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How to Jumpstart your NaNoWriMo Project

10/15/2019

It’s mid-October, and time to talk about participating in National Novel Writing Month again.

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:

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

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 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.

This article was first published on NIWA’s blog as as Tips and Tricks to Jumpstart Your NaNoWriMo Project © 2019 Connie J. Jasperson and NIWA. It has been reprinted by permission.

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What is National Novel Writing Month About?

10/1/2019

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I regularly participate in the annual writing rumble known as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is a worldwide event where people dedicate themselves to writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. I'm a rebel in that while I do work on a new novel, I will also scratch out as many short stories as I am able in those thirty days.

I participate every year because for 30 precious days, writing is the only thing I "have" to do.

My friends and family all know that November, in our house, is referred to "National Pot Pie Month," so if you drop by expecting a hot meal from Grandma, it will probably emerge from the microwave in the form of a formerly frozen hockey puck.

I usually have my “winners’ certificate” by the day they become available, but I continue writing every day through the 30th and update my word count daily.

NaNoWriMo is a contest in the sense that if you write 50,000 words and have your word count validated through the national website you ‘win.’ But it is not a contest in any other way as there are no huge prizes or great amounts of acclaim for those winners, only a PDF winner’s certificate that you can fill out and print to hang on your wall.

It is simply a month that is solely dedicated to the act of writing a novel.

Now let’s face it–a novel of only 50,000 words is not a very long novel. It’s a good length for YA or romance, but for epic fantasy or literary fiction it’s only half a novel.

But regardless of the proposed length of their finished novel, a dedicated author can get the rough draft--the basic structure and story-line of a novel--down in those thirty days simply by sitting down for an hour or two each day and writing a minimum of 1667 words per day.

With a simple outline to keep you on track, that isn’t too hard. In this age of word processors, most authors can double or triple that.

As always, there is a downside to this intense month of stream-of-consciousness writing. Just because you can sit in front of a computer and spew words does not mean you can write a novel that others want to read.

Every year many cheap or free eBooks will emerge in January, testifying to that fundamental truth.

The good thing is, over the next few months many people will realize they enjoy the act of writing and are fired to learn the craft. They will find that for them this month of madness was not about getting a certain number of words written by a certain date, although that goal was important.

For them, NaNoWriMo is about embarking on a creative journey and learning a craft with a dual reputation that difficult to live up to. Depending on the cocktail party, authors are either disregarded as lazy ne’er-do-wells or given far more respect than we deserve.

For a very few people, participating in NaNoWriMo will give them the confidence to admit that an author lives in their soul and is demanding to get out. In their case, NaNoWriMo is about writing and completing a novel they had wanted to write for years, something that had been in the back of their minds for all their lives.

These are the people who will join writing groups and begin the long journey of learning the craft of writing. Whether they pursue formal educations or not, these authors will take the time and make an effort to learn writing conventions (practices). They will attend seminars, they will develop the skills needed to take a story and make it a novel with a proper beginning, a great middle, and an incredible end.

They will properly polish their work and run it past critique groups before they publish it. They will have it professionally edited. These are books I will want to read.

Every year, participating in NaNoWriMo will inspire many discussions about becoming an author. Going full-time or keeping the day job, going Indie or aiming for a traditional contract—these are conundrums many new authors will be considering after they have finished the chaotic month of NaNoWriMo. While few of us have the luxury to go Indie and write full-time (my husband has a good job), many authors will struggle to decide their publishing path.

However, if you don’t sit down and write that story, you aren’t an author. You won’t have to worry about it. With that in mind, November and NaNoWriMo would be a great time to put that idea on paper and see if you really do have a novel lurking in your future.

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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.

This article was first published on Sept 10, 2018 on Life in the Realm of Fantasy as What is NaNoWriMo and Why Bother With It? © 2018 Connie J. Jasperson

http://conniejjasperson.com/2018/09/10/what-is-nanowrim…ith-it-amwriting/
It has been reprinted by permission.

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How to Jumpstart your NaNoWriMo Project

What is National Novel Writing Month About?

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