Surviving NaNoWriMo and Making That Novel

1. Caffiene Make yourself a cup of coffee or buy a can of an energy drink

2. Planning Plan ahead - you don't have to make it up as you go along

3. Death to the editorKill your internal editor. It doesn't matter if you aren't entirely satisfied with your writing. After NaNoWriMo, you can edit to your hearts desire.

4. Distractions...Avoid distractions and procrastination

5. Writers block? Well, what did you do today, did you read anything interesting in the news? What did you learn in class? Take inspiration from any aspect in your life.

6. Keep on schedule Write 1,667 words a day

7. Timed writing: it can be your best friend

8. Make use of your spare time Write when you've got spare time, even if it's 5-10 minutes, when you're cooking the dinner or when you're waiting for dinner to be cooked for you. Write instead during breakfast instead of reading your morning paper.

9. Sleep properly - 10:30pm - 7/8:00 am is a good nights sleep and if you go to bed late, sleeping the extra hours does not help. Being awake can make your mind more active.

10. Exercise: it is good for the brain, and if you're trapped in a room for a couple of hours, you'll want to go out and stretch. An exercise body means an active mind ready to go.

Give yourself a time and word count target. Can you do 700 words in 30 minutes? Can you do 1000 in 40? Make sure when you start the clock, don't stop writing. So plan ahead what you're going to write first and just go at it with no time to think. Remember, editing is for AFTER you've finished the NaNoWriMo, even if that nagging voice in your head is saying, "No! You've worded that wrong. Go back and do it right." The chances are your nagging editor will be there when you come to redrafting. At least mine won't leave mine alone every time I read through it.

There is a tool on the internet that might come in handy and I found it to be a Godsend and I know many other NaNoWriMo entrants did as well. This tool is called 'Write or die'. It is a timed writing tool, you'll set yourself a target and a time limit and there are 3 modes you can work by and they are essentially, "how badly do you want the program to punish you for not writing?" Thus you set a grace period as to how quickly the punishment sets in. In Normal mode, the screen turns red and you can hear an annoying background sound and in Kamikaze mode it'll actually start deleting words that you have written.

I found a good setting is: 700 word, 30 minutes, Evil grace period and Kamikaze mode.

Here is the link:

Dr Wicked's Write or Die

1 month, 50,000 words 1,667 words per day. This is something you need to stick to.

But there is no doubt that you won't, something will likely distract you; friends, family, TV, social life, children, the internet, video games, work, Uni work, other work that MUST be done or whatever. Your distractions might be useful research and even act to cure writer's block if you get it. Your children can be characters that interact with your main character, and something they did today could be written about, what you went out to do with your friends could be something - a barbecue with some anecdotal conversations or a night out clubbing or something you studied at University that day.

But you'll probably need to shut yourself in a darkened room away from rest of the world and tell the people who you're living with that you're working on your NaNoWriMo, which can excuse you from doing anything social that might get in the way or even house-hold duties, it can even mean support from your peers. Listening to music can drown out extra noises. Keep any kind of media away from you - hide your DVD player, TV, Xbox or whatever if you feel they're going to tempt you, failing that, have some self-control.

If you don't meet your target, slap yourself on the wrist and add it to the next day's word count. If you were to look at my progress you'll find plenty of slaps on the wrist, for one day it amounted to 10,000 words, I did not sleep that night and had plenty of caffeine, I had Uni the next morning and forgot my homework, so this is perhaps not the healthiest way of doing things and it's best to avoid it, but sometimes you have to cram something in. But if you do fall behind, don't think, "screw it, I've lost", because it's always possible to catch up and even if you can't reach 50,000 words, 30,000 is still one heck of an achievement, and although you won't get a certificate for it, you have a goal for next year. However, I want you to succeed and that is why I am here writing this lens.

It might be handy when writing your novel in general is to manage your story in its various parts, I am currently editing my NaNoWriMo from last year and I've downloaded a very useful tool called 'Celtx' - it's downloadable here:

http://celtx.com/

It is designed for things like screenplays, but it's actually a good tool for plotting out your story. Even for a Novel. Lets take a look at it:

Here you have a database:


That is of the character sheets. In the character sheets you've got different headings by which you can define your characters:

So that's:
Name
Description
Detailed Physical Descriptions
Traits
Motivation
Background

This can be handy in keeping a solid image of your character in one place - so Agvithur had a past experience in losing his brother to the PPA (Party Perspective Activists) citizen's arrest - Agvithur was brainwashed as a result. He is currently 19, he has short blonde hair, 5 foot 10, likes to wear a vest top with black jeans. His goal is to influence people away from the indoctrination people face in his society and help the understand what's really going on - he views himself as a liberator, but is perhaps naive and a little too idealistic, but he has a kind heart, which brings him support from his friends. He has a a fictional psychological condition called the Pantheon complex - which is a central plot device. He is the main protagonist. This I have recorded and can use it as a reference.

You can use parts like the 'Screenplay' part of the program to do some chapter summaries. They don't have to be long and only you need to be able to make sense of them. Perhaps give the novel and/or each chapter a premise.



The above image won't make much sense to anybody reading it - but I know what it means. So when coming to edit my novel - I might wish to analyze the chapter summaries rather than trailing through the whole draft - that means any changes can be applied.

You might wish to use subplot and subtext into a new setting - so for example:



Subplot is an important part of making your story interesting, because whilst you have your main focus, it is realistic to say that there's something else going on with your characters. No story in a person's life has only one focus - when we follow our Characters, we see them as multi-dimensional - the main concern in the story might be that a society is oppressed by a religious super-power, but the characters are human and have many other hardships to experience along the way. Love may be an aside to the plot, but also friendship or bereavement.