Writer-In-Progress

If you had a chance to read yesterday’s post, How I’m Planning for NaNoWriMo, you’ll know I’m working out my master plan for attacking my first NaNoWriMo in ten short days. What you may not know, if you’ve not read much of the rest of my blog, is the dirty little writing secret that could potentially keep me from successfully slamming 50K or more words next month:

I’m a pantser.

For the uninitiated, this is a cute way to say I don’t plan my writing. My regular life is so scripted (I’m a teacher, mom, coach’s wife, oldest daughter…) that the one place I run with abandon through the halls of life is my writing. Sure, I have mileposts and loose outlines for some stuff, but when I write with a new creative idea, I’d rather chase it under a rock and behind a waterfall than follow a set path. I don’t mind wrong turns–I often get my best ideas there. It’s called drafting .

Why does this matter in NaNo? Because if I approach November with the wild abandon I’m used to when starting a new writing project–usually on a whim–I know myself and my writing well enough to know I’ll burn out within the first week. Probably about four days into it.

And I want to avoid that.

So I started planning my NaNo strategy early. Way early. I’ve been getting myself up around 4:15-4:30 every morning for about a month and a half now (that’s not just NaNo related, it’s writing related) to get into the routine. I know that after a day of teaching, the only thing my mushy brain is able to do is a)cook b)play FarmVille c)socialize and d)edit, if necessary. I’ve studied myself enough to know that writing doesn’t come easily for me after 5p.m., so I’m adjusting. (Incidentally, I completed the first part of a new manuscript–20K words–in the last 25 or so days working on this schedule, so it does work for me.)

I also know I have a love-hate relationship with my writing ideas, so this time, I’ve been letting the ideas brew for some time. It’s been over a year since I had the initial idea for this work, a series of food/life essays, so I’ve kept a notebook for jotting down those gems as they come to me. For NaNo, I’m using them for inspiration, posting some here and some there, keeping my notebook with me at all times and a chart or two on my wall so my short-attention span brain will remember the focus of my month every time I come up the stairs.

And part of my planning obsession has nothing to do with the writing itself. All this prep also serves to rev my engines on a daily basis for what I’m about to undertake. My usual writing MO is to throw myself completely into a new project whenever I feel like it. Not this time. The parameters of NaNo–November only–forces me to temper my enthusiasm as it builds. That’s tough for an impulsive writer. It’s made me do something a little different these last couple of days (I set aside the 20K word WIP to come back to after NaNo, so I’m not working on that, either. I don’t want that train of thought intersecting with my NaNo work). Instead of writing what I’m dying to write, the food/life story (of which there are close to 100 essay ideas now..!), I make myself come up with a random topic idea to write about (this is during normal times when I would write–in the morning, at lunch, etc.). I hate wasting writing ideas and hate shunning the muse (you never know when she’ll toss something usable out there) but I won’t let even one iota of the NaNo work see the light of day before its time, so this is the happy medium. Interestingly, it’s helping me lose my inhibition and perfection procrastination that usually follows a new writing idea.

What about you? What type of writer are you? Pantser, plotter? A little of each? Does it depend on the project or the stage of your writing? And how is this going to affect your ability to successfully complete 50K in NaNo next month? I’d love to know. And if you’re building your list of NaNo buddies, I’m BuckeyeBeth–feel free to add me. The more the merrier! (Or…misery loves company!)

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Initially, I’d planned to save any discussion of NaNoWriMo til next week, but I figured any post here is a good post….since I’ve been slacking.

Yeah, I’m doing the NaNo thing. No, really this time. Not that I’ve tried in the past–I haven’t. Evidently, somewhere along the line in 2006 I thought I would, because I created my account there but evidently didn’t visit after that. But each time November rolls around and I see all the hubbub over NaNo, I can’t deny a twinge of regret-tinged envy to all those who at least attempted to cram 50,000 words into an otherwise ridiculously busy month.

As a fiction writer, I just don’t feel I could have done NaNo successfully. I have a way, in real life, of stopping myself from getting involved in areas where I know I’ll fail from the start, and NaNo & Fiction was that trigger for me. But now that I’ve got several solid months of writing nonfiction (and a good start–20K words–on a memoir) under my belt, I feel like nonfiction is the playing field on which I was meant to face NaNo. ..and win. Writing lengthy fiction (over 10K words) was an effort in futility for me, but with nonfiction, I have yet (knock on wood) to fear the empty page. I just write.

