by Theresa Garee | Nov 3, 2021 | Blog, Write Now Columbus Essay Archives
National Novel Writing Month – You’ve Begun! How Do You Keep Going?
Fourteen-time NaNoWriMo winner Nita Sweeney offers motivation for your National Novel Writing Month adventure.
Congratulations! You’ve taken the huge step of signing up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and you’re in the throes of writing your novel. But what happens if (when?) the exuberant exhilaration wears off? How do you keep going?
Don’t panic! Whether it’s your first Nano or your fifteenth, time-tested methods will help you keep going once that initial excitement wanes.
For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is an annual challenge in which writers all over the world attempt to write 50,000 words of fiction (1,667 words a day) during the 30 days of November. Other writers (like me) aka “rebels,” write in other genres, revise, or add to existing works.
Regardless of which challenge you have chosen, the following tips can help you keep up your momentum and cross that finish line strong.
Candy Bar Scenes
Coined by author and writing teacher Holly Lisle, the term “candy bar scene” refers to any scene you are eager to write. Writing such a scene is a reward. You get words down and you enjoy it.
If you feel stuck, take a few minutes to make a list of scenes you know must happen in the story. Bonus points if these scenes excite you and make you eager to write, i.e. candy bar scenes. Don’t worry if any of these scenes occur late in the book or even at what you believe to be the end of the story. Don’t worry about writing out of order. Especially if you use writing software like Scrivener or yWriter, but even with word, you can cut and paste or drag and drop scenes into the correct order later. Organization is what December is for!
Make the list. Then, whenever you feel blocked, grab one of those scenes and dive in. Often we’re only fighting inertia. Use one of these “delicious” scenes to entice you back into the work.
Community for NaNoWriMo Motivation
I’m writing this during the pandemic. For safety issues, NaNoWriMo cannot allow in-person events this year. In the before times (and hopefully in the very soon after times), write-ins allowed wrimos (people participating in NaNoWriMo) to gather and write side-by-side in small groups. The pandemic prevents that fun, but it can’t keep us from gathering online!
Be sure to join your local region. Municipal Liaisons (regional leaders) and other wrimos host activities on Discord and Zoom or other chat rooms and video conferencing platforms. Word wars and word sprints or just camaraderie to write together will help you meet your daily goal.
The NaNoWriMo forums may also help you get the work done. Stumped with your plot? Go to the borrow a plot thread. Trouble naming your character? Let someone else name her for you. Don’t know what the name of that thingie your villian uses to kill people? Head to the experts forum. Someone there surely knows.
A word of warning, however. Time you spend in any of these communities takes away from the time you have to write. Beware of time sucks and rabbit holes. Perhaps set a timer to limit how long you spend scrolling through the interesting forum threads. You have words to write!
Writing Fuel
I hope you’re already well stocked with writing “fuel” (books and snacks). Chocolate and meditation books are my favorites right now and I also need coffee and tea. But we also need to eat healthy foods. Remember to eat a vegetable once in awhile and some protein too.
Friends and family can help here. If they want to support your efforts, invite them to bring you snacks! Promise them you’ll help with the dishes . . . in December. Boundaries are your friends in November (and always).
Maintaining Your Writing “Machine”
In addition to eating a few vitamin-rich foods (or taking some vitamin tablets) during November, don’t miss out on other ways of keeping your writing “machine” in top shape. By “machine” I mean your body.
If you exercise regularly, do your best to keep that up. Exercise benefits mood and mind health and great character arc ideas might pop into your head when you’re out jogging with the pupperina.
If you don’t have a fitness routine, add a walk around the block or a stretching session between writing bursts. Who knows! The habit might stick beyond November.
Your emotions can use a strength session too. Five minutes of meditation or a ten-minute writing practice session can refresh you during the month. No need to complicate it. The simplest thing can have a great benefit.
