Showing posts with label Outline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outline. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

January NaNo Wrap-up and Tips

As you may recall, I've been doing my own NaNo thing for the month of January. My goal was to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. 


As of last night, I'm at 49,181. Barring any ridiculous circumstances that would prevent me from writing only 400 words for the next two days, I think I can safely say I'm going to make my goal!

Woohoo!

Here are a few tips that might help anyone thinking of doing something similar:
  • 1613 words per day is really not that many words. On average, I'd say it took me one and a half to two hours. My preference was to spread the time out over the course of the day. The writing felt much less difficult/sloggy when I spread the time out over fifteen or twenty minute intervals. 
  • Stopping when I hit the word count, even if I felt like I could go much longer, was crucial for my forward progress. It was so much easier to start my words the next time, since it wasn't hard to pick up the momentum from the day before. And this helped me avoid burnout or feeling like I needed a break between writing days.
  • I'm a planner rather than a pantser, so having an outline before I started was vital. Even with my very detailed outline, there were still places I could have done better—on several days, I lost precious writing time researching or figuring out plot points I should have worked out earlier. 
  • I got my friends and family on board before I started. This way everyone understood if I said I had to bow out of something because my daily target hadn't been met yet.
  • The absolute best motivation for me was entering my word count into my WriteTrack counter every day and watching the graphs climb. There was one hectic day where I only managed to get to 75% of my word target for the day—and I was so upset that my pretty graph looked crappy that I worked really hard to get my numbers up again!
Word count graph

I'm really happy I'm on track to meet the goal I set for myself, but more importantly, writing has become a daily habit for the first time in my life. This is true to the point where I'm even contemplating maintaining my January schedule into February, at least until the first draft of this WIP is done.

If you want to make writing a daily habit too, try your own NaNo! It's easier than you think.
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

To Outline or Not To Outline


Blank book
When I got the idea for my first manuscript I was pretty psyched.  This was going to be my ticket to success!  I knew the start, I knew the ending, now I just had to write it.  So I started to write, and write, and write some more. I had about five chapters down when I attended the SCBWI Niagara  conference and received notes on my first chapter and synopsis.

 The notes all around were invaluable but it was the note on my synopsis that really hit home.  "This doesn't sound fresh".  My first thought was well of course not, you don't understand, there's so much that's not on the page, I only wrote the synopsis in a day, blah, blah, blah...
Girl frustrated at computer

 But lucky for me, one of the things I pride myself on is my ability to chuck my ego at the door (I'll even grind it to a pulp if asked nicely).  The real reason why it didn't sound fresh was because I didn't know where it was going, who the characters were and why they were doing what they were doing.  Because I didn't have a sense of the overall story, I couldn't answer basic questions like the ones asked here and here.  I couldn't effectively communicate what the story was in the synopsis.

So I decided that before I continued to write my manuscript, I was going to finalize my synopsis.  Fast forward four months and several edits and revisions later, that synopsis has turned into my outline and bible for my novel.  It's also resulted in a number of things including the scrapping of several chapters, the shrinking of the scope of the story and a newly defined antagonist just to name a few. 

 Was this exercise beneficial?  Will it help me to create a better manuscript? Will I be a millionaire with a six figure advance?  Yes. Yes. We'll wait and see.  Overall though, what it has allowed me to do is communicate my story better, write chapters that advance the plot and save time that may have been wasted developing ideas and moving in directions which weren't vital to the story. It's also helped me to get feedback on the story at a high level and fast.  There are a number of individuals who've graciously given me their time to provide feedback and comments.  Reading a ten page outline at this early stage is way easier than reading one hundred pages of a poorly drafted manuscript.  As this stage, I'm more interested in issues like voice and pacing than grammar and sentence structure. 

 Is outlining for everyone?  I envy those with the talent to put fingers to keyboards and blast out a manuscript without one.  But for me, I wouldn't have it any other way. 


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