Yes or No to NaNo? How to get back into your writing

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National Novel Writing Month

Hard to believe, but it’s that time again! November is looming up fast and November for many writers means National Novel WritingMonth. Thirty days of frenzy and exhaustion as they try to rack up 50,000 words by 23.59 on the 30th.

NaNoWriMo is in many ways a Very Very Good Thing. So much of the writing life is about procrastination, waiting for conditions to be better, writing in fits and starts – a month in which you dedicate yourself to major production levels is a month where you can discover what you’re capable of. Many writers are amazed, once they get into it, to find just how much they can achieve. They start December with a pile of messy pages, but pages which can lead to other pages, pages which can be edited into shape.

So, yay for NaNo.

But I’m not doing it this year.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or you’ve read my last blogpost, you’ll know that this year has been all about distraction. Service providers have let me down and my days, weeks and months have been filled with lists, correspondence, shouty scenes and anxiety. Even now, I’m barely coming out of it.

If I sign up for NaNo this time round, the dark side of it may be revealed – it’s another form of pressure and I really don’t need any extra pressure right now. The voice, that voice any writer is so familiar with, the shrill nagging ‘Why can’t you just get on with it!’ voice, will raise its decibel-level even more.

I have projects. I have ideas. I also have clients whose work needs editing, workshops to run … so my own work will have to wait a little while longer. I’m fairly OK about that. I believe in the work. It can keep, just a little while longer.

Are you contemplating doing NaNo? I genuinely think it’s worth considering. I’ve done it before, and always on my own terms – I've written posts about previous years’ NaNoWriMos, including the technique that I’ve found served me best when aiming for ultimate productivity. You can find my posts here and here, and earlier ones here and here.

If you are doing NaNo, you could do part of it at my next writers’ retreat, Fictionfire by the Spires: Reboot and Troubleshoot, here in Oxford from 7-8 November. The title tells you what I’ll be focussing on. I’ll run four workshops designed to get you back in touch with your writing and help you with issues you’re having with your project. There will be peaceful time for you to just … write. There will be constant tea and coffee. And buffet lunches. And cake – there must always be cake.

It’ll be fun. The group will be small (maximum 8 people), friendly, supportive. You’ll be in Oxford, one of the most gorgeous cities in the world.

To find out more about what’s involved, visit my website.

Here’s what people had to say about my two previous writers’ retreat weekends, in St Ives in Cornwall:

 

‘It took me out of my day-to-day environment with all its everyday complications and gave me a space in which to write.’ C.J.

‘I can’t recommend this event highly enough! If ever you have the opportunity to attend one of Lorna’s workshops, grab it with both hands!’ C.W.

Can’t make this one? Sign up on the website to my mailing list, to be kept informed.

And if you’re doing NaNo, enjoy the ride!

NaNoWriMo and Beyond - the Secrets of Success Part 2

So, here we are with one day of National Novel Writing Month to go. How's it been for you? Are you sitting under the glitterball of success as I mentioned in my previous post or has your forehead been in contact with your desk so often there's a dent in it (the desk, that is)?

Well, I've entered NaNo for three successive years now and I haven't hit the 50,000 word target once. And I'm totally fine with that - because I never intended to hit that target in the first place. For me, NaNo is all about cultivating the habit of writing every single day, because that's what works best, not some notional 1667 word goal. The thing to bear in mind about NaNo - as I also said in my previous post - is that it's your NaNo, not anybody else's.

Two years ago, when I entered for the first time, I wrote 36,228 words - which gave me such a thrill as I'd surpassed my self-set target of 35,000 words. I'd broken through the log-jam and created a significant body of work which simply hadn't existed 30 days previously. It was a great feeling.

Last year I entered again and I totally screwed up. I was in a bad place with my writing and was torn between projects. I even named two on my author detail page on NaNo, a sure sign there was trouble ahead. I swithered (a good Scots word for dotting to and fro in an undecided manner) anxiously between  the two and was master of neither. My confidence took a battering and I felt I'd never see my way clear again.

This year, the situation is different once again. This year I feel I've got a grip on my writing in the sense that I am now working lucidly on a project for which I have a strong passion. Yes, there are frustrations, doubts, episodes of sturm und drang - but at a deep level I have faith in this story and am relishing exploring its possibilities, even when there are so many possibilities I despair of ever managing them all!

