I said it here – it’s the flexibility of Nanowrimo, the fact that you define how you use this 30-day all-purpose novel-writing resource, that makes it remarkably productive.
How do you intend to use Nanowrimo?
My Nanowrimo is about restarting what I let stall after a promising beginning. This is a not an uncommon outcome – and I know I’m not alone. Fellow quitters – our particular challenge is to breathe life back into the living worlds we started.
Here are a couple of random doses of practical wisdom from two novelists whose names you’ll recognize (and I paraphrase):
• Tolstoy – immerse yourself to the point of obsession with everything ever written about your subject. He might have added, “and stay obsessed, even after you’ve driven friends and family from the house.”
• Hemingway – before you attack the Big Blank Page, load your cache and warm yourself up by rereading every chapter you’ve written so far. Do this every day.
Both authors, in different ways, arrive at the same conclusion:
Momentum – building it and maintaining it – is the absolutely crucial factor in your novel’s success.
A novel is an ambitious project requiring lots of skill and confidence. Every moment of it should draw on the changing, growing database that living inside your imagination. The work requires loading that data into your mind on a daily basis, outfitting your mind for quick associative response at any moment, to any configuration of information your imagination might produce.
Folks, we’re talking obsession here – even if self-induced.
That’s right, to do this work, be prepared to throw yourself into a state of obsession with your material and your process.
Otherwise it will show: there will be a shallowness to things thought and said, motivations for action will seem thin and unconvincing, action itself will seem forced and perfunctory.
All right. Lecture over. Now…go obsess yourself!
Seriously, go burrow into your material, lose yourself in it. Become, at least for a time, the world’s leading self-taught eccentric expert on your story. With only two days until the start of Nanowrimo, there’s no time to waste. Jump in now with both feet and don’t let those around you puncture your information balloon.
Have a plan going in and write it down, even if it’s ridiculously simple. Here’s mine:
• I’m reading, rereading, then rereading again, the seven chapters I produced last year.
• I’m freewriting intensively ABOUT my characters, reclaiming the intimacy I had with them, then digging deep for as much new character material as I can turn up to support my understanding of where the story needs to go.
• Bench test the story as you go. Use whatever method you like for shorthanding the story. Create a story model. Change the model to support unexpected turns of events rooted in the new character information you’re turning up.
• Come the 1st, plunge in where you left off and write like crazy.
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