Structure is Your Friend
Those write-ins I mentioned? That’s a structure. A ten-minute timer, another structure. Word sprints and word wars, yet another way to structure your time and get the words down.
Make It Your Own
Some people write best first thing in the morning. Others are night owls. Another group loves to sneak in a writing session on a lunch break. And you’ll find still another bunch writing in their cars in the parking lot while waiting for their kids to get out of school.
Find the time and the place and the mode that works best for you. Make no apologies. Part of the lure of NaNoWriMo is experimentation. It’s a safe space to figure out your best writing practices. Lean into those, and don’t let anyone dissuade you.
Share Your Tips
I’ve offered some of my best motivation tips. I’d love to hear yours. Comment here or buddy me on the website. I’m willwrite4chocolate. And check out my other NaNoWriMo blog posts. I’ll see you around the forums!
by Theresa Garee | Aug 5, 2018 | Blog
Recently, a friend asked for my best writing advice. Her question brought me back to all the suggestions I’ve heard since 1994 when I first began my journey away from the practice of law and into the dark unknown of wordsmithing. Like me, she is bipolar.
Perhaps she expected me to talk about craft or motivation. Maybe she thought I would suggest a book or a course or some external structure to help her learn to put words on the page in the proper order. I’ve asked for all that myself and received many fabulous tips.
Instead, I told her, “Take your meds.”
She stared blankly at me so I continued.
“Do not stop. Do not go off them even if you are worried about weight gain or dampened emotions. Do not stop even if you fear they jeopardize your creativity. Take your meds. You cannot write if you’re dead.”
Her eyes opened wide. Yes. I had surprised and perhaps confused her. But she nodded.
I was, of course, remembering the times I’d quit taking the antidepressants and mood stabilizers I’ve been prescribed since 1994, about the same time I left the practice of law. Each time, stopping the meds seemed like a great idea. Even going on meds to begin with was a huge struggle. Why didn’t meditation fix me? Or recovery? Couldn’t I exercise my way into mental health? [That one still creeps into my mind occasionally.]
I specifically recalled three years in Taos when I’d tried to do mental health “the natural way” whatever that means. I tried Sam-E and long walks on the mesa with our two dogs. It wasn’t long before I was suicidal and so filled with anxiety that I could not bear to be alone. I rode with my husband through the Rio Grande Gorge to his evening classes in Santa Fe because I was so afraid of the darkness, most of which was in my mind.
And during each of the times I’d gone off my meds, I could not write at all. And once I went back on meds, it took a very long time to regain what I’d had before. I truly have lost entire years to this folly.
So, I’m not a doctor (but I am a lawyer – CYA alert) and your mileage may vary so please, consult your mental health professionals. Maybe you don’t need meds at all.
But if they have been prescribed, please take them. Please.
As I told my friend. Simply continue and you will find your path, but only if you take your meds.
by Theresa Garee | Aug 4, 2018 | Blog
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
My memoir, formerly titled Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two: How a Sedentary, Middle-Aged Manic Depressive Became a Marathoner (with the help of her dog) has a new working title: Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink.
But that’s beside the point.
The real news is that the manuscript (whatever you want to call it) earned a spot as a finalist in the 2018 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in Nonfiction. The winner will be announced in September at the conference in New Orleans.
How in the heck did that happen?
It happened because I followed the instructions of my writing coaches, the award-winning authors Tania Casselle and Sean Murphy. Among other things, they advised me to enter every single contest for which the book was eligible.
Every! Single! One!
Still, how does someone who continues to have depressive episodes so crippling they make it difficult to get out of bed some days achieve such a goal? My secret? Structure.
The following five structures work for me:
1) Classes and Workshops.
The idea of entering every contest (or submitting to every publisher) that fit my book came from two extremely qualified writing instructors. Suggestions might come from other students as well. In either case, these people could help you do what might not occur to you, what might seem too difficult, or what you might think is a waste of time and money.
2) A deadline.
