Things to do when not writing NaNoWriMo Novel

* Play Scramble on Facebook on the premise that you are a) limbering up your fingers for typing, and b) it involves words so it’s a pre-write exercise.

* Take a nap and have a dream where one of your minor characters makes a case for importance in your plot and then proceeds to tell you how she dies. Get up and write that chapter.

* Get so enamored with one chapter that you just want to edit, edit, edit instead of write, write, write.

* Use Find/replace to change all contractions to two words, thereby increasing word count by 50 words.

* Think of ways to color code your characters to aide in building a mind map of the plot lines. Spend too much time on which color is just right for each character. Be glad that you have a set of 64 colored pencils.

* Recalculate every hour how many more words you have to write to ‘catchup’, then whine about your swine flu setback.

* Check FB again in case something important has happened. Be amused by swiney cartoon son has posted on your wall. Decide that one of your characters liked Winnie the Pooh as a child. Consider this research.


* Peruse the NaNoWriMo Forums and wonder if everybody is writing either FanFic or Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Have an episode of self-doubt that you shouldn’t be doing this.

* Remind yourself that it’s just a goal to get a first draft completed.

* Realize at 11:17 that due to the time change the perfect sunbeam for napping is almost in place. Move laptop to bed. Realize 45 minutes later that the sun doesn’t move as quickly as you thought.

* Think some more about your characters. Maybe even write a character sketch.

* Write a blog post to tell your 5 readers that your word count is now 6828, which isn’t bad considering that you didn’t write for 4 days.

* Wonder if bullet pointed blogs posts count towards word count if you can attribute them to a character? After all, 392 words would increase your count to 7220, leaving you with exactly 1860 more words per day to write to meet 50,000 by Nov 30th. Consider that would be 380 words if you removed the contractions.

* Take another nap. The sunbeam is now perfectly aligned with bedroom window.

That wasn't so bad for a start....

I was excited yesterday about doing NaNoWriMo. I even thought that maybe it would be okay if I started writing, since my outline had energized me. But, I decided that I needed to pace myself (and follow the rules if I'm participating), so I waited until today.

So, what did I do when I woke up this morning? Did I rush to the computer, armed with my outline, a cup of coffee, and thousands of good ideas rushing through the grey matter?

Are you kidding?

I drank my coffee, read about 75 pages in a book (Marilynne Robinson's Home, which I'm liking quite a lot), and then went back to bed. I crawled out from under the covers just before 10:30, just in time to see the nature montage that always closes CBS Sunday Morning.

After a few hours of procrastinating, I finally turned on the laptop. More time with email, news stories, Facebook, and other diversions, I finally started to write. I only had 300 words after a half hour. If I continue at that pace, I'll never finish in a month!

Finally, I started to write. My story went off in a direction I hadn't anticipated, but that's okay. I have now completed the first draft of the prologue and I'm content that I wrote not only a little more than 2000 words, but that I said what I wanted to say in the opening pages. All in all, not a bad start. Let's see how it progresses, some of which I hope to document here, though I don't anticipate doing that daily. No, NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo would be too obsessive, too much for anybody.

Happy wordful November, everyone.

NaNoWriMo Minus 1

Having a few hours to kill in an airport and on a plane, I made use of pen and paper to begin planning my NaNoWriMo project. As I understand the rules, prework is okay before November 1st, and since I've never written a novel before, I thought I might at least explore a few ideas.

Yesterday, I saw a televised interview with John Irving. One things that Irving said that intrigued me was that he doesn't start writing his book until he knows the last sentence. It was, he explained, the only way he knew how to begin a plot driven work.

I'm not going to doubt a best-selling author's process, just as I would not doubt someone who had written several unpublished works, because I really haven't a clue how one writes a book. What I think the follow up questions should have been, though, was this: how often does that sentence remain the last sentence?

I wrote a last sentence and it isn't too bad as sentences go, but it really was no more than a prompt. It started me thinking and, although it was a workable sentence, potentially a poignant last sentence that with lots of work might be within reach of Fitzgerald's green light Gatsby close, I quickly realized that I probably didn't have a book. So much for that idea.

The fun part about imagining is not knowing where your brain is going to take you. I continued to write down ideas, drifting away from my last sentence. Soon I had several seemingly unrelated ideas, but I saw a pattern revealing itself.

So, while I think that there is more to the pattern to be found, and that the discovery will come in the writing -- and more certainly in the editing to follow after Nov 30 -- I now have a core idea. Nature, time and place will figure prominently in this project. What I'm envisioning is a series of loosely related stories. I've outlined the chapters and have given them working titles. The titles will serve as writing prompts. For about half of these, I already know either the characters or the plot. Some characters will be recurring, but in some chapters, place and nature/season will be what ties the piece to work as a whole. It may not work out, but it's where I'm headed right now.

I don't know why I feel compelled to put the working chapter titles here, but in some ways it makes it seem more real. If I focus on one of these a day for the next 30 days, I should have at least something of length, even if not of significance by the end of NaNoWriMo. This list is in a vague thematic order that is more or less seasonal, but it is not the order that I think that the book will actually be.

The Map
Spring
Cemetery
Driving Lessons
The convertible and the tree
A Tale of a Bird Watcher
Ah, Pioneers
Baby!
Flower and Patio
Summer
Cherry
If It's Worth Building
Summer Storm
Escape
Getting Glasses
Home is not home if there are no oak trees
Fireflies and fireworks
Fall
Spook Spoof
Putting Dad to Bed
The Greenway Trial
Cowboy Camp
Deerhunters and the Tea Party
Fire Sale
Winter
Selling the Farm
An Accident
Break-In
5 Cents or The Dr. Is In
I'm Older than John Glenn
It was colder than this in 1875

As I actually get some words down on paper, I might be willing to share some of this with readers I trust. Let me know if you're interested...I probably will not look at specific criticisms until I'm ready to begin editing in December, but I'll take any encouraging words throughout November.