Oh dear. NaNoWriMo. One of the stressful things writers do for fun. Actually, everything we do is stressful, and fun, in my opinion. Well, NaNo certainly does have its pros and cons, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about my personal NaNo survival kit.
Okay, before I get into what I use for it, I'll have you know a bit about it, in case you don't. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It's an event that takes place in November in which you write (Or try to, but I have Yoda in the back of my head and I don't want to let him down) 50,000 words. Normally I write "50k", but seeing all five digits makes it a bit more impressive, and I think adds a bit more perspective to how hard it is. Especially since many of us procrastinate (I really TRY not to, but right now I'm in the "do not" phase. But I'm moving up!), it's hard to get in our daily word count goal. So, I won't ramble on about this, when I could be telling you about my survival kit. More on this later!
So my NaNoWriMo kit includes.
1. A Plan. Without a plan, I am hopeless, as I have said before. Maybe one of these days I'll actually go Pantser, but lets face it, I am a mess without a plan of attack. (I don't even try to say I'm a pantser anymore)
2. Chocolate. Or, chick oats, as my family likes to call it, which now that I think about it, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but hey! What are families for but not making sense but still being lovable?
3. Coffee. Yes, I am a coffee drinker, and tea too. I have no preference, just some days I want one more than the other. Though coffee and writing just seem to go together in America. Probably if I were British I would say tea and writing.
4. A word processor (Obviously). Because if I didn't have one, I would never be able to fill the word goal in that space of time. Writing about 1.5k a day by hand just doesn't seem appealing.
5. Connection to the Internet. So I can tell them I won! *cough cough* What are you talking about, twitter? *cough cough* Social media *cough cough*
6. Sleep. And the audience goes "What?!" Yeah yeah, I know. Of course I don't need sleep, but it's still nostalgic, okay? But still, though I've proven that I don't need sleep (More on that later), it is a nice thing to have, on occasion.
7. Support. No, really. I don't do well without people to let down, and I mean that seriously. If people put their faith in me, it helps me, because I don't want to let them down. Contrariwise, If someone says they don't think I can do it, I helps me to have an obstacle to overcome. I guess I just need people to know I'm doing something really hard, and they'll fill out the rest.
8. PEN AND PAPER. What if I have new ideas? What if I need to change a plot point? What if I accidentally change my Main Character's hair length mid book? These are all valid points, hence why I keep a notebook and pen on me at all times. At least a pen, so if push comes to shove, I can write on myself. I normally do the latter when I'm in bed, so I don't have to get up to write something down. I'll make a little note about the prompt of the idea. Say the idea was "artifact" then that led me to all these different points. All I would do is write "artifact" on my hand, or wrist, or ankle. Careful what color pen you decide to use on your wrist though. Using the wrong color can make for a few uncomfortable experiences (Yeah, that's happened to me. Also a story for another time.). I also write in code, so if people see weird words on me, they won't know what they mean. Whovians might freak out if I wrote silence, and many other instances could make for explanations I don't care to give. Code works, people! Use it (Only if you want to. Remember, it's all your own method. Spit out the parts that don't work for you.).
I think that's it, so ta ta for now! (Isn't that an acronym? Like, TTFN.)
-Viola June HFA-DGN
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