Finding the Fun During NaNoWriMo

 Part of a special month-long event featuring writing tips and NaNoWriMo strategies from guest writers and fellow NaNo participants.

Finding the Fun During NaNoWriMo
by Kerry Vail

One of the biggest lessons I ever learned by doing NanoWriMo happened completely out of the blue—kind of the way all big lessons happen.

Three years ago, I got up on the morning of November 1 (curses that Nano starts the day after Halloween! I’m always exhausted!) before daylight even. I had my coffee, my cat, and my outline—all in front of me. I turned on my desk system and logged in.

I went and puttered around the Nano site, soaking up all the positive energy and revving myself up for big words. I had my story plotted out—how hard could it be?

I opened MSWord and started to type…a completely different story! What? How did that happen? The weird thing was, it wasn’t even a story I’d ever thought about. I didn’t know the characters, the setting, ANYTHING.

And you know what? I had a blast. Nano became total fun (instead of fun mitigated by stress and tension and word counts). Something about just letting go and writing shook things loose in my head, and interesting things came out.

Did I finish Nano? No. I got 35,000 words. But, I’ve never been prouder of a start of a first draft. And I had so much fun writing it.

My tip to you: Make sure you keep your mind on the fun factor of Nano. You may have your novel plotted down to the scene, but if you sit down and think “meh”, then maybe it’s time to throw in some fun. Take your character and send him on vacation. Send him to India, a fair, the moon… I know it won’t fit in your novel at that place, but I can almost guarantee you will feel “looser” creatively. You’ll probably also get to know your character a little better (who knew he liked cotton candy?) and you may find out he really wants to go to the moon. It isn’t a futile exercise, no matter how silly it might feel at first. And you still get the word count.

Happy Nano-ing!!

Kerry Adrienne

www.kerryadrienne.com
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Check out my recent release from Ellora’s Cave: Beautiful One
http://www.ellorascave.com/beautiful-one.html

Note: For more info on NaNoWriMo, visit http://nanowrimo.org.