This project began with a short story. The story was long-listed in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize, which was very gratifying, of course. Then I had an epiphany: this story had the potential to be More, Much More! It was a complete rush of blood to the head. The Muse, who'd been off on a gap year, suddenly was knocking on my door with every intention of staying for more than a day or two.

The project is a historical novel. I signed up for the Historical Novel Society Conference in London in September (you'll have seen my five reports about the conference last month). The conference, apart from being hugely enjoyable in its own right, provided me with a Goal and a Deadline, for I was going to see how much I could write by the end of September - I was going to pitch to an agent while there.

On 14th July I started. I vowed I'd write every day, right up to the Conference. And I did. Yup, I'm bemused by that myself! I went to London with 67000 words under my belt. Damn, it felt good!


After positive encouragement, I prepared to take a month off from writing in October, so that I could reinforce my story with some necessary research. This didn't work out according to plan: real life barged in with work demands and so on - and I ended up neither researching very much nor writing anything. I dreaded all my hard work and enthusiasm fizzling out - it's happened before. I'm sure we've all been there. New ideas and projects are no problem - its keeping the momentum going that's the challenge.

So we come to NaNo. I knew I wouldn't be able to write anywhere near 50,000 words, because my Fictionfire work demands have been pressing this month. I also knew that if another month went by without my first draft making any forward progress I'd start to lose faith in it - and in myself.

So I set my target: 20,000 words. This, I felt, was doable. This could mean 300 words one night, 1200 words the next - whatever I felt capable of, as long as 20,000 words were produced by the end of the month.

Not only do I set an overall target, but here's the greatest secret of success for me, and it's one I discovered in 2010 - and it's thanks to Jerry Seinfeld! Here's what you do: you take a sheet from a calendar and on every writing day you put a big red cross on it to show you wrote something that day. It couldn't be simpler! What happens is that the line of crosses spreads across the page and it would be horrible to see a blank box interrupt that sweet line of success! Doesn't matter if the word count is low - the main thing is that something was produced. All those crosses line up, all those daily word counts start to rack up and they amount to a lot more than a hill of beans when you're done!

I also record on the calendar what the word count that day was, and my running totals for the month and for the project as a whole. I've had to write in the middle of the night, so I go to bed anything between 2.00 and 4.00 a.m. I've literally fallen asleep on occasion - and my fingers have kept typing! I often don't know the next day what it was I wrote the previous night, so am eager to read it! Every night I start with blankness and force myself - really force myself to get going. Most times it gets better once the first sentence or so is down. Some nights it doesn't get better at all, but I keep grinding on.

I'm delighted to say that I hit my 20,000 word target on November 23rd and tonight I'll be reaching 90,000 words for the project as a whole. There's a long long way to go. After that, the thing may never sell. I'm a realist.

But I'm also a writer - and feel I can say that, when sometimes in the past I haven't felt I deserved that label. If you've been doing NaNo, you're a writer - whether you wrote 50,000 words or 5,000. If you didn't do NaNo this year, consider it next year - or choose any month for your own personal NaNo. Make it your own. Try the chain of red crosses. Set achievable goals. Have faith!

Here are the links to my posts on NaNo back in 2010:
NaNo with a Twist
Post-NaNo Post: How to Keep Writing!

NaNoWriMo - the Secrets of Success Part 1

Tomorrow, National Novel Writing Month – NaNo for short – starts again, and during the next 30 days hundreds of thousands of writers all over the world will attempt to write 50,000 words at a rate of 1667 a day. (In fact, they’ve started in New Zealand already …). They’ll join Forums, upload word counts, forget the housework and walking the dog. They’ll laugh crazily, weep tears of exhausted despair, stare at the screen, hit the keyboard, hit the screen, hit the wall … They’ll overdose on caffeine and triumph – and in all likelihood they’ll have difficulty remembering their own names by November 21^st.

