No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days (6 page)

Make sure you have enough tables, desks, and chairs set up to accommodate everyone’s particular work needs, and make sure that a clock is clearly visible to everyone. Brew up a pot of coffee or tea, and have lots of noncrumbly, nonoily treats on hand so people can snack without worrying about their keyboards.

After everyone’s had a chance to settle in, announce a schedule. Thirty or forty minutes of work followed by a ten-minute break is a good one. But it’s up to you. Whether you allow talking during the work sessions is also your call, but if you okay conversation during the work period, be sure to have headphones or earplugs on hand so you don’t get distracted. Ask all attendees to turn off the ringers on their cell phones, and set a timer so everyone knows exactly when each session ends and the glorious break time begins.

Should anyone continue to type after the alarm marking the end of the session sounds, chop off their fingers. Don’t be afraid to be a tyrant.

-------------------BRAGGING AS A TOOL FOR SELF-MOTIVATION

When inculcating a healthy amount of fear, bragging is an indispensable tool. Nothing makes it more difficult to back down from a task than having boasted about it, in great detail, to all of your friends and loved ones. Think about it: Do you really want to be the jokes every time novels are mentioned? For the rest of your life? Or have to hear your mother sigh when she learns that you botched yet another attempt at making something of yourself?

I don’t either. Which is why I make a point of laying a solid foundation of bragging way before I’ve thought about plot or setting or character. My ultimate goal is to back myself so far into a corner before the month even starts that I have no choice but to stay on course with the word count, no matter how dismally off-track my novel gets in the weeks that follow.

In this way, bragging is an essential device for creating expectations. Not for genius prose, mind you. No, what you want to do is set up expectations for completion. For staying on track. For seeing it through to 50,000 words.

Some people pay personal trainers thousands of dollars to receive this sort of ongoing, disappointmentbased motivation. Smart people get it from friends and family for free. Begin talking about your imminent ascent of the noveling ladder immediately after you have those first discussions with your friends about the thirty-day plunge.

In our wired age, email is the most efficient path to acquiring mass motivation. Send out boasting emails to everyone you know about your quest. Look up long-lost classmates to inform them you will be a novelist in a couple of months. If you have a novel-friendly office, spam your department with your good writing news. This kind of outreach nets you, the writer, two invaluable things:

-1) Constant motivational/envious/resentful check-ins from friends throughout the month about how the novel is going.

-2) An irresistible invitation to widespread mockery should you not actually reach 50,000 words.

BETTING THE BANK

Lustily bragging about your upcoming noveling exploits often segues beautifully into the next recommended prewriting strategy: leveling huge, possibly crippling debts against the outcome of your novel.

For Andrew Johnson, twenty-nine, of Christchurch, New Zealand, the opportunity came at the office.

“A disbelieving workmate challenged me when I said, ‘I bet I can do it,’” recalls the three-time NaNoWriMo winner.

“‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How much?’ I took fifty-dollar bets from any person willing to stake their cash on me being unable to complete the novel.”

Andrew finished out the month with both a new novel and a little extra pocket money. Unfortunately, he had to retire the scheme soon thereafter.

“Oddly, it only worked for one year,” Andrew writes. “Those who get stung by a fanatical NaNoWriMo writer once are going to avoid being stung again in the future.”

If you’re having trouble finding people kind enough to bet against you, you can still leverage the same motivating fear of total financial ruin through “conditional donations.”

This path was pioneered by a month-long novelist writing outside of NaNoWriMo. In May 2001, an aspiring writer named Paul Griffiths announced that if he failed in his quest to write a 60,000-Word novel in one month, he would donate his entire life savings to the National Rifle Association. Paul was not a fan of the NRA, and was very enamored of his savings account, and these two things combined to give him all the incentive he needed to get the novel finished. To follow in Paul’s footsteps, here’s all you have to do:

-1) Find an organization you detest. If you are stuck for ideas, call your favorite charity and ask for a list of groups who are out to destroy them. Be sure not to choose a good or righteous cause, as this may make giving up on your novel mid-month feel like a philanthropic act.

-2) Once you’ve selected a suitably villainous group, break out your checkbook and write a check to them. Make the amount large enough to wreak havoc on your finances, but small enough that you won’t be tempted to put a stop payment on the check should it ever actually make it to them.

