Getting the Tires Ready

Most of you I am assuming have owned a car at one point in your life. Even if you are as clueless about the engine as I am you still must know that before you go on a long road trip you need the car ready to roll. That is what I am doing now.

I love NaNo for many reasons; the biggest being that it puts the focus on what should always be the focus of writing: writing. It gets you out of your head and working at you desk, computer, notebook, whatever you use to get your words out and up to 50,000. You don't get bogged down in "does this phrase sound right" or "maybe I should do more research" and my favorite "what if it isn't good enough". You don't have time to second guess yourself or your work. All you have time for is getting the words down and worrying about it later. That is what I think is part of the beauty of NaNo.

The second part is that it allows you to surround yourself with talented, committed writers that not only challenge you and motivate you but keep your head in the game. It's hard to flake out when you have seven or more emails reminding you to writing in your email everyday or when you feel like your novel is going no where and your ready to give up. Sometimes it helps to be able to log on and see that you are not the only one going through writer's block. This year we had someone who was 10K away from goal and felt that his/her story had died but they posted it on the forums and everyone came through with ideas that could help them get to 50K and they did. Is there anything better than that?

What I am not so sure I love about NaNo is that with all the pressure to shell out this novel in thirty days you tend to forget about other things in your life and when you sit back and read it sometimes you are like what the crap did I just write.

See in those time it would have been nice to check the oil, rotate the tires and basically just get the car ready for the road. In other words; research and outlining. Honestly, I am not really an outline kind of girl but I do like my research. I like to have notes and pictures and ideas to fall back on. For the NaNo that I just finished I wrote 25 pages of back story; 25PAGES!!! That is insane but from that I have a great idea for my next novel. Which lead me to what I am writing here.

Now that there are no time schedules to keep or word counts to master I can sit down and really think about what I want in my next story. I can plan where the characters will go even if they are going to take me on a completely different side trip. The point is that I will know where they should end up. You don't leave Washington state headed to Florida without a map but in NaNo that is almost what you are encouraged to do.

I'm not going to say that my next three novel ideas are going to be planned to death but they will be better planned than my NaNo if for no other reason that if I write 25 pages of back story you can bet it is getting in that novel somehow :).