Gimme Options

I don’t want to give you advice on setting goals for NaNo this year as much as I want to remind you that you have options.
•    You can buy into the word count goal because it works for you.
•    You can have a main goal and sub-goals, giving yourself a reward for each level reached. (Say, for each 10,000 words, or for each 10,000 words over and above your usual monthly average.)
•    Your goal could be to not have any page or word levels to hit, but to do something different – write an entire novel by the seat of your pants (if you’re a plotter), or see how different a novel would be if you spent time plotting it out a little or a lot (if you’re a pantster).
•    You could choose to experiment with any number of things (what you write, where you write, when you write, writing alone or with people, etc.), then write a “debriefing” statement to yourself in December telling yourself what new things you learned do and don’t work for you.

Last year, my first NaNo, I chose to a) buy into the 50,000-word goal, b) try writing a book by the seat of my pants with little plotting, and c) allow myself any kind of experimenting that popped into my head that month. Then I wrote about my results the first week in December.

Turns out, I made the word count goal by the skin of my teeth in the final hours. Hurray! But it’s because I indulged in one of my old childish games that adults aren’t supposed to play – one-up-manship. {grin} Every time I saw that Shonna or Stephanie or my friend Jack had written more words than me, I had to keep going so I could beat them by at least 100 words. They were all ahead most of the time, but my childishness paid off and I “completed” my novel!

The pantster bit doesn’t work for me. It took me months to make order out of the chaos of those 30 days. Not worth it for me since I need to write and sell or go back to accounting. Eek! So this year I’ll be doing some plotting, then some writing, then some plotting, then some writing – so I can use the energy and creativity of NaNo without writing blindly just to accomplish someone else’s predefined goal.

Giving myself a month to play, to allow myself to try anything and not regret it – that was GREAT. I found out I can’t write with others, and I can’t write in public places. I need to be home in my office. I found out I write well with instrumental music or Creative Mind music playing, but I can’t focus at all with music that has lyrics. I was surprised to find – and it may not be a scientific fact, but it seems like it – that I actually write more with Creative Mind or instrumental music playing.

A great piece of advice from last year (Sara Gruen, Nov 15, 2007) was to write the fun bits first. That was hands down the best piece of advice all month for me! When I started doing that, I noticed there was a lot less fluff and boring bits!

So this year my goals are to a) buy into the word count and childishly try to outdo all of my NaNo buddies, b) write and plot as I go, with some peppy background music, c) write the fun scenes first, and d) try to relax and experiment with anything that comes to mind. A childishly fun-loving mind seems to write better! At least for me! What about you?