-3) Seal the check in an envelope, address it, and then give the envelope to a friend with strict instructions to return the money to you should you complete 50,000 words of fiction in a month’s time. Should you fail to reach 50,000 words, he or she should do you the favor of dropping the envelope in the mail.

-4) Inform your friend that someone posing as you may return in thirty days to plead for the money, claiming the whole novel-writing thing was a dumb idea. If this happens, make your friend promise to restrain the imposter until the police arrive.

And there you have it: intense literary motivation for the price of a stamp. And when you actually do finish the novel in thirty days, you are both a novelist and a righteous crusader, having kept a small fortune out of the hands of evildoers. Way to go, superhero!

CHORE-BASED BETTING

Many of us, however, go through our lives unencumbered with such fiscal distractions as savings accounts, retirement funds, or petty cash, and therefore have nothing to potentially squander on diabolical organizations.

No matter how poor we may be, though, there is one thing we can always wager: our bodies. Those with no savings to put on the line should sit down with friends and set up a series of chore-based ultimatums. Should you only write 30,000 words next month, for instance, you agree to scrub a friend’s kitchen floor. A 20,000-word total means mowing lawns for a month. And should you fail to break 10,000 words, you agree to scoop the poop of your friend’s fiercely incontinent dog for an entire year. You’ll find that friends and family warm to this plan immediately. For guaranteed novel-writing results, it’s best to construct a web of miserable chore-based bets that would essentially occupy your weekends until you die.

For thirty-five-year-old, five-time NaNoWriMo winner Dan Strachota of San Francisco, the conditional betting took place on the home front. “The second year I did NaNoWriMo, my girlfriend and I wrote together at adjacent computers,” Dan remembers. “In order to motivate ourselves we would make wagers over who could write the most words in thirty minutes. It would get pretty competitive, as the punishments for losing grew more and more heinous—from easy stuff like having to give backrubs and sing a capella songs to harder things like running up the street half naked, doing funny dances, and kissing random strangers.”

Ah, the timeless power of tender, loving humiliation. Follow Dan’s example and get creative in your shackling of yourself to your writing instrument. And remember: A little fear goes a long, long way.

CHAPTER 3

NOVELING NESTS, MAGICAL TOOLS, AND A GROWING STOCKPILE OF DELICIOUS

INCENTIVES

In her search for a quiet place to write, Karla Akins quickly round that locking herself away in her study brought no relief from the tempests brewing in the house.

“A closed door with children in the house is nothing more than an invitation to bang, kick, scream, and cry,” advises Akins, a 42-year-old one-time NaNoWriMo winner from North Manchester, Indiana. “The teenager will be in an emotional crisis with his girlfriend, and the younger ones are sure you simply cannot survive without being in their presence.”

Karla’s quest for some writing solace did turn up one unique environment where the children were much less likely to intrude.

“I do a lot of brainstorming and ‘writing’ on the toilet,” she says. “I keep a notebook or small tape recorder with me all the time. It’s amazing what kinds of things will come to me while having my

‘quiet time.’”

Writers with children can relate to Karla’s nomadic quest for quiet. But even if the only other living things you share your home with are house plants and dust mites, finding a perfect place to write is not easy.

In this chapter, we’ll look at the pros and cons of potential noveling environments, from coffeeshops to cars to cheap motels. And after we look at where you might write, we’ll go shopping for the tools—

edible and otherwise—that you’ll need to gather for the mammoth literary task ahead.

WRITING AT HOME

Home is the best option most of us have for pounding out novels. It’s familiar, it’s open twenty-four hours a day, it’s relatively private, and the food and drinks on the menu are as cheap as you’ll find anywhere outside of a soup kitchen.

The advantages of home-based working, though, are also its shortcomings. Because your house, apartment, or dorm room is so familiar, you’ll likely find it difficult to draw a firm line between “novel time” and “puttering time,” “family time,” or, most harrowingly, “dishwashing time.” A quick trip to the fridge for some glucose reinforcements can turn into an hour-long rearranging of the canned goods in your cupboards. Phones ring. Email lurks. And because you can work as late as you want without employees trying to shoo, you out, you’re bound to be less focused in your writing, letting noveling take a backseat to other pressing chores that arise.

All these liabilities can be minimized with a few tips:

-1) Isolate yourself as much as possible.

If you live with other people, try to find a spot where you won’t be disturbed. Be creative about