72 hours, and counting…
What, you thought you’d maybe try to sleep for 24 of those hours? And perhaps, work for another 24? Possibly even spend time with your family? Wash some dishes? Silly writer! Sleep – and cleanliness – are for the sane. Around this time, most of us are furiously hashing out last-minute plot ideas – in fact, I have it on good authority that a great many WriMo’ers are still in the “I’ve got a title – now what?” phase. So if you’re still floundering for ideas, you know you’re not alone. And if you’re among that rare elite who actually has a plan (a what now?), then you’re not alone either – just in a much, much smaller group (I bet you arrange your CD’s alphabetically too.)
You may be surprised to know, that the only things you really need to have to write a novel in a month are:
(1) Something to write on.
(2) Something to write with.
(3) The ability to form basic sentences.
Although, technically #1 and #2 are optional. You could, with the help of a great many throat lozenges and cups of hot lemon tea with honey, get by with a digital recorder and lots of spare batteries. The only catch being, you’d have to find someone to transcribe your barely coherent mumblings, and send the transcription off to the NaNo-bots so your words can be counted at the end of the month. But – doable!
So you see, the only limit, as is so often the case, is within that bulbous cranium of yours. Some particularly crazy people have, in one month, written two 50k novels. Granted, I don’t think I’d be presuming too much to say, the prose was probably less than stellar, but that said – doesn’t 50k seem easy now?
There are, of course, a few extra things that can really help you stick with your new, shiny goal to the bitter end. The most important being, some kind of support network – a cheering squad, if you will. Hopefully you’ve found your regional group by now, and you’ve sat your family and friends down and broken the news to them. But if you’re still feeling lonely, remember there’s always the NaNoWriMo boards, just chock full of people who are more than happy to cheer you on, root for you in hard times, and pat you on the back on days when it’s going well. And if some of those words somehow manage to arrange themselves into surprisingly pleasing shapes, you can even post excerpts of your novel-in-progress in your author profile section.
To all the other writers who are, like me, still wide awake at midnight-thirty, billions of thoughts scurrying around their brains like hyper Skittles-fuelled ferrets, remember: This is only the beginning. Once the writing starts, that’s when the fun truly begins!
See you on November 1st!
Saturday Scribes 