, I can't even attempt it. But I can still write two and see where it leads. Because that's the magic of being a NaNo WriMo writer. Spinning wildly through November with only one thought to the end. I'll probably only end up with 10,000 words or less on the secondary novel, but I still like the idea of not having to wait. I suppose that's why NaNo WriMo really appeals to me. I'm the instant gratification sort. 

So here goes nothing, guys! 

Too Ready

To be honest, I've never been this ready for NaNo WriMo. Last year at this time I was frantically trying to pull together an outline, figuring out how to believably assassinate Churchill, and having long conversation with my husband about the best guns to fight dragons (if you want to know more about all that, you'll have to check out my blog every Saturday in November, where I'll have samples of my past NaNo WriMo Novels for Sweet Saturday Samples). 

This year's outline has been done since the beginning of the month. My research is in a neatly stacked pile. It's all a little unnerving. It seems too complete. Too easy. I have a nightmarish vision of me sitting in front of my computer on November 1st, my outline and research in front of me, and not having the slightest idea where to actually start. It might have to do with the fact that usually I have a few scenes kicking around in my head that I'm aching to write down (I always write down scenes ahead of time if they come to me because I tend to forget if I don't; It's torture not to be able to before NaNo WriMo). This year: nothing. A few vague ideas about using school newspaper articles to drive the timeline in the plot, but that's about it. And a fuzzy picture in my mind of hundreds of students storming a detention hall. 

But what fun would NaNo WriMo be if there wasn't some glitch. Sitting down and having 50k words slip easily out of your head and onto the screen doesn't seem fun at all. It's exhilarating to email my friend Kris at midnight asking her how the heck am I going to get to 50k when the story is winding itself up at 30k? I love wasting my time scouring the NaNo WriMo forums for truly hilarious plot bunnies (Oh yes, you have to check that forum out). 

I did a random search on author's who've published their NaNo WriMo novels (... it looks like I may be the first ...) and ran across a blog about why a guy hates NaNo WriMo and why we should too. I couldn't quite understand the gist of his ramble, but I think it had something to do with NaNo WriMo giving people who've never considered themselves novelists a chance to try their hand at it. I think he might've been jealous. Jealous that anyone can try to be a novelist in November--and that anyone who puts their mind to it can succeed! Jealous that we're all going to have a blast writing bad fiction, pretending that November 30th is an important deadline, calling ourselves novelists. Jealous that we get a kick out of being seven thousand words behind with only hours left. 

November just can't get here fast enough ...!

The NaNo Mom-o

Because that's sorta why we're here, right? We're moms and we're authors. And this year we're NaNo Mom-o's. (Yes, I just made that up. I think it's brilliant.) It's not going to be as easy for us to reach 50k. We have to take diapers and sibling rivalry into consideration. So here's your first Mom-o pep talk. I completed my first NaNo WriMo novel (you know the one that's going to make me rich and famous, remember?) with a six month old baby in the bouncer beside me. (And sometimes in my arms...or his swing...or anywhere he was quiet.) I'm not saying that to brag. I'm saying it to encourage you. To let you know that you can find time to write 50k words even though you are a mom and have a million things on your plate.

I'm not saying it's going to be easy. You're going to have to be creative (as if writing a novel in a month wasn't creative enough ...) like staying up unto the wee hours of the morning; like getting ten minutes here or there or anywhere you can tap out a hundred words or so. If your phone can email, start emailing scenes to yourself while you're in the longest line imaginable at Walmart. But do it. You might not make it to 50k, and you'll still be a great author. But we're going to try our darndest!

The best tip I can give you, though, is to get your husband on board. Mine, bless his awesome heart, fully supports my NaNo addiction in a million different ways. Like cooking dinner, or refraining from complaining when I stay up at all hours to get twenty thousand words in the last week (Oh, yeah. It's happened ... And oh, yeah, I made it!) Last year he pulled out plot twist after plot twist for me. He's amazing and half the reason I'm the writer I am today.

Okay, girls. This is it. Only a few more weeks until we get out there and make great stuff happen!

Set Yourself Up To Succeed

In case someone has told you otherwise, let's make it clear now. Writing a 50k word novel in 30 days isn't easy. However, it's definitely not impossible. Especially if you do a couple things to set yourself up to succeed.

One- Have an idea! And don't wait until Halloween. Give yourself time to mull over the idea and see if you can get 50k words out of it. I have some favorite places to get ideas. The "Stuff You Missed In History Class" podcast, for one. They have lots of podcasts on random events in history they can really get your imagination going. That's where I got mine this year! Definitely think out of the box. Cast well known history characters in strange places! Women's suffrage in space; Prohibition in a dystopian future. The Writer's Digest is also a great place to find prompts. Listen to music, watch people in the mall, read the news. There's a million places to find an idea.

Two- Have at least a rough outline. How do you normally write? If you usually have a detailed outline to work from, make sure you write it out ahead of time. Even if you're a "pantser" like me or you aren't totally sure yet where the characters are going to take the story, at least jot out something. I would suggest at least four points: The beginning or setup, 2 middle points, and the end. I think the end is one of the most important, even if it's vague. Give yourself something to shoot for so your story doesn't wander off and run out of gas at 30k words!

If you can, finish your outline in the first couple weeks of October; again to give you time to mull it over or add points that come to you. If a scene pops into your head, outline it so you don't forget. November is going to be full of enough stuff without you having to recall stuff you thought of in October. (And in case you're wondering, yeah, my outline is done ...)

Along these same lines, if you have research to do, gather it ahead of time as well. You don't want to waste precious writing time scouring the Internet for information on Victorian bathrooms. (Let me save you some serious hunting- check out Victoriana.)

One of the best things about NaNo is just letting your writing go, but if you don't prepare a little, stress can get in the way of the fun. Get rid of potential road blocks now so you can really get out there and race!