The Official NaNoWrimo 2010 Challenge!

[Ashley (;]

I found a pep talk I liked. It'll help keep you going, hopefully. ^^ Heck, you might've already read it.

"Several of my friends are cakewalking through NaNoWriMo this year. One of them, who shall remain nameless, just hit 50,000 words, and is now considering writing a second book this month "just to keep things interesting."

I feel sorry for these people. The best part of NaNoWriMo is overcoming adversity and seizing noveling victory on the final lap. My friends brazenly seized their victories in Week Two, and are now consigned to a miserable November full of achievement, leisure, and obscenely impressive word counts.

Bah. Those of us who are grappling with sluggish stories and dwindling mojo? We're having the real NaNoWriMo party---the Struggler's Party! I've been hanging out at this low-energy fiesta for the past week, and I've been hearing some familiar laments around the punch bowl.

"I think I picked the wrong story."
"Work ate my word count."
"Nothing seems to happen in my book."
"My main character is getting on my nerves."

The most common refrain at the Struggler's Party, though, is that we're just feeling Blah. Our stories are Blah, our writing is Blah. We've spent the last two weeks mining our creative depths, and many of us have emerged with too few diamonds and way too many lumps of coal.

NaNoWriMo is supposed to be fun! An anything-goes adventure where stories take flight and our characters surprise and delight us. When does that NaNoWriMo kick in?

In all my years of NaNoWriMo, it has always kicked in right about now. I wanted to share two quick tips on harnessing the power of the second wind that's about to blow across our novels.

1) Incite change. If your story is losing momentum, juice it up by inflicting some major changes on your characters. Crash the spaceship. End the marriage. Buy the monkey. Change is scary because we have to figure out what comes next. But feeling afraid is ten times better than feeling bored, and your book will benefit from your risk-taking. Go big this week! You won't regret it.

2) Trust the process. If you're doubting yourself or your story, just keep moving forward. It will work itself out in the end. Every year, NaNoWriMo authors who press on to 50K are treated to the equivalent of NaNoWriMo's northern lights. This is the electric moment when the tangle of plots and people we dropped into the first half of our books end up forming unexpected connections with what we write in Weeks Three and Four. Themes develop. Arcs emerge. Things crackle, then hum, and, at the very end of the month, enough circuits connect that the whole story lights up with a charmingly bookish glow."

[Louise]

I wrote a bit more today, FINALLY.
Because I've reached my goal, I feel like rushing my story to get it completed...but I'm going to make sure that I don't. I have about half a story to do, and I will get it done! I refuse to do a half ass job with my writing, it's going to be spectacular.

[Kitkat.]

I'm less than 1,000 away from my even lower 5,000 goal. I think I'll hit it before Tuesday.

[alex]

Last day, guys

[Louise]

Raise your hand if you're going to continue your story after November. *wave*

[Emmy]

*also raises hand*

[Ashley (;]

I fell asleep and vaguely remember waking up, then somehow teleporting to my bed. xDD But I'm pretty sure I got to my 10k... I'll see when I type it all up. ^-^ Pretty good for never writing anything with a lot of words before, moving twice, and doing it in two weeks.

[Callie]

*also raises hand*

[Kitkat.]

*waves arms in air* I like my characters, so I might make a sequel next year,

[alex]

*raises hand*

And it's over now ^^ Time to unsticky

[Callie]

Some suggestions from Holly Black I might actually use:

“So, now you have a first draft! A finished first draft! Congratulations! It took me many years to get to get one of those–partially because I love rewriting so much that I kept stopping the drafting to do some illicit revising. You are now to what I think of as the fun part. I liken revising to cleaning the bathroom: at least I can't make it worse. While first drafting, I'm scribbling down an idea. The idea seems so great, but often what I write doesn't seem nearly as great as the idea was. What I love about revising is that now I (finally) get to take what's in front of me and make it better.

My process goes like this: I print out my draft and surround myself with lots of colored pens and sticky notes. Then I gather together some wise friends who have been blackmailed into reading my novel and let them tell me what worked and what didn't. I make them pie and coffee and soup. I note down everything they say. Then I write down all the stuff that I know is wrong with my book–some of which they have probably already mentioned. I trace through character motivations. I look at individual plotlines. I dream up new scenes. I look at existing scenes that feel thin. I make sure that I've remembered to described things–and I try to remember to engage more senses than just sight. Often in my first drafts my main character careens through the plot, looking at stuff but not really reacting to it. I go back through and make sure what the protagonist is feeling made it onto the page. I try to make things worse for him. I try to make her more active. And, of course, I go back through the whole thing sentences and paragraphs, line by line–making them a lot more clear and hopefully a little more lyrical. Then I take that marked-up manuscript and start translating the notes into actual changes and new scenes in the electronic draft, often as I sit on my couch in a nest of coffee cups, sticky notes attached to the cushions and a drift of pages surrounding me. Eventually someone comes (a critique partner, my editor, or possibly my husband) and wrestles the whole thing away from me. And that's how I go from a draft to a revised manuscript. Good luck!"