Chocolate Sunday: NaNoWriMo
What a way to begin blogging, right? Procrastination at it’s very finest.
In keeping with a theme, my chocolate of the week is Naked Truth’s ‘Get Lost’ block – goji berries and toasted coconut in dark chocolate. If you’re in Australia and can get your hands on it, do yourself a favour and get some! I’ve eaten a whole block to myself this week, their blocks aren’t as big as a standard Cadbury block or anything but I still count it as an achievement.
What a way to begin blogging, right? Procrastination at it’s very finest.
In keeping with a theme, my chocolate of the week is Naked Truth’s ‘Get Lost’ block – goji berries and toasted coconut in dark chocolate. If you’re in Australia and can get your hands on it, do yourself a favour and get some! I’ve eaten a whole block to myself this week, their blocks aren’t as big as a standard Cadbury block or anything but I still count it as an achievement.
Onto business though: National Novel Writing Month – a clever way of saying that thousands upon thousands of writers every year basically dedicate November to what, for most of us, is a crazy attempt at writing an entire novel in a month. The only real rule is that to win, over the 30 days you must write 50,000 words. Some writers manage to clock that 50k in the first few days – it’s the 5th of November as I’m writing this and I’ve seen at least a dozen posts from writers in the NaNoWriMo Facebook group who have already completed it. I’m sitting on 6545, well behind my target (hence the procrastination of writing a blog post) but still fairly positive that I can make it across the line this year.
I’ve done NaNoWriMo maybe half a dozen times over the years I’ve been writing – four of those I’ve succeeded in breaking that 50k cap. Those four times were a combination of fanfiction projects because I’ve always had a problem with carrying ideas to completion and my attention span cannot handle staying focused on one story for that long. For those of you familiar with the terms, NaNo uses the terms ‘planner’ and ‘pantser’ to describe the different approaches to writing. A consummate pantser for the most part, this year is the first one I’ve concentrated solely on original work and gone in with any kind of plan. My first day was a frantic rush to finish a short story that has been driving me crazy for a couple of months now, and since then I’ve written bits and pieces for both a novel that I’m hoping to self-publish in the first few months of 2017 and a collaborative novel with Meg Bawden that we’ve been planning for weeks now.
Of course, I’ve spent just as much time getting lost in research rabbit-holes and reading the MANY, many blog posts far more prolific authors have written about their own NaNo experiences, complete with golden rules and helpful tips, as I have writing so far this week. Despite the number of these that I’ve read, I still don’t have a failproof method or approach to making it through this month. I have lots of ideas, thanks to reading them all and some of my own experiences, but the funny thing about them is how poorly they hold up when I try to put them into practice!
My top three tips, the ones that always seem to at least HELP me stay productive, would have to be as follows:
1)
Go grocery shopping BEFORE you get too deep into
your project – buy lots of easy food that won’t take long to make and you know
will be satisfying OR do a big meal prep on the 31st of October and
stock your fridge and freezer. You won’t have enough patience to stay away from
the computer/your notebook more than 10-15 minutes to get food when you’re on a
roll and your body deserves better than living off snack food for the whole
month if you can manage it.
2)
Set aside a designated space and TIME-BLOCK for it.
If you’re going to do a word sprint for an hour, or you have 30 minutes left
and you’re 500 words short of your target, then MAKE sure you won’t be
interrupted for anything less than an emergency. For some of us, this is as
simple as putting our phones on silent or closing the door. For others, like
those who have kids or dependents, then you might have to be a bit more creative.
3)
Reach out. There are thousands of other writers
across all the social media networks we have access to and there will always be
someone in the same forum or thread or FB group to answer your question or word-sprint
with you or just reassure you that if you’re crazy for attempting this then so
are all of the rest of us doing it right alongside you. You’ll make some
wonderful friends.
In conclusion – happy NaNoing to all of you on this strange,
awesome, stressful, wonderful journey too!
(This totally counts towards my word count, right?)
-
Brooke
