With less than a day to go until the beginning of NaNoWriMo I am frantically reading No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty because I don’t have a plot and I am hoping it wont be a problem. Baty’s advice is to not do too much planning before NaNoWriMo because if you do, you may get attached to parts of the story (characters, ideas, the epic world you have created), and not write with ‘literary abandon’. Given that we only have 30 days, the aim is not to get bogged down with ‘pre-writing’ ideas and just write like a crazy person, with the focus on quantity rather than quality.
Wrimo’s know this and given that I have only done NaNo once before, I am hoping that the No Plot will work for me. In 2009 when I did NaNo, I didn’t do a great deal of planning but I sort of had the plot and a couple of the main characters worked out and I didn’t stray much from the plot line, until the end and then I wasn’t really happy with the end and to be truthful, I wasn’t happy with the novel at all. When I edited it a few months later, I chopped out close to 10,000 words and I’m still not happy. I also wrote a genre out of my comfort zone, a sort of drama/historical fiction, (with not a lot of historical information in it).
This year I am going to write a fantasy novel and I have a brief idea of a couple of characters and the way the story will begin, but no idea where it will go from there. Hopefully this will work in my favor. I am feeling anxious about the fact that I haven’t done any research/work into the ‘world’ bar a very basic scribbled map with 3 towns on it, but in No Plot? No Problem, Baty tells the story of a fellow WriMo who put a lot of effort into creating her world, including customs, culture, religions, clothing and weaponry, only to have it fall apart during NaNo because she wasn’t happy with anything she wrote.
So my lack of preparation is supposed to be a benefit according to Baty. We shall see. I am feeling very anxious and a little excited about starting, and I guess only time will tell if this method works for me.
Wrimo’s know this and given that I have only done NaNo once before, I am hoping that the No Plot will work for me. In 2009 when I did NaNo, I didn’t do a great deal of planning but I sort of had the plot and a couple of the main characters worked out and I didn’t stray much from the plot line, until the end and then I wasn’t really happy with the end and to be truthful, I wasn’t happy with the novel at all. When I edited it a few months later, I chopped out close to 10,000 words and I’m still not happy. I also wrote a genre out of my comfort zone, a sort of drama/historical fiction, (with not a lot of historical information in it).
This year I am going to write a fantasy novel and I have a brief idea of a couple of characters and the way the story will begin, but no idea where it will go from there. Hopefully this will work in my favor. I am feeling anxious about the fact that I haven’t done any research/work into the ‘world’ bar a very basic scribbled map with 3 towns on it, but in No Plot? No Problem, Baty tells the story of a fellow WriMo who put a lot of effort into creating her world, including customs, culture, religions, clothing and weaponry, only to have it fall apart during NaNo because she wasn’t happy with anything she wrote.
So my lack of preparation is supposed to be a benefit according to Baty. We shall see. I am feeling very anxious and a little excited about starting, and I guess only time will tell if this method works for me.
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