Participating in Novel Writing Month

Of the many techniques available to help an author write their novel, focusing a dedicated time on cranking out the first draft is one of the best. NaNoWriMo, or the National Novel Writing Month organization, led this effort for authors for years. That is until a scandal among the leaders basically killed the organization. And though other organizations have tried to fill this space, none have truly established themselves.

So, when my online critique group—which is a bit of a misnomer as we have over 100 members and offer much more than just critiques—organized an internal Novel Writing Month, I was fully on board. With the idea of my next novel coalescing in my brain—forget that I’m still editing and polishing my first novel!—this was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.

Research

Just sitting down and writing a novel may work for some authors—an approach known as ‘pantsing’—it most certainly doesn’t work for me. Most likely due to my background in project management, I understand the value of planning and how work up front can save a lot of time and effort at the end.

To prepare for a month of writing, I spent the prior month planning and organizing. I developed an outline of my story, mapping out the main story beats like the inciting incident, midpoint, and ultimate showdown. As a fan of the Save the Cat approach to story outlining, I filled out my thirteen-point beat sheet that ensured a narrative flow.

Character sketches then followed where I considered the many aspects of my hero as well as prominent secondary characters. Three-dimensional characters to whom readers can relate are critical to a successful story, and I wanted to make their backgrounds, experiences, and traumas seem realistic.

As my story takes place in two time periods, 1962 and 1985, I had to research different eras of my main character’s friends and family, i.e. how relationships were in 1962 and how they would have changed over time to 1985. Additionally, since I was using specific historical settings, I had to research everything from vehicles to popular music to the prices of hamburgers in each time period to ensure a level of authenticity.

Even though much of what I researched would not be included in the actual novel, having a depth of understanding of the characters and time periods was critical to write a realistic story.

Prep

In addition to research, I did some personal organization to ensure I could take the most advantage of this focused month-long writing time. I first told my close friends and family what I was planning with the understanding that I may not be as available during the month of writing as they may be used to. Then, I blocked out time on my calendar to ensure I wouldn’t schedule anything else.

My writing group also created a word-count tracking leaderboard to which we could each post our daily progress. In addition to fostering a bit of friendly competition, it provided a visual map of progress made to our monthly goal of 50,000 words written (which may not be a full novel, but would certainly get an author past half-way.)

Writing

On the first day of the Novel Writing Month, I pulled up many of the research documents I had created on to one of my two computer monitors. A new, blank Word document occupied the other.

Nothing holds as much promise as writing the very first words on the page of a new novel. I had considered the opening scene many times in my head, tweaking it each time to (hopefully) make it more compelling. The first sentence is critical toward capturing readers. The first paragraph and first page are nearly as important as readers decide whether the story is something toward which they’ll commit their time. And as a speculative fiction author, conveying a speculative tone if not including specific speculative elements in the first pages is important.

To me, the opening scene conveyed those elements, and I enjoyed the first few hours digging into the beginning of my novel.

Subsequent days, however, were harder to find the flow and put words on the page. To help, I employed a technique called ‘sprinting’ where a timer is set for a period of time like 20 or 30 minutes, and the author just bears down and writes as much as they can for that time. At the end of the period, the timer is reset and the process repeated. A few sprints each day helped me often write five or six pages or about 1500 to 1800 words.

Challenges

Energy and focus were the biggest obstacles for me to overcome. Writing—and being creative in general—can be mentally exhausting, and doing that day after day leads to an increasing energy deficit. Maintaining a schedule helps—a schedule of rest and relaxation and diversion as much as a schedule for writing.

In many instances, this is where my preparation helped. If I could not summon my full creative juices, leveraging what I had already written in my outline and beat sheets provided enough of a springboard to make some progress.

Still, there were days that the words simply would not flow no matter what I tried. In those cases, I took the day off. Though it was difficult not to feel guilty about skipping a day, creative flow cannot be forced—at least not by me.

Overall

By the end of the month, I had around 30,000 words written, and though that was well below my opening goal of 50,000, it still marks hefty progress toward getting my first draft completed. The intensive writing also helped me identify some weaknesses in my story as well as other areas that could be further explored—areas I’ve already identified to address during future editing passes.

With my first draft well underway, I continue to make progress as I can, though it is slower as I prioritize writing this new novel among many other factors such as editing my first novel, writing short stories, maintaining my website, writing blog posts, volunteering for writing organizations, etc.

However, should the opportunity arise, I will not hesitate to participate in another Novel Writing Month (or two) to get my first draft fully complete.

I highly recommend the approach.