So here you are, on October 31^st, wondering whether to join in with the creative insanity. Look, you’ve got a To Do List as long as a giant’s arm already – why do this? Why put yourself through it? What will you get out of it? If, on November 30^th the magic 50,000 word mark has been reached, you get a certificate. Big wow, you might say. But there’s so much more to it: there’s an enormous sense of pride. You’ll have put 50,000 words on the hard disk, on paper – that simply weren’t there before. They may be raw, rushed and clumsy words, but they’re words plucked out of your brain and sent down the neural pathways to that paper or screen – ultimately to make their way into the brains of your readers. You’ve gone beyond the idle ‘I’d like to write a novel sometime …’ You’ve cut the tree down, chopped it into planks and staves and masts, nailed most of it together – you can now trim and hone, carve and plane, shaping your ship of dreams and sending it out onto the ocean … OK, enough of the seafaring metaphor!

In this and the next blogpost or two, I’m going to explore NaNo and how to make it work for you, with an honest discussion of the benefits and the pitfalls. I’ll talk about my past experience and what I’ve learned from it – and whether I’ve decided to join in this year (still dithering at this point, with eleven hours to go!)

So, what’s the first lesson in making it work for you?

Make it your own.

Even though this is a huge collective endeavour, make it your own personal NaNo.

It’s wonderful to have the structure of Nano behind you, with the sense of that global community – but this is your Nano. You don’t need to write 50,000 words.

You should set your own goals. Make them challenging – yes. Make them aspirational enough to give you a sense of satisfaction when you rise to the challenge. Don’t make them impossible – don’t set yourself up for a fall and for that horribly familiar feeling that you can’t do this writing thing.

At midnight on November 30^th I want you to be sitting in a golden glow of Serene Self-Satisfaction or under the glitter-ball of Total Triumph – not weltering in a grey miasma of Despair.

Today’s the day to consider joining. Today’s the day to consider your writing project –

• Is it a project that’s been on your mind and now you feel ready to start it?

• Do you have several projects on the go? If so, pick one for NaNo.

• If you’re just setting out, try to block out the rough shape of it and decide how much of it you’re going to tackle in the coming month.

• If you’re midway, where in the arc of your story have you reached? My bet is, you’re in that difficult mid-section. If so, you might use NaNo to hammer your way through this tricky bit, gritting your teeth all the way if need be, knowing that you’ll have the pleasure of coasting to the denouement later on.

• Is this a project that is well-advanced but which has beached itself? Now’s the time to refloat it (drifting into seafaring metaphors again, sorry!) Use NaNo to finish the thing, for good or ill.

• You don’t even need to write new stuff if you don’t want to – you can use NaNo for concentrated editing of your manuscript.

Be honest with yourself: if NaNo is not for you, whether this year or ever, don’t do it! There’s no law saying you should. Be a rugged individualist, stand back and watch other people suffer in that peculiar NaNo way. Don’t guilt-trip about it. Writers have a strange talent for finding oh so many triggers for feeling guilty – don’t let non-participation be one of them.

The secret of NaNo, then, is to know whether to join in and how to make it work for you: I’ll talk some more about the latter in my next post.

In the meantime, pop over to the NaNoWriMo website, run by the delightfully-named Office of Letters and Light, at www.nanowrimo.org – you’ll find loads of inspirational advice and enthusiasm there. Sometimes it’s a bit cheerleader-y, but hey, in the gloom of November we need all the sunny positivity we can get …

Upcoming Fictionfire Focus Workshops - a reminder

WINTER BLOCK

VILLAINS WITH RELISH (November 10th - booking closes November 7th)
Everybody loves a baddie - but how do you describe a really good baddie? In this workshop we'll set about creating villains who are memorably nasty in all sorts of ways.

SHORT STORY WRITING (November 24th - booking closes November 21st)
In this workshop we'll explore the constraints and advantages of the genre and the writing skills you need to craft effective short fiction.

FESTIVITIES AND FROST (December 1st - booking closes November 28th)
As the festive season arrives, we'll explore how you can use Christmas and winter settings to create powerful scenes in your fiction which will resonate with your reader - whether the tone is 'Bah, humbug!' or 'God bless us, every one!'

There are discounts for booking more than one workshop. You can find out more and make your booking by going to the Focus Workshops page on my  Fictionfire website. I hope you can join us!

Fictionfire:
fire up your imagination
fuel your self-belief