some tips for staying on track with NaNoWriMo or whatever else you are writing

Time to take another look at your NaNo project

Whether you are participating in NaNoWriMo or not, there will be times when your current project loses its momentum and you need a new strategy to help you get your ideas moving and your words on the page. Below are some links to articles that will help you stay on track and achieve your goals.

For non-NaNo writers, my favourite strategy is to have more than one project on the go. When one gets stale or feels blocked, I switch to the other. While I’m working on the second project, the back of my brain will continue to worry away at the first one and the reason for the block is often revealed and solved.

When working on NaNo, you may find that you need to step back and revamp your outline. Once you got writing, your characters and plot may evolve beyond the planned events and backstory you started with. Sticking to you original concept can become hard and unsatisfying work. Consider taking an evening away from wordcount in order to take a good hard look at that outline and see where it should and could be going now that you are well into the story.

NaNo or not, make sure to drop by the NaNoWriMo site for encouraging and helpful writing tips and pep talks any time of the year. The resources for young writers and teens are perfect for helping writers of any age.

Also, here are a few articles I found that I think will help as you approach the challenging NaNo mid-point.

Okay, Hillary Retig’s article is nearly 10 years old, but check it out for “five strategies for making it past the dreaded ‘Week Two Doldrums’.” How to Get Past the NaNoWriMo Danger Point and Finish Your Novel is worth a read if you find your wordcount or will power diminishing.

Victoria Fry‘s article, How to Have a Proper NaNoWriMo Mentality, offers four great tips for keeping your brain from getting in the way of your creativity. “At the end of the day, what these mentality shifts come down to are this: NaNoWriMo is not just a numbers game.  NaNoWriMo is whatever you craft it to be and, with a few clever tweaks, it might just turn out to be one of your favourite, most creatively inspired times of year.”

Check out Ingrid Sundberg’s article, NANOWRIMO: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU HIT THE WALL, where she offers her “secrets to keeping the NaNoWriMo word count fires a-burning. One of my favourites: “Write the candy bar scenes first!”

Wishing you a writerly November!


CASL compliance: This message was sent to you by Heather Wright on behalf of Wrightingwords.com. If you do not wish to receive electronic messages from me or Wrightingwords, please reply by email and write “Unsubscribe” in the subject line. Unsubscribing will remove you from inclusion on any emails sent to you by me in the future, with the caveat that if you choose to opt out, then you will also lose all email correspondence for all Wrightingwords related news and activities.

10 Days and Still Writing

IMG-20130709-00210I hope you are having a writerly November whether you have signed up for NaNoWriMo or not.

I set my own NaNo challenge goal and joined a group of like-minded writers in order to stay motivated and get the writing done. What a great idea that has turned out to be. I’ve been crazy busy with a lot of other things, but reading the daily writing posts from the other 36 writers has kept me inspired and writing.

I’ve learned a couple of things about the way I write, too. First, I need an outline. My work for the first week was based on notes for stories that I had scribbled in my journal over the past six or seven months ( a lot of unfinished business), and getting those stories written was a breeze. Then, I opted to work on something new that was really only a germ of an idea, even though I was excited about it. What a difference in output–and how I felt about the words I put on the page. While my fingers clicked the keys, there was a part of my brain that kept saying, “Well, this writing doesn’t matter. You’re going to throw these words out once you get the story organized. Just get to your daily quota.”

Shudder. Ugly writing mantra. Go away!

The other thing I learned (again, I might add) is that my writing needs to be purposeful. I started NaNo a few years ago and happily clicked myself 20,000+ words into a novel that I knew all along would never really go anywhere. I thought I would enjoy writing just for fun. Wrong. I stopped writing it and wrote Writing Fiction: A Hands-On Guide for Teens instead. It was my dream book. The one I really wanted to get out there. It had my heart. Purposeful writing. Yesterday, I put the non-outlined book away and went back to the sequel I’m writing to The Dragon’s Pearl. I reread the entire book, edited, and then wrote a section that I had only roughed in (made my quota) and moved the entire project a big step closer to publication. This book has my heart, and I guess I just don’t like unfinished business. I’d tried to put it aside to work on something new, and I couldn’t do it and actually produce anything worth reading.

