Larry M. Coleman

NaNoWriMo Day 21

This whole month has been a series of posts that are about things that have worked for me. There is a huge pile of resources available at NaNoWriMo’s NaNo Prep page. The reason I didn’t lead with those is because, in my opinion, there’s too much stuff there. Useful things to be sure, but if you’re trying to get through the daunting task of not just writing your first novel but doing it in only a month, the amount of things that page has for you to consider is almost scary.

I know how intimidating it looks: I looked at that amount of information before I did my first one and, honestly, it didn’t help much beforehand. The only way you can really get through writing your first novel is to have written it. After you’ve done it, though, the massive amount of information on their prep site is incredibly useful come revision time. You’ll understand so much more of it than you would have if you’d gone through it before writing.

Ironically, the guide to how to get there is really only useful once you’ve got there. Sometimes maps are most useful for telling you where you’ve been. And, to be honest, you can learn everything you need to start in this 20-minute speech by Neil Gaiman. Everything else is just filling in the details:

There are years worth of information packed into only 20 minutes, but if you remember nothing from that brilliant address, remember this: If you’re wondering how you—yes, you—are going to write a novel in a month, just pretend you’re someone who can write a novel in a month and then write it.

And now some miscellaneous things I’ve found useful along the way; a few things I wish I’d known before I started.

• A useful technique for stopping is the “Hemingway half-sentence.” Ernest Hemingway used to end his writing sessions in the middle of a sentence so that he’d have a natural place to pick up from the next day. I don’t do that, but I do jot down one or a few very short phrases to jog my memory as to what I was getting at.

• If you’ve petered out and don’t know where to go, two words often fix that: “So what?” Look at where you’ve come to a halt and ask yourself that. If that doesn’t work, try, “But wait, there’s more!”

• If you’re having trouble starting at all, you don’t have writer’s block. Your trouble starting is probably because you’re trying to start at the beginning. Don’t. Start at the story.

We don’t need the backstory first. The backstory isn’t the story: that’s why they’re two different words. Start at the story. We don’t need to know what the characters did with their lives up until that point. You can fill that in later. Start with the interesting part and backfill the backstory.

• Is it taking you forever to write dialogue because you’re trying to decide on the right dialogue tags or what actions to have the characters do while they talk? The fix couldn’t be simpler: don’t use them in a rough draft. Your readers are smarter than you think. Over 90% of the time they’ll already be reading it the way you intended. You can figure out the other 10% come revision time.

Why do you write? To take measurements. A measurement of the world outside. But also to measure yourself, and to see at the end of it, when you are a writer you are bigger on the inside than you are on the outside.