Monthly Archives: October 2011

This may be a completely insane idea, but I am seriously considering posting each days’ work here throughout NaNo. It would be first draft quality, as I always make it a rule to not edit during NaNo as there isn’t enough time to do so. Basically, I would just be copying and pasting the scenes I had finished straight from Scrivener to here each day, in the raw.

I don’t like posting unedited work for public consumption, but there may be something good in doing so. It would help encourage the newbies, perhaps, if they can see just how imperfect a first draft usually is.  It would allow me to get early input on my project and the direction it’s going. It would help to hold me accountable, make sure I meet my goals for that day so I can post it here.

I usually fall off heavily on my blogging during NaNo, too, so this would make sure that the blog doesn’t sit abandoned during the whole month.

So what do ya’ll think?  Would you have any interest in seeing the earliest draft I produce, watching the story take shape each day?  Is it a silly idea? Am I barmy?

National Novel Writing Month is just about a month away, so it’s time to start the necessary prep work to get ready. I have participated in NaNoWriMo every year since 2006, and while I haven’t finished the month out with a completed novel in hand every time I participated, I have “won” more often than not, and I have learned a lot about writing in the process, particularly the whole concept of Actually Getting The Thing Done.

So some prep work is in order. While my writing style tends toward a “go with the flow” approach that works quite well for short stories, I have learned that longer, novel length works benefit from having at least somewhat of a skeleton in place before the writing begins.

Outlines, my friends. Though what I call an outline, and what some other writers call an outline, most likely differs greatly, I have learned that at least a barebones outline does help me get from point A to point B.  The trick, for me, is to not go into too much detail beyond a brief sketch of the basic plot arc.  Because the drive to write for me is to find out where the story goes, and knowing too much of the story before I start has a tendency to destroy my need to actually write it down.

Where another writer’s outlines might be filled with details upon details, mine has a tendency to stick to just the basics of my plot arc.  So there’s not a lot of detail, and yet this barebones “not-an-outline” is completely necessary if I want to stay on track. I need to keep that central plot in focus or I lose myself in the characters and lose the plot completely.  If I don’t have a barebones structure set up, I end up with just 50,000 words of Awesome Characters Doing Stuff With No Point.

Where I do go into a lot of detail in the prep stages is with my character and setting notes. Relationships, personalities, faces, voices, decorations in main locations – all of this is determined before I type the first sentence, and often with extensive images and notes to back it up. My fiction tends to be largely character driven, and usually with an ensemble cast rather than a single protagonist. I can spend hours creating the perfect villains for the piece, to the point that I should perhaps list “villain creation” as one of my hobbies, right under reading, writing, and gaming. (Perhaps my obsession with character sheets is a result of my gaming.)

So that’s what I’m busy with now.  I am determined that this year, by the end of NaNo, I will not only have a 50,000 word manuscript in hand, but will have a novel that I can see myself actually cleaning up for publication within the next year.  Perhaps in the next few weeks, as I work on my preparation, I will post some of my character sheets and planning notes here to show my planning process in greater detail.