Introductory note: The NaNoWriMo race is on and Karen Wiesner is back to help us reach the finish line of a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month. She’ll be with us every Tuesday in November to offer advice based on her books First Draft in 30 Days and From First Draft to Finished Novel.
A guest blog from Karen Wiesner:
Writing goals worksheets can help you stay focused and see an outlined project through to completion. This worksheet should always filled in after you’ve completed your outline, with scenes/chapters divided, and is uniquely designed to help you establish exactly how much time you need to complete the manuscript draft. Since we’re talking about NaNoWriMo this month, let’s come up with an actual schedule for the month of November. The NaNoWriMo goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. So, let’s come up with practical goals throughout the month.
First, go through your outline and count up the number of scenes. A 50,000-word novel may have approximately 30 chapters with approximately 2 scenes each. If you want to work weekends during November, simply write 2 scenes per day next to each day of the month. If you want to write only on weekdays, you’d have 5 days a week, 4 weeks in the month, or 20 days to write, which means you’d have to write 3 scenes per day. Doable, but certainly a challenge.
Next, using a blank sheet of paper or start with a blank page in your word processing program, make a list of the number of scenes within the book, putting one scene on each line. Obviously, these scenes will come from your outline.
Something like this:
November 1:
Chapter 1, scene 1
Chapter 1, scene 2
November 2:
Chapter 2, scene 1
Chapter 2, scene 2
I, personally, feel that writing two scenes a day is ideal because you don’t burn out and you’re brainstorming (yes, you need to brainstorm constantly even when you’re using an outline!) on only two scenes a day. Since each scene which will each have its own mood, characters, setting, objective, etc, it’s less confusing to focus on one or two at a time. Things roll along at a steady clip this way. You rarely feel you’re doing too much or too little, unless your scenes are consistently long or short. Remember: check these off as you complete them. There’s nothing more motivating than steady accomplishment earned with hard work.
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4 users responded in this post
Karen, thanks so much for your structured perspective. Being much more spontaneous in my writing, I love seeing “the other side of the picture”! And, even though I’m not writing from a planned outline, I realized as I was reading your post, that I AM following a loose structure. I do write scenes, about 2 a day. They aren’t always sequential, but they always show me a new snippet about the characters, their motivations and goals, etc. And, yes, trying to write 3 or 4 scenes tends to drain me. Thanks so much for you perspective!
Thanks. I set up my outline on Oct 2 and now I’m over 10,000 words on my novel. Things are going pretty well and I can’t wait to see my finished product
Great blog, Karen. I love the way you make it sound so logical and ordered and relatively easy to do! Even though I am behind in my pre-writing planning because of a big project, I know I’ll still be able to make the 50,000-word goal by simply breaking down the numbers as you have.
Ladygrey, congratulations on your amazing work! You must be in heaven right now!
Onward, writers!
I’m really proud of all of you. You’re finding what works for YOU, and that’s the whole point, right?
I set a goal for myself to write one more novel this year. I’ve been writing two scenes per day, and this story just has me eager to write every day and I’m writing quality stuff (all based on an outline I wrote months ago, of course). When I try to write much more that two scenes each day, I have a tendency to do a mad-dash that needs more time to fix later. And I’m usually so eager to quit writing for the day, my only goal is to get it done. I think there’s a huge difference in making doable, consistent, logical goals–a difference that means you can love a project (not dread it), be on-fire eager to work on it every day (instead of hemming and hawing), and getting the scenes down on the page in a way that makes for much less work later in revisions because what you’re doing is quality (and not just slammed down for the sake of getting it the heck out of your sight for the day). And, by doing just two scenes per day, you can still finish a novel in a month or so. Imagine if you’re doing your best work each day using this method. You can write a lot more quality books per year and feel good about what you’re doing with each one. Can’t do much better than that. Keep going, ladies! : )
Karen Wiesner
http://www.karenwiesner.com; Karen’s Quill, KarensQuill-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, subscribe for a chance to win Karen’s books every month!
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