NaNo has all the sparkle of an unwrapped present for me at the moment. Yesterday, after meeting my 20K goal in the WIP, I ceremoniously set it aside to now focus my creative and brainstorming efforts on getting myself ready for 50K in 30 days. My NaNo work is a theme I’ve been aching, itching, dying to explore–my life through food and essay–and I’ve been stoking the fire for months.

Earlier in the summer, I bought myself a special notebook only for my food essay topics and have spent time brainstorming. My next step was to start compiling these on spiral-bound index cards, much the same way I would work on plotting a work of fiction. Instead of listing plot events on the cards, I write the broad topic (Nancy’s Peanut Butter Popcorn) on the top and list every last minute detail I remember about the actual food or event. I list only in a single word or two–no sentences or lengthy recollections–I don’t want to write yet, just stoke the fire of creativity.

My next step, self-created, is to settle in with my index cards (now numbering almost 50…one for each 1K words…although I didn’t plan it like that!) over these next two weeks and transfer those card ideas to chart paper that will line the walls of my writing room all the way through November. My ideal goal is to list about ten ideas on one giant, lined yellow sheet. To start NaNo, I’ll stick up one sheet on the wall for a week and will write from those essay prompts each day (I take one essay prompt and run with it as far as it will go–no set word count limit). Then, the next Sunday, I’ll add one more sheet of ten ideas. I know I will not finish the initial ten ideas in one week, so this will give me options to work with. If Nancy’s popcorn idea doesn’t thrill me the first week, Richie’s Roast Chicken might…but I won’t forget Nancy because it’ll still be posted there.

And so on…by the end of the month, I will have all of my ideas out on the walls to work from, somewhat like I had plot events charted on my cards and arranged on my dining room table. With the walls papered with my inspirational ideas, there will be no way, no excuse NOT to write. I know the motivation will be refreshed each time I post a new chart on Sunday, my day for the renewing action of ritual to sustain me through 50K words.

I’m also trying to figure out how to work in some reading time each night. I know that for my writing, nothing refreshes my creativity than seeing how other people make their unique life experiences universal through memoir. I almost always get an original idea or two when I read, so that’s important for me as well. Still working on those details…

I know from my Twitter friends there are lots of you planning on NaNo and I can’t wait to get started on this journey with you. How are you all getting ready to meet the challenge? What advice do you have? I’d love to hear your thoughts to help me think all the way through this task…

If you’d like to add me at NaNo, I’m BuckeyeBeth. Be sure to add me! Hope to see you all there!

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I think my brain is changing.

Not in a bad way, mind you. I’ve always been forgetful regarding things I don’t feel are important to me, but I’m not talking mechanics and function here. I’m talking preference.

Literary preference.

For as long as I had a job of sorts (starting way back in jr. high with babysitting gigs on school nights), I’ve had money (of sorts) and I’ve always spent part of my dinero on books. Fiction books in particular, romance novels in specific. Nothing else interested me. Maybe a blurb here or there on a nonfiction topic pertinent to my writing, or some aspect of natural science or American history or archaeology that floated my boat, but by & large, I was a romance fiction reader.

Last weekend while cleaning my writing room of old coffee mugs and empty plates, I took note of my TBR pile, (ok,~one of~ my TBR piles, the biggest one) and noticed something I probably should have realized sooner but didn’t: there wasn’t a single romance fiction book in there.

It was 100% memoir. Funny memoir, food memoir, observational memoir, sports memoir. The only place I found fiction was on my wall shelf, and those are books by author friends, not books I read (clarification: books I have read in the past).

I started thinking, as I always do when faced with odd observations. Over the last year or two, I’ve slowly but surely come to the conclusion that long pieces of fiction–meaning long pieces of fiction about one character–are not what my writing style excels at. I can finish a hundred short essays or memoir pieces in the time it would take me to sustain myself through writing half a novel (and I have six unpublished sitting downstairs to prove it). My brain just works best with short jaunts, not long journeys when it comes to stringing words together. Maybe it’s a result of the past few years when I’ve defined part of my writing self as a freelancer, maybe it’s a reality that’s been there all along (after all, I do have six unpublished novels sitting in the basement) and I just didn’t take time to notice.

The question I can’t get out of my mind is this…which came first? The preference of memoir writing or the interest in memoir reading? From the looks of my TBR pile, I’ve been buying these things for a while. When did my fiction to memoir brain shift? I must not even have been aware of it. Did I start buying memoirs because I loved to read them or because I discovered how much fun they are to write?

Maybe I should write a memoir about my TBR memoirs…

And now I’m curious. Do people’s (aka other writers’) reading/writing tastes & preferences change over time? Or am I more abnormal than originally thought?

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