The final days of a contest or publisher’s reading period usually is enough to spark me into action. It’s that pressure cooker effect. There’s no time for perfectionism. I just have to get it done.
3) Tracking Tools.
I love querytracker.net and Submittable. Real numbers don’t lie. I can see my submissions and percentages. The geeky part of me loves this. Plus, Submittable recognizes people who collect the most rejections in a month. Anything like that helps.
4) Accountability Partners.
I tell a friend I’m going to do something. I tell my little writing group. I tell my husband or my neighbor. I tell the regulars at the coffeeshop where I write. Eventually, one of them will ask about my goal. I don’t want to let either of us down.
5) Online Groups.
These are a different breed of accountability partners. But be careful with this. Choose wisely. I’m in a secret Facebook group for artists collecting rejection letters. If I’m not entering, I have no rejections to report. Telling these kind strangers is oddly satisfying.
But here’s the true secret. At some point, these external structures become internal. They light a fire inside me and I’m surprised to find myself motivated to attempt things I would never have done before. Magic? Perhaps. But I’ll take it.
What kind of structure do you need to meet your goal? What will help you not give up? I’d love to hear about it.
by Theresa Garee | Nov 1, 2013 | Blog
“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” – Mark Twain
National Novel Writing Month has officially begun. During the 30 days of November, folks all over the world will attempt to write 50,000 words of fiction. This year I’m a NaNo Rebel since I’m not writing a new novel. Instead, I’m doing “Reverse NaNoWriMo” by attempting to remove 50,000 words from a 193,000 word manuscript.
I enjoy the NaNoWriMo structure and have used it for the past nine years to create or revise. The local NaNoColumbus group, libraries, and the Thurber House host write-ins where others are also working on their books. The NaNoWriMo website offers forums where I go to ask questions, offer tips, or socialize between writing sessions. The website also features a list of published authors who have used the NaNoWriMo structure to do their work. There’s even a special forum for the “NaNo Rebels.”
Since this is my first re-write of this particular manuscript, I’ll be doing a “big picture” edit in which I’m trying to create the shape I want for the book. During October, I reviewed each scene and determined which ones needed the most overhauling. Now that NaNo has begun, I’ll work through those scenes to distill them to the essence of what the book is about. Sometimes this is as simple as removing words and rearranging sections. More often, however, it requires an entire rewrite of a scene, a chapter, or the entire book. It will be good to have the support of my fellow “Wrimos” (that’s what we call folks attempting NaNoWriMo) in this endeavor.
Where are you in your writing process? Is it a time of creation for you or, like me, are you in the throes of revision? I’d love to hear about it.
by Theresa Garee | Jan 16, 2012 | Blog
For my next book in the FiftyFifty.Me challenge, I read GOOD BEHAVIOR,
a memoir, by Nathan L. Henry, the story of his year in jail for armed robbery. This was an adult jail but Nate was only sixteen. He was no stranger to trouble and in this memoir, he alternates chapters among his year in jail, the year leading up to his crime, and scenes from earlier in his childhood that somewhat explain how a boy from a one stop-light town in rural Indiana finds himself in this predicament. It is gritty, graphic, and often disturbing. I found parts of it nearly impossible to read, but was drawn through it by the hope that he would find a way out. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that the jail librarian is instrumental.
What I took from this book, more than the story itself, was the way in which it was told. He maintained a primarily chronological structure in the alternating chapters so although the book jumps back and forth in time, the reader always knows where she is because he tells the different stories in a “this happened then this happened” order. Within this framework, there were a few flashbacks, but the story was carried forward by the passage of time. We knew he’d either get out of jail or be sent to prison. We knew he’d eventually be arrested and go to jail. We knew he grew to at least the age of sixteen. All of this pulls the reader along. We are also pulled along by the question of “what exactly happened?” since he teases us by referring to the day he set the school on fire and the night the police chased down he and his friend Phillip before he actually tells the events.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but it’s definitely worth the read.
