November 1st, is here, the beginning of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  Many authors have begun this month fully intending to get their 50,000 words by November 30th.
 
NIWA authirm Lee French and I are co-MLs for the Olympia Region for NaNoWriMo. In our region last year, 245 writers created profiles and began an official manuscript at www.nanowrimo.org. More than half were college students.
 
We’ve been doing this for a while, and we have seen a pattern.
 
First, reality sets in. This happens within the first few days. Last year 64 writers in our region never got more than 5,000 words written. One stopped at 34.
 
Some new NaNo writers are people who “always wanted to write a book.” Often, they don’t have any idea of what they want to write, and no clue of how to be disciplined enough to write any words, much less the number of words it takes to make a novel.
 
They start, get 30 to 1,000 words in, and realize they have nothing to say. But in our region, 34 people made it to the 10,000 word mark before they stopped writing. That’s an achievement—it’s almost a novella.
 
Other new writers are fired up on day one. They go at it full tilt for a week, or even two, and then, at the 20,000 word mark, they take a day off. Somehow, they never get back to it. Their novels will languish unfinished, perhaps forever.
 
Even seasoned writers who have won NaNoWriMo in previous years may find the commitment to sit and write 1,667 words every day is not doable for them. Things come up—life happens.
 
But by November 30th last year, 78 writers out of the 245 in our region had made it to the 50,000 word mark, and 5 exceeded 100,000 words.
 
Many of these novels were complete and ready for revisions.
 
It takes personal discipline to write 1,667 new words every day. This is not revising old work—this is writing something new, not looking at what you wrote yesterday. This is starting where you left off and moving forward.
 
For me, having the outline keeps me on track.
 
I’m not a good typist. The words that fall out of my head during this month are not all golden, just so you know. Some words will be garbled and miskeyed. This means I sometimes have a lot of revising of the work I intend to keep.
 
Some of what I write will be worth keeping, and some not at all. But even among the weeds, some passages and scenes  will be found that could make a story work. I will keep and use them because they say what I mean to say, and the others I will revise.
 
I use November to write short stories. To that end, I keep a list of ideas and prompts, and have it ready for when I begin to write. The words fall out of my mind, and the stories tell themselves.
 
Finishing November with a completed novel is a matter of sitting down and writing. If you don’t get those ideas out of your head and onto paper, you can’t revise and reshape them into something worth reading.
 
How do we develop the discipline to write every day? This is my list of suggestions for how to have a successful NaNoWriMo, and end November with that winner’s certificate:
 
First, we must write at least 1,670 words every day (three more than is required) This takes me about 2 hours – I’m not fast at this.
 
I can’t stress this enough: write every day, no matter if you have an idea worth writing about or not. If you are a person who needs a dedicated block of time, do it even if you have to get up at 4:00 am and don’t let anything derail you.
 
But maybe you can’t sit still for too long. Write in small increments—ten minutes here, half-an-hour there. These short bursts add up.
 
Perhaps your mind has gone blank. If you are stuck, write about how your day went and how you are feeling about things that are happening in your life, or write that grocery list. Just write and think about where you want to take your real story. Write about what you would like to have happen in that story. Soon, you will be writing that story.
 
Stay connected. Check in on the national threads and your regional thread to keep in contact with other writers. Attend a write-in if your region is having any or join a virtual write-in at NaNoWriMo on Facebook. This will keep you enthused about your project.
 
Don’t sabotage yourself: Delete nothing. Passages you want to delete later can be highlighted, and the font turned to red or blue, so you can easily separate them out later.
 

• Remember, not every story is a novel. If your story comes to an end, start a new story in the same manuscript. Use a different font or a different color of font, and you can always separate the stories later. That way you won’t lose your word count.
• Validate your word count every day.

 
Yes, these suggestions do require you to actually sit in a chair and write. Talking about what you intend to write won’t get the book written—for that you must sit your backside down and write.
 
That is what NaNoWriMo is all about. Writing, and developing discipline.
 
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Credits and Attributions:
 
Connie J. Jasperson is a published poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy.
 
Portions of this article were first published on October 24, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as “Many will begin, few will succeed,” © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson and has been reprinted by permission.

It’s mid-October, and many established authors are preparing to embark on their annual NaNoWriMo project. The experienced NaNo writers are making outlines and creating character studies. They’re just setting up the background, so they don’t have to stop and do that during the writing process.
 
All this preparation will jumpstart their project when they sit down and begin writing a manuscript of at least 50,000 words on November 1st.
 
For the next thirty days, they will spend several hours every day writing nothing but new words in a new manuscript. For many of us, this is when we get that rough draft of our new novel out of our heads and onto paper so that we have that all important “new novel every year” going out the front door along with the novellas and short stories we generate to keep the content of our author pages fresh and updated.
 