I needed to learn that, as long as I’m writing every day, I’m fulfilling an important goal of my NaNo–and, I hope, developing a writing habit that will stick. I’ve also realized that this month, I’m probably going to have to stop thinking about word count for a couple of days and do some serious outlining before the writing can get in gear again. That’s okay, too. The NaNo experts always suggest spending time outlining before starting the event. For me, a definite non-pantser, that is good advice. I’m just going to do it in the middle that’s all.  If I don’t reach my word count goal of 22,500 words, I won’t be heart-broken. If I have a bunch of good words and a plan that I can keep following after November that will result in a finished novel, then I’m a winner. Where am I now? I’ve written 6656 words–6656 mostly purposeful words. Like Martha Stewart says, “That’s a good thing.”

Hope you have a great week ahead and that you meet your writing goals big or small.

Writing Prompts for November, 2013

Storm front rolling in.
Storm front rolling in.

I hope those of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo this month get off to a great start. I signed up, just to keep track of my words and see my goals getting closer to completion. There’s no way that I’m going to write anywhere near 50,000 words, but I like the discipline of the event. I know a few others who have signed up, and we will be cheerleaders for each other for the next 30 days.

For those of you who like to take a different approach to NaNo word counts, YA author, Nicole Humphrey Cook, describes a reverse NaNo system that leaves you only having to write 1 word on the last day. Check the system she uses here.

I hope you enjoy writing whatever you write this month, and here are some writing prompts to get those creative engines running.

1)  Try one of these opening sentences to start a story or novel:

  • I was beginning to wonder if driving a car was something I should be doing with a cranky Dalmatian in the back seat and a migraine pounding behind my eyes.
  • Some tunes bring back the wrong kind of memories.
  • I’d thought the carpet was clean until my face made close and painful contact.
  • At times like this, I knew better than to ask, “Why me?”
  • Was I the only one who had noticed that there’d been no squeal of brakes before the car hit the gate post?

2)  Here are some titles that might suggest a story:  Blue Yesterday, The Ring Keeper, Last Wishes, Diary of a Dropout, The Ruby Secret, The Gold Claw

3)  Can you picture the scene when you hear these lines of dialogue?

  • Did you hear about Henry?
  • No. What’s new?
  • He’s run away.
  • Please stop doing that.
  • Why?
  • It reminds me of someone.
  • Who?
  • Your brother.
  • I have to leave.
  • But, I need your help.
  • It’s a bit late to ask.

4)  See if these random words suggest a story or poem:

  • knife, paper, ice, coat, silver, lake
  • clasp, frame, red, strike, notes, tin

5)  What masks do your characters wear to hide their feelings in certain situations? Whom do they trust to see behind their masks?

6)  What costumes did your characters want to wear on Hallowe’en when they were children? Did they want to be superheroes or bunnies or witches or pirates or ….? What was your favourite Hallowe’en costume? Why was it your favourite?

Writing and NaNoWriMo

Saugeen Shores-20131013-00400Well, winter’s been doing its best to threaten us this week–icy car windows, the scramble to find mittens and scarves, fat flakes of snow flying horizontally past windows, but none of the snow has stayed on the ground long enough to be considered ‘real’ snow. Personally, I’d like winter to wait just a little longer. Fall has been extraordinarily beautiful here. We must have had just the right kind of summer weather we needed to create the oranges, golds, and yellows that still brighten the trees.

Today is a sit-by-the-fire-and-watch-the-sleet kind of day. And a writing day, too. Naturally, there are lots of other items on the to-do list, but writing is going to be top of the agenda for the next hour or two. Nice.

