Day 01 – My Secret NaNoWriMo Plan

Well, it’s upon us. The big NaNoWriMo is here.

You’re reading the last of of my 15 Day Countdown items. If you’ve hung with me through the entire sequence, my thanks, and I hope they’ve been helpful. Any that you missed, you can pick up from Write a Better Novel, where they’re available as pages from a set of drop-down menus.

When I was younger, I avoided speaking about my “process.” I feared I might accidentally drain the magic, lose my mojo, turn into a pumpkin, whatever. Looking back, I think the real problem was that I didn’t actually have a process–at least not one I was aware of. If I accomplished something, the source of it was hidden to me, and I had no conscious tools for support and encouragement.

For two years now I’ve been blogging exactly the sort of practical information I once didn’t trust. I think I’ve finally reached a place where I no longer believe I’ll lose the magic simply because I talk openly about the smoke and mirrors that help make it happen. Nearly twenty years of teaching/coaching cured me of that.

But the fact remains: most novelists, published or not, feel a touch of trepidation standing on the brink of NaNoWriMo.

My challenge–and everyone’s challenge, I believe– is to pull together the most effective mix of tools, habits, rituals, and plans for the 30 days ahead, so that fear is reduced to a trivial factor.

So today, rather than suggest or recommend, I’m going to share with you my own personal plan for NaNoWriMo. The task is simply to take what might be helpful to you and integrate it into your own plan.

My personal goal is to finish Regenerating Jeff, a novel that was off to a nice start until I let it get away from me. I’m not the best about sticking to plans, but I’ve got a “to do” list that I plan to live by. For 30 days anyway. Here it is:

* Reread the 7 or 8 chapters of draft I’ve already written.

* Review my best-of-the-best character, story, and theme notes. Remember all those pages of notes I showed off in a recent video post? I’ve boiled them down to 86 questions/answers that I can carry around in my iPhone, both as notes and as flash cards.

* Make a rough daily agenda. Knowing the broad outlines of my story, I’m laying it out as a series of 30 assignments. Of course, I know full well that when I come to Day 12, things may be changing, shifting in unexpected directions, so I’m fully open to reviewing and changing the “assignment schedule” at any time.

* Write every day. Even on days when I have “no time,” I pledge to put at least a couple of hundred words down.

* Use Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die. Yes, carrots don’t work with me–I need a stick, and Write or Die’s dire threat of disappearing text, combined with it’s Disable Backspace feature, is the kind of penal straight jacket that I welcome.

* Write first thing. I’m best in the morning, before anything else has had a chance to crowd into my brain. And if I’ve made my word count by noon, I can enjoy, REALLY enjoy my work and everything else during the rest of the day.

And so…good luck to us all.

Bill

PS
Don’t forget–we get a blessed extra hour on the time change tonight. Turn your clock back and celebrate that extra early morning light.