I have been a Municipal Liaison for my region since 2011, and my co ML is author Lee French. Between us, we keep the writers in our region stoked about their projects and help them get through the rough spots. We host write-ins, both virtual, and at libraries and coffeeshops.
 
As established authors, we have learned a few tricks that we are always happy to share with those who are planning to “do” NaNoWriMo for the first time. If you are just embarking on this literary joyride for the first time, here are a few quick tips and resources to help get your novel off the ground:
 
Things you want to have at your fingertips, so you don’t have to stop and look it up:
 
MAPS: If you are writing a story set in our real world and your characters will be traveling, walking a particular city, or visiting landmarks, bookmark google maps for that area and refer back to it regularly to make sure you are writing it correctly.
 
If you are writing about a fantasy world and your characters will be traveling, quickly sketch a rough map. Refer back to it to make sure the town names and places remain the same from the first page to the last. Update it as new places are added.
 
TECH: Many people are writing scifi novels. In hard scifi, technology and science are the central core of the stories, so it’s a good idea to know what tech is available to your characters well in advance of writing their scenes. A little planning now will aid you greatly in the writing process.
 
If you are writing fantasy involving magic or supernatural skills, briefly draw up a list of rules for who can do what with each skill. Remember:
 

• Magic with no rules is both impossible and creates a story with no tension. No one wants to read a story where the characters have nothing to struggle against.
• Each character should have limits to their abilities. Because they are not individually all-powerful, they will need to interact and work with each other and with the protagonist. They will have to do this whether they like each other or not if they want to win the final battle or achieve their goal. That will provide openings for some great interactions.
• This gives you ample opportunity to introduce tension into the story. Remember, each time you make parameters and frameworks for your magic you make opportunities for conflict within your fantasy world, and conflict is what drives the plot.

 
Looking things up on the internet can be an incredible time-sink. Bookmark your resources well in advance, so all you have to do is click on a link and get the information you want. Then you can quickly get back to writing.
 
Resources to kickstart stalled creativity:

• Fantasy/Real Name Generator
• Ye Olde Map Maker (not free, but cheap and excellent)
• Medieval City Generator (free and excellent)

 
Basic resources to bookmark for the fundamentals:

• Thesaurus.Com
• Oxford Dictionary
• Wikipedia

 
Three websites a beginner should go to if they want instant answers about grammar, written in plain English:

• The Grammar Girl
• Grammar-Monster.com
• Daily Writing Tips

 
Never delete, do not self-edit as you go. Don’t waste time re-reading your work. You can do all that in December when you go back to look at what you have written.
 

• If you love your sanity, make a list of all the names and words you invent as you go and update it each time you create a new one, so the spellings don’t evolve as the story does. Save this to your desktop, so all you have to do is click on the icon to open it for updating.

 
If you want to “win” and have your wordcount validated on the national website, write at least 1670 words every day. This is 3 more than is required, to account for differences in how your word processing program and NaNoWriMo’s official word counter validates wordcount. You don’t want to come up short at the end! This has happened and is quite frustrating.
 
Most importantly – enjoy writing that novel. This is time spent creating an amazing story only you can tell, so above all, enjoy this experience.
 
To learn more about NaNoWriMo, go to www.nanowrimo.org.

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Connie J. Jasperson is a poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy.

Writers generally come in two flavors: those who write whatever falls out of their head and those who carefully structure what they intend to write. I am somewhere in the middle: a plotter, but I am also a “pantser.” A great article on this subject can be found at The Write Practice.
 
Quote: Simply put, a plotter is someone who plans out their novel before they write it. A pantser is someone who, “flies by the seat of their pants,” meaning they don’t plan out anything or plan very little.
 
Planning what events your protagonist will face is called plotting, and I make an outline for that.
 
“Pantsing it,” or writing using stream-of consciousness can produce some amazing work. That works well when we’re inspired, as ideas seem to flow from us. But for me, that sort of creativity is short-lived, unless I have a brief outline to follow, a road map of some sort.
 
Participating in NaNoWriMo has really helped me grow in the ability to write on a stream-of-consciousness level, but in each manuscript, I get to points where I need reminding of where I intended the story to go when I first conceived the idea. My storyboard gets me back on track without making me feel like the creativity is already done.
 
One NaNoWriMo joke-solution often bandied about at write-ins is, "When you’re stuck, it's time for someone to die." I will just say that assassinating beloved characters whenever we run out of ideas is not a feasible option.
 
When cherished characters are killed off, we must introduce new characters to fill the void. The reader may decide not to waste his time getting invested in a new character, feeling that you will only break their heart again.
 