Are you planning to try National Novel Writing Month  (NaNoWriMo) this November? I’m working with some other writers on an amended version of the NaNo challenge to get a couple of my current projects past the stalled stage. We all set our own goals, or use the NaNo daily, 1667-word-count that produces a 50,000-word novel by November 30th.  Some of the writers in my group will be signed up for NaNo, and others, like me, will have their own daily word count goals. Either way, we will be checking in every day to report on our progress. If you’re signed up for NaNo, I’d love to hear what you’re planning to work on, and I also wish you every success.

I’m going to shut things down for a while, get out the journal, and do some writing. Since it’s November 1st next week, I’ll be brainstorming some new first-of-the-month writing prompts, too.

Hope you find some creative time today!

Word Count and Daily Goals

Lake Huron shore
Lake Huron shore

I read a great post by Elizabeth S. Craig yesterday about word count in which she says, “I set myself a daily goal, but for others a weekly goal might work better.  If you have a chaotic schedule, setting a weekly goal can give you a chance to make your goal by either spreading your goal out each day or having a marathon writing session all at once to catch up.”

Okay, my goal has simply been to write every day and make some progress on one of my writing projects. It seriously has never occurred to me to set a number for pages or words to be completed in a day or a week. The only time I’ve ever done this is when I did NaNoWriMo. My focus has mostly been on simply finding the time to write. I think I am definitely missing something here. I love seeing the word count go up, but I’ve never worried about whether it went up by 500 or 1500 words, as long as the number increased. I’ve decided that I want to get the draft of the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl done before the middle of August, but when I think about it, I could get it done sooner if I changed my approach, and then have time to write other things, too.

I work to deadline and word count all the time in my freelancing life, but even then I don’t set myself a daily number of words to produce. I just get the work done.

This is going to take some thinking about. How do you work on large projects? Do you set daily word or page counts? I feel like I’ve been on another planet or something when it comes to this. Hmmm. Time for me to get in gear.

There are two links in Elizabeth’s blog post that I’m going to add below. They really are compelling reading, though Elizabeth added a justified caution about the strong language in Chuck Wendig’s post.

Have a great weekend!

India Drummond’s “How I Easily Doubled My Daily Word Count”

Classroom Visit and NaNo Thoughts

I had a great morning yesterday, visiting a class of Writer’s Craft students at a local high school. I talked with them for an hour about publishing: different ways to get your work published, some warnings, some resources and some facts about the money side of the business. The time flew and the class was attentive and asked good questions. I hadn’t visited the school before, but I was made very welcome. I was a bit early and while I waited for the teacher to meet me, without exception every teacher that passed me smiled and said good morning. That doesn’t happen everywhere.

In the conanowrimo_participant_06_100x100urse of talking about writing resources with the teacher after the class, I mentioned National Novel Writing Month. She teaches a course in the first semester that would overlap NaNoWriMo’s dates, and I thought it might be fun for her students to explore.  NaNoWriMo has a fantastic program for young writers with lots of excellent resources for the writers and for teachers who might want to get their classes involved.

So this got me to thinking about this coming November. Will I join NaNo and try to write a novel in 30 days? The first time I attempted NaNo, I stopped around 20,000 words. I was happily writing a suspense/romance and enjoying just letting the story go where it may, when I realized that if I could write 20,000+ words in a couple of weeks, why wasn’t I writing the book I had wanted to write for several years? Duh. So, I stopped the novel and finished Writing Fiction: A Hands-On Guide for Teens, instead. My 13-year-old son finished his NaNo novel with 50,000+ words and a lot of pride. The second time, just as we started NaNo, my much-loved mother-in-law began a swift and deadly decline due to pancreatic cancer.

There’s a unique quality about NaNo that seems to crack through something in me that just gets words on the page. Maybe it’s because the objective is so absurd that the writing can’t be overthought or second-guessed, and I don’t put up my usual procrastination roadblocks because I need to post a number every night.  Yup. Seeing that graph head upwards really motivates me.

Have you tried NaNoWriMo? What do you think about the experience? Are you thinking of signing up this year? If you’re a teacher, have you ever used the resources or used NaNoWriMo with your class?

%d bloggers like this: