NaNoWriMo Planning, Day 2: Pants Not Welcome

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!)

Tagged as: NaNoWriMo