Prepping Your Life for a Big Writing Event – A Guest Blog by Kimberly Napoli

I love to throw parties, small ones with just a few friends to big ones with a 100 plus people. I might spontaneously invite a few people over, but I would never call 100 people to see if they’re free on Friday. Both events take a level of planning and preparedness, but the levels required are very different. I see writing this way. For the day-to-day pantser who already has their writing worked into their life, it’s probably not too difficult to bring a chapter to a critique event. But for a big event like National Novel Writing Month you are going to need to get prepared and get your house in order.

It is time to have a good look at how you spend your time and how much time you are going to need to commit to meeting this rewarding and challenging writing goal.

Are you going all the way and planning to write the 50,000 words? What is your goal? You also need to get your story prepared so that all you need to focus on is the writing. So, how fast do you write? I am really slow. I think and pause a lot as I write. My pace is about 2- 3 pages an hour. Sad, but I want to be honest with myself. I could improve this by being less of a pantser and plotting out my scenes better, but for me writing is my spontaneous outlet so I try to keep it organic.

With about 250 words to a page I need to find 100 hours in the 30 day period for writing. With one day lost to the American Thanksgiving Holiday, that leaves 29 days. I like to have one non-writing day a week so now I am down to 25 days. That brings me to four hours a day of writing. Can it be done? Yes. Can it be done by me? No. I can do three hours with some help from my family. See how important this quick exercise was? By taking a little time now to be honest with myself and see the clear picture of what the task involves, I can look at my life and start making the necessary plans to reach this goal.

Where In Life Will You Find the Time?

You probably already have some time carved into your life for writing but now you need to find more. Spend a week before NaNoWriMo looking at your day, how you spend your time and the tasks you are responsible for. Hidden in there are the extra hours you need over the next month.

Sit down with your support group and talk to them about what your goal is and how long you will need their help. This information will show them how serious you are and that there is an expiration date on their sacrifice. They will be more willing to help you if they have a concrete idea of what is expected.

You have a tentative idea of how much time you need to put into this challenge so brainstorm with them on ways to make that time yours. What tasks of yours can they take over? Can someone make dinner/breakfast or help you prepare meals in advance to put in the freezer? Can someone be in charge of clean up? Will they be understanding if you don’t eat a few dinners/breakfasts with them so that you can focus on your writing goal? These small things can add up to extra hours of writing.

Can you make it a win-win? What extras are you going to do for them when the month is over? How can you help them or reward them for their sacrifice?

There are probably small amounts of hidden time that you can utilize to your writing advantage. Here are a few:

-     Always have a notebook and voice recorder on hand. You never know when the perfect plot twist or dialogue will come to you. Plus, you can work during surprise free moments. (I love 3 x 5 and 4 x 6 note cards perfect size to put in a zip bag with a pen and toss in your purse.)

-     Spend 10 minutes every morning identifying what you are going to focus your writing on for the day.

-     Show up 10 minutes early to appointments and pull out your tools to make notes on the day’s writing focus. Preparing now will free your mind for writing when you sit down to zip out your word count.

-     If you get an hour for lunch spend half of it writing. You don’t have to give every free chunk of time; you can break it up. I’ve had people tell me they don’t want to give up their lunch hour because they spend it with friends or a loved one. They should hold some time sacred for people. So I say write for 30 minutes, have someone get your lunch for you, and reward yourself with 30 minutes of quality people time.

Can you Buy More Time?

Can you work with your support group to see if you can budget to buy you more time? Ideas include getting a cleaning service, pre-ordering meals to put in the freezer, sending them out to dinner and bringing you food back so that you have a house with no distractions, fluff-and-fold laundry service. These tasks can be done by professionals, or neighborhood youths, or the youths in your own home.

What ideas have you come up with to fit your life around your writing goals? Share your ideas and concerns and let’s start a dialogue to help each other find our focus and reach our dream.

I you want to work on a system that helps you make writing a constant habit in your life. Check out my November online workshop at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassNov08.html.

Best to you and your dreams,

Kimberly Napoli