This week: NaNoWriMo's Coming! Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Do you prepare or go with the flow?
This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter is all about the National Novel Writing Month.
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline |
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It's the middle of October, which means that it's time to start thinking about NaNoWriMo (if you haven't already). For those who haven't heard of NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month , a writing project that's actually international at this point and takes places in November. Participation is free. In order to be a NaNo winner, you need to meet the goal of 50,000 words written by the end of the month.
I've participated a couple of times and found it to be an enjoyable challenge. 50,000 words seems like a lot and it is, really, but when you break it down over the space of 30 days, it's not so bad, nor extremely time-consuming. The challenge helps you to establish a routine - to sit down, to take that time for yourself and delve into your creativity. With no time to edit too much, nor time to hesitate too much, you're just focussing on your characters, and the adventure you're taking them on, and that's a good feeling once you get used to it. I'm one of those people who hesitates and doubts and it took a few days of telling myself I could perfect the story later, but it was fun to go with the flow, and the sense of accomplishment at the end was truly enjoyable.
For those of you who have heard of NaNo before - and may even be veterans - are you participating this year? If so, are you preparing anything or are you like me, opening a fresh page on the 1st of November, waiting to see what happens?
I have friends who like to be well-prepared before writing a novel. They write character sheets, plot outlines, chapter outlines... some even draw maps. There is a clear advantage to this stategy - you already know your characters and you have a reasonable idea of how they will respond to the obstacles you're setting them. You know what you're doing, and where you're heading. A possible downside is that by the time you have done all this preparation, the story no longer feels fresh. It's already been played out, at least to a certain extent, in your mind and a level of boredom can set in before you've even begun. Also, if you rely too much on sheets and outlines, you can end up feeling lost when your characters begin to wander off in a direction of their own choosing, as they're prone to doing, or when you hit other unforeseen circumstances.
The downsides of my own approach are clear. The times when I participated I didn't have a clue what I was going to do. There was a large risk of not coming up with anything or, if I did have an idea, my running out of steam with it halfway through or it generally turning into a disaster. The upside of my approach is that when you have less of an investment in the story, you're more relaxed and can simply have fun with the project. You have full flexibility. I remember that the last time I participated, I stared at the blank screen for a while, then had the mental image of a young woman waking up in a graveyard, in the pouring rain, and I went from there. Originally it headed in the direction of a spoof piece on the theme of "the Chosen One who ends up needing to save a different world/reality", and then it evolved into something deeper and darker as I got to know and understand my characters, and thought on the history behind the events. I thought up my own monsters and creatures. The tale took on twists and turns. November flew by.
As I mentioned above, those 50,000 words don't need to be perfect. They are not and cannot be expected to be perfect. When I read back my NaNo novels, though, I was pleasantly surprised that I'd done a pretty decent job. I admit that they're still sitting on a memory stick, incomplete and unedited, but they had value. They loosened me up. They gave me ideas that I've used in other pieces. And who knows, one day I might return to them. I'm not really a novelist, however. Short stories and poetry are more of my thing. But I'll never see those NaNo novels as a waste of time or energy.
If you're on the fence, then, about NaNo-ing this year, I'd encourage you to have a go. You deserve an hour or two per day to enjoy your inner creativity. You deserve to explore one of your ideas in some depth. Take whichever approach works for you - the prepared one, or the unprepared one, or a semi-prepared one. Have fun with it - there's no point stressing or subjecting yourself to unnecessary pressure.
I think I might sign up and give it another go. That is, if my kittens let me - they're 9 weeks old right now and when they're not sleeping they're a couple of bundles of boundless energy who appear to love dashing over my laptop keyboard. That's not helpful when writing a newsletter, let alone when writing a novel. We'll see, though... and if you are signing up, good luck!
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline
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Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team
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Action/Adventure: October 16, 2019 Issue [#9815]
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