For that reason, the death of a character should be reserved to create a pivotal event that alters the lives of every member of the cast. Sudden death is best reserved for either the inciting incident at the first plot point or as the terrible event of the third quarter of the book.
 
So instead of random assassination, we should resort to creativity.
 
This is where having prep notes or an outline can provide some structure, and keep you moving forward.  You will know what should happen in the first quarter, the middle, and the third quarter of the story and you can wing it when connecting those events to each other. Because we know how it should end, we can fill in the blanks between large events and the story will have cohesion.
 
Think about what launches a great story:
 

1. The protagonist has a problem.
2. You have placed them in a setting at a given moment and shown the environment in which they live.
3. You have unveiled the inciting incident.
4. You know what they want, but you aren’t sure how far they will go to achieve it.

 
Now you need to decide what hinders the protagonist and prevents them from resolving the problem. The outline is just a skeleton you will flesh out in November. When you do the actual writing, you will “pants it” between events to infuse the narrative with three things:

• Empathy—the reader must identify with the protagonist.
• Believability—readers must be able to suspend their disbelief.
• Tension—from the inciting incident on, we want to keep applying pressure to our protagonist. We want the reader turning the pages to see what will happen next.

 
We want the protagonist to be a sympathetic character whom the reader can identify with; one who the reader can immerse themselves in, living the story through his/her adventures. The combination of plotting and “pantsing it” offers you the freedom to lay down the prose as you wish, and you never lack for an idea of where to go with your story.
 
But for NaNoWriMo, speed is everything. I need to get my 1,667 words every day, and I can’t take the time to sit back and ponder what to write next.
 
I find that this is where preparing a loose outline in advance helps me write quickly. Readers want the hindrances and barriers the protagonist faces to feel real. By writing down ideas in a specific file as they occur to me, I have a list of roadblocks for my story all ready to go when November first arrives.
 
A loose guide helps me visualize setups for the central events. This enables me to quickly lay down the narrative that shows the payoffs (either negative or positive) to advance the story: action and reaction.
 
Some authors resort to “idle conversation writing” when they are temporarily out of ideas.  If you can resist the temptation, please do so—it’s fatal to an otherwise good story. Save all your random think-writing off-stage in a background file, if giving your characters a few haphazard, pointless exchanges helps jar an idea loose. (However, for purposes of wordcount, if you wrote it, you can count it!)
 
One failing of NaNo Novels in their rough draft form is their unevenness. Try not to introduce random things into a scene unless they are important to the completion of the character’s quest. Remember, to show the reader something is to foreshadow it, and the reader will wonder why a casual person or thing was so important they had to be foreshadowed.
 
The simple solution is a word document saved to your desktop, one that you can just open, make a note of your idea, save it, and close it to go back to what you were working on.
 
Both over planning and under planning can lead to a book that is stalled and a writer who believes they have “writers’ block.” For me, a happy medium lies in a general outline, done as a brief storyboard.
 
The storyboard for my ideas works this way: First I open a blank workbook in Excel or Google Docs and give it a file name using a working title if I don’t actually have a real title for the book. This may look like:
Snowbirds_storyboard_2017.xls (I use Excel.)
At the top: Working Title

Column A: Character Names: list the important characters by name, and also list the important places where the story will be set.

Column B: About: What their role is, a note about that person or place, a brief description of who and what they are.

Column C: The Problem: What is the core conflict?

Column D: What do they want? What does each character desire?

Column E: What will they do to get it? How far will they go to achieve their desire?
 
As I said, this plays directly to how a linear thinker like me works. It takes advantage of the ideas I have that might make a good story, makes a note of all the pertinent ideas I have at the outset, and offers me a jumping off point. I set this aside and pull it out in November when NaNoWriMo begins, and I need a little refresher on what I plan to write.
 
What has prevented you from writing in the past? Did you get busy? Did you sleep in? Did you feel uncreative? These are mental roadblocks we all experience. The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to develop the ability to work through these hindrances.
 
Remember, you are a superhero with a keyboard, slaying the monsters of idleness and lack of creativity.
 
Do a little planning, but write like the wind, and let the story take you where it will.

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Credits and Attributions
The Pros and Cons of Plotters and Pantsers by The Magic Violinist, The Write Practice, http://thewritepractice.com/plotters-pantsers/ © 2017

Portions of Pantsing vs. Plotting was first published on November 1, 2017, by Connie J. Jasperson on Life in the Realm of Fantasy,  as Pantsing vs. Plotting or Somewhere in the Middle © 2017 by Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission.

Connie J. Jasperson is a poet and the author of nine novels. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies. A founding member of Myrddin Publishing Group, she can be found blogging regularly on both the craft of writing and art history at Life in the Realm of Fantasy.