WoD

Coping With NaNo: Writing Sprints

At the beginning of November, when I’m enthusiastic and inspired, I write in long bouts of 45 minutes or an hour.

A few days before the end, when I’m way behind & madly scrambling to the finish line, I won’t let myself stop for hours on end.

In the dreaded Weeks Two & Three, however, a powerful combo of procrastination-inducing thoughts takes over:

  • The usual snippy remarks from my inner editor ‘You’re using THAT word? Really?’
  • The story isn’t exciting enough yet to carry over the slump ‘They’ve not warped yet? Really?’
  • I can still tell myself that there is a lot of time left and I’ll be just fine ‘I’m ONLY 10K behind…’

It tends to leave me much less eager to write and when I try to put my head down and write for a full hour, I just end up checking Twitter on my phone half the time. So instead of a long slog, I go for short sprints.

Writing sprints are my November lifeline and are the only reason I won three Nanos. If I focus, ignore the distractions and type like the wind, I can get 300 words down in ten minutes. I know some people will think that’s not a lot and some people will think they couldn’t top that, and that’s okay. We all have different paces, what I love about knowing mine is that I can organise my writing sessions around it.

If I can do 300 words in 10 minutes, I only need six ten minutes sprints to be over the daily word count goal. I could just write for an hour instead but I know for having tested the theory time and time again that it would be less productive for me.

For the people of the internet age who have ridiculously short attention spans, sprints are just perfect – it’s so much easier to set aside distractions (read ‘cat gifs’) for 10 minutes than it is to resist them for a full hour.

Approaching a mountain of words ten minutes at a time can also be a lot less daunting, especially when you’re quite a bit behind like I am.

Just set an alarm for 10, 15 or 20 minutes and write without pausing for anything. Switch off the wifi if you have to, or try writing full-screen (programs like Q10 or Write or Die let you do just that) and type until the clock ticks. You can alternate your short, concentrated bursts of pure noveling genius with getting a coffee, doing some plotting or interacting with the people you’ve been neglecting this November.

If you’re on Twitter, follow @NanoWordSprints, where MLs from around the world run regular sprints day and night, complete with mini pep-talks and optional writing prompts.

You can also hang out with fellow writers in the Nano London Chatroom: After you’ve registered here, you can log in to the chatroom here. Writing sprints, plot discussions and possible procrastination await.

Way-way-behind-Claire,
10681 words

Originally posted at www.nanolondon.org.

recycle

Recycling an old story

This November, I’ll be bending the Nanowrimo rules a teensy bit to recycle an old story.

I wrote the initial draft of Stars Shine Brighter for Nanowrimo in 2008, a mess of rushed ideas, mixed up English and French, entire epic scenes condensed to the words ‘[insert space battle here]‘ and truly horrendous writing.

I can say without false modesty that there isn’t ANY salvageable prose in that draft.

Some of the ideas and characters however, have stayed with me and developed over the past four years. I wrote a few extra scenes in that universe for a piece of Creative Writing coursework, kept about five different story notebooks going, restarted from the beginning several, even discussed some of the concepts and ideas with my Dad (who, it turns out, enjoys hard sci-fi!).

I started dissecting that first draft with Holly Lisle’s excellent and gruelling online editing course, How To Revise Your Novel. But around Lesson Eight, when it was time to decide what to keep and what to cut, to create a solid basis upon which to re-write, I realised that there was nothing in the text I felt like keeping.

So I put Stars Shine Brighter firmly on the back burner and let it stew until I felt ready to have another go at it. For a while, I wasn’t sure I would and I was surprisingly okay with that.

After FTL came out though, I couldn’t get the feel of proper, old time Sci-Fi out of my mind. I also found the game thought-provoking in some ways. Though quite comfortable and traditional is some ways (though not easy!), FTL also has weird stuff going on.

My boyfriend, who loves to immerse himself in a game’s narrative, pointed out that it was a bit weird  that your ship, mandated by the Federation, should be so small and crappy and that the enemy fleet, the Rebels, should be so numerous and powerful. Shouldn’t the rebels be a tiny force? And if so many decide to join the Rebellion, is it because the Federation are actually the baddies?

I realised how much more interesting of a story I’d have if my characters, instead of being ragtag space pirates on the run from an army trying to arrest them, were actually part of an army that turned out to be ‘the baddies’. A lot of the themes and ideas I want to play around with fit a lot better with this scenario and I’m incredibly excited to start exploring it.

Onto plotting and outlining then, and bring on November!

NanoParticipant

NaNoWriMo is nigh!

October to me is the time of wearing several layers of sweaters, celebrating my Dad’s birthday and getting ready for NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month is a seat-of-the-pants literary challenge taking place every November. Participants aim to write a brand new 50,000 words story in 30 days.

It’s now an international event, with many local chapters, including here in London!

I was introduced to Nano just after I moved to the UK and joined all four of the lovely people I’d met by then were doing it too. As it turned out, peer pressure is a corner stone of Nano (in a good way, I promise). Since then, I’ve been month-noveling furiously every November.

Keeping up the pace all month is difficult (in fact I always fall behind) and can be frustrating, but there are also exhilarating moments when your story behaves itself, everything is coming together nicely and you have enough points on your Costa card to get your sixth coffee of the day for free. Plus they have all the yummy Christmas drinks already in November. And on the less-inspiring days, there’s nothing better to spur you on than the sound of everyone else in the room typing like the wind. Guilt monkeys are also a corner stone of Nanowrimo.

Nanoing

Now of course neither you nor I will produce a masterpiece worth millions this November, but I know that I’ll be writing. I’ll be writing a lot more than I usually do. I’ll be taking risks, exploring silly ideas, taking dares and coming up with the kind of insane things one can only dream up when on a coffee drip. There will be some dreadful crashes, but I can guarantee there will also be some good stuff.

I know this because four years ago the most writing I had ever done were the first pages of one fantasy epic (complete with red-headed elves with apostrophes in every other character’s name) and about three Harry Potter fanfictions. I’ve now written four novels. They’re all very short, mostly unfinished and not that good, but each of them is a bit better than the last and crucially, the writing that I do outside of November is also massively improved.

So whether you’re new to writing or an old hand I think you should give Nanowrimo a shot. The worse thing that can happen is you ending up with a story you won’t reuse, but you’ll still be 50,000 words of practice better off than before.