To be sure, there are mixed opinions about the utility of getting words-down-any-words-down and powering through to get something on the page. Personally I feel that getting words-down-any-words-down can be very helpful, as I find it much easier to go back and revise than to try and conjure something for the first time.
But how does one power through? I have never attempted the marathon/race to the moon/mountain climb that is NaNoWriMo, but I’m sure that at some point that brain starts yelping, “No! More! Words!”
How do you quell that feeling and power through to keep going?
Each scene has to make a promise that is fulfilled in another scene, which leads me write the next scene. When I get stuck in nanowrimo, it's because I wrote a scene that doesn't make a promise that needs to be fulfilled later. For example, if a character wants to buy a car, but the sales person tells them too high a price, then the character must do something: shop somewhere else, come up with a scheme to get money, etc. These are new scenes that I will need to write, which keep the words flowing.
While is hard to have perfect prose during nanowrimo, it is possible to make sure scenes fulfill the requirement of making promises.
By being competitive as hell and not wanting to admit publicly that I failed at something.
I find it very freeing to be able to free write without worrying about editing (though I appease the internal editor by correcting my spelling paragraph by paragraph). Mostly though, you just keep going. Maybe take a 5-minute break–walk around the room, get some water, stretch your muscles–then get right back to writing.
I think you power through by attempting the ultimate trick- tunnel vision. That's right, by pretending there isn't a layer of slime on the shower walls and the dishes are stacked in the tub. You just pretend it doesn't exist. You sustain yourselves from the dredges of the fridge and tell the baby to change her own diaper. Easy.
I think you power through by attempting the ultimate trick- tunnel vision. That's right, by pretending there isn't a layer of slime on the shower walls and the dishes are stacked in the tub. You just pretend it doesn't exist. You sustain yourselves from the dredges of the fridge and tell the baby to change her own diaper. Easy.
I've done 2 WriMos (won both). The trick for me is to front-load. I always hit a spot just after midway that it gets MUCH harder, so if I do 2000+ words a day the first 30K or so, then I have the leisure to slow a little. I also let myself write just a sentence to hold the place for any section that isn't coming. A novel isn't 50K ANYWAY, so why not fill in the holes later, rather than finishing with a book not near the end?
NanoWriMo can be a good challenge to those brain cells. You may start out with nothing, but once those juices start flowing, there's no telling where they might take you! I did it last year. Started with a basic idea that had been nibbling at me for several months, and it actually turned into a very viable novel. After many revisions and edits, I am now sending out queries on it. I'm sure that won't happen every year, but I thinkn Nano is a good exercise for writers in a position to do it. Just have to be willing to let everything else slide for that one month.
Wish I could do it this year but my son's getting married on the Nov. 12th. Too many other demands on my time. Good luck to all you bravehearts out there tho'. Have fun with this.
Well, when the severe RSI set in, I just went to the nearest old-peoples shop and bought some arthritis gloves, which immobilised everything other than my finger tips, and carried on 🙂
I join all kinds of word wars. Competition can help me get few extra words on the page because I don't want to a) lose and b) let the team down.
This year my wars are:
Vancouver BC v Vancouver WA
Vancouver BC v Japan
Internal to the region:
pantsers v plotters
and wordzillas v slayers (we have two team member who have committed to write over 500,000 words.
So I may have been too enthusiastic about competition this year 🙂
I'm a believer in slapping the first draft out. Once it on the page, or in the document you can make it perfect.
Not sure I will participate this year. I have query jitters. But I sometimes wish I had a problem coming up with words. My problem is that I put too many words down and come up with too many ideas. And then comes the problem of which idea to go with. What would my characters most likely do?
Hmmm….
Good luck to the participants.
I could never do it, but I have a lot of respect for those who do!
This is my first Nano. I write daily but tend to abandon project. My main goal is to kill my inner critic or at least gag her long enough to write 50k. I don’t have any writer friends so I’m hoping Nano will provide some support and a feeling of community. If anyone wants a writing buddy my Nano user name is LuMadrid. Good luck to everyone!
I don't outline much, don't take notes. I write scene by scene, with the pertinent question being, "does this scene move the story forward?".
The next scene is always in my head, sometimes two or three next scenes
compete and I must decide which one comes first. But Powering Through
just rides on the coat tails of the scene I'm writing.
This is my first year doing NaNo. I'm stuck with the book I'm working on (second in a series), so I decided to write my first Nanovel in a completely different genre to perk up my creativity.
For powering through when I hit a block, I plan to use the same technique that got me through my first novel. When I run out of steam with one character, I find a way to end that chapter, then start the next chapter from a different character's POV. New ideas start to flow and the fingers fly again.
I wasn't sure how I would until the copy of No Plot No Problem showed up. A MUST READ for any Nano types!
Three Words: Write or Die (https://writeordie.drwicked.com) It's a lovely little program you can use online for free or download for $10. You set the word count you want to do, and the time period you want to do it in, and then it makes you slave away by threatening you with ungodly noises if you stop or slow down. Because I am a bad typist (in terms of errors, not speed), this keeps me from worrying excessively about correcting the errors with little red wiggly lines until my thoughts are out. I also like using the Dana by Alphasmart because it has no bells or whistles or internet link.
When I hit a wall in the wordcount, I venture out of my room, find someone who hasn't heard too much about NaNoWriMo before, and explain it to them (along with the words I have and the words I still need that day). Normally their exclamations of horror and disbelief pat my ego enough that I want to go back to the laptop and pull even crazier wordcount stunts.
I power through by breaking out the crayons and watercolors. And I post another cartoon. A scholar from England recently called my cartoons "Thurberesque."
That also motivated me. I power through when I receive E-mails from people who laugh at the cartoons.
Laughter fuels me.
My true-to-life stories are often pretty funny, and are about my mom, dad, or sister, so thinking about sharing what I am writing with one of them often helps me write better and faster. The drawback to writing about real events with real people that will actually read it, however, is that I often edit as I go or worry over my edits.