Don’t Get Discouraged!

To start, I apologize for posting this blog late. I have excuses (my elderly dad and his issues, moved in with me this week, as well as a few other one-time events, all conspiring to keep me away from the computer), but I’m a professional. That means I make my deadlines. So, no excuses, just an apology.

The words aren’t coming! How am I ever going to write 50000 words!”

You might be screaming those words (mentally or audibly) right about now. I know I am. But I’m determined to not give up. I had a similar experience last year, but made it to the finish time with 50000 words. You can too.

How? How do you keep from getting discouraged? Here are a few of my thoughts and suggestions. I hope at least one of them gives you the push you need to, “Go, go, go!”

Get plenty of rest and food. A little extra caffeine, a few hours less of sleep, slightly less time spent at sit-down meals can carve out some extra minutes for writing, but don’t go overboard! Don’t give up the energy rest and food provide, thinking you can push through the fog of sleeplessnenss or sustain yourself on coffee and bagels for a month. It can’t be done! You need real food and real sleep, not counterfeits.

Usually, though, it’s not the physical that keeps me from finishing a NaNo novel. There just comes a time when the ideas start to dry up. There are lists on the NaNo forums of things you can do to your characters and ways to get the plot moving, but I’m not sure going there for help is a good idea. Maybe after November, for ideas for next NaNo, but not now. If you are so far behind that you are getting discouraged, surfing the forums will probably just add to the discouragement. Instead, find ideas from other sources.

I keep a small container of wooden and plastic figures near my desk. When I get stuck, I pull out 2 or 3 without looking. Then I write something that incorporates those. An elephant, a car and a spotted alien looking bug can sure make for an interesting scene. Sometimes one or the other of the items don’t make it into the scene or the scene goes off in a totally different direction from the objects I selected. That doesn’t matter. The goal of the exercise is to stimulate an idea. Any idea.

During the day, when not writing, add to a list of random events (car wreck, heart surgery, getting the mail, falling off a horse). When you are stuck and don’t know what to write, pick something from the list. A variation is to pick newspaper headlines and write on of them into your story. There are numerous books of idea-starters. A few I have used in the past are, “Story Starters,” by Lou Willett Stanek, “Writing Without the Muse,” by Beth Baruch Joselow and “Everyday Creative Writing,” by Michael C. Smith and Suzanne Greenberg.

You could even write about your discouragement, giving it to one of the characters. Before you know it, you might have a new thread, and 5,000 more words, for you magnum opus. Or Have a character do whatever it is that you want to do next month, when this project is finished.

Attend a write-in or get together with another writer. Depending on your personality, this may or may not motivate you. Even if you are one of those people who can’t write with others around, and you end up only talk about writing the entire time, it could get you excited about you story again. If you feel brave, you could trade stories and spend 10 or 20 minutes writing on your friend’s while s/he writes on yours. That is sure to change something. It might be just what you need to reignite your own passion for the story.

I found an interesting site, Dr. Wicked.com’s writing lab http://lab.drwicked.com . He has a couple of useful widgets and applications that might help you toward your goal. (Much more useful than wandering the NaNoWriMo forums for an hour).

There are a lot of different things you can do, but they all have a common thread. You must write! There is just no getting around it. Whether you are in NaNoWriMo doldrums, having a routine day, or even, like me, in the midst of major life changes, it’s all the same. If you don’t write the story, the story won’t get told.

So . . . “Get to writing!”