Happy NaNo’s Eve!

One more day until NaNoWriMo, folks! Other than purchasing your newest version of Scrivener, what else are you doing to prepare for the marathon that will ensue? Are you gutting your work space to make room for new writing supplies? Have you put together the playlist for the long hours you will end up sitting at your desk? Do you have a month’s supply of your favorite beverage? How about them Cadbury’s eggs left over from Easter this year?

I personally don’t have any Cadbury’s eggs left over from Easter (I have no self control in that area), but I, too am working through my own initiation sequences.

For starters, I’m stocking up on paper. This is going to sound like writing suicide, but I’m going to draft in notebooks this year. I’ve always found it easier for me to generate crappy writing when I’m holding the good ol’ trusty pen. It’s almost like that one friend who doesn’t judge you for your mistakes.

I’m also psyching myself into it. In The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, she mentions a tool for motivation called affirmations. Affirmations are positive statements about oneself like “I am an amazing writer”, or “I can write a novel in a month”. Find that affirmation that works for you. I’ve been telling myself, “It will only take an hour to write 2,000 words a night” and “You can do this” for the past three weeks now, and I’m starting to believe it.

I’m currently writing up a synopsis of where I want to visit over the course of the month. For me, writing an outline gives me a good idea what sites I would like to visit and what scenes I feel would be appropriate. Usually, I write by the seat of my pants, but I tend to get stuck when I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I can type/write a little faster this way. Note benne: Outlines are not set in stone. They are meant to be slashed apart and loosely followed. As Captain Barbossa says: “[They are] more of what you would call “guidelines” than actual rules.”

To go along with the outline, I’ve also begun sculpting my characters. I realize this sounds a little weird, but for one, it is very therapeutic to massage clay, and by creating my characters I am being productive. Plus, it helps assist in visualization. Plus, plus, if you use the polymer baking clay–KABAM. Homemade action figures to act out scenes with. I’ve found that this exercise gets me all excited to write about the characters and brings them to life, in a sense.

For the past month, I’ve been putting together a playlist of songs that I consider to be the soundtrack to the story. It’s actually been quite fun. I ended up reopening my Pandora account and started a station including the genre of music I needed. I gave the generator a couple artists that I knew fit the tone and as the station gave me new songs to listen to I liked, disliked and added new artists to the station as I discovered them. The result? A working soundtrack. I’m at the point where I’ve begun purchasing songs on iTunes and adding the clear winners to a Youtube playlist for when WiFi is available in my writing environment.

The last thing I’m doing is creating a game plan for writing. My goal is to write 2,000 words per day, and having two jobs and full time school takes up a lot of my time. I mapped out my schedule in Google Calendars so I can visualize exactly how many hours out of 24 I can dedicate to drafting.

Well, that about sums it up for me. It’s time for me to hit that outline again and see if I can get it finished!

Live long and write happy!

ACE