Blocking goals for NANOWRIMO
It’s 8 days into the NANOWRIMO project and I have 1,009 words written, 48,991 left to go. I thought I’d be clever and have internal rhymes within each narrative sentence, and then an equal number of sentences being narrative and dialogue. It started out fun, but it’s too much for me at this stage. Too cumbersome. I’ve stripped plot and linear purpose and I’m not worried about it being a novel. This has freed me up considerably.
If anyone needs a daily goal-chart for their wordcount or other, this fellow over at spacejock.com has made some .PDF’s ready to download. He has a couple tips for those attempting the project. Here’s a few that I like, paraphrased:
- Don’t concern yourself with plot. If it changes, keep writing and make a note of it if you need to. This reminds me of Anne Lamott’s comment to forget about plot in her book Bird by Bird. Worry about characters.
- Write scenes that interest you and don’t worry about their order. You can fix the order later. I’ll further add, forget about linear thought if it holds you up.
- 20-30 minutes is an approximate time to yield 500 words. Do it in 4 chunks throughout the day and you have yourself 2,000 words.
Again, I’m interested in NANOWRIMO because it encourages me to write. That’s about it. I don’t really want to write a novel, and I don’t have characters I’ve felt pressed to write about. More than anything, it’s a good prompt to make writing a habit. That’s reason enough for me.
So, my title Jim and Jane isn’t going away, but their characters are. Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna have a coffee now and see if I can’t get 500 words down in the next 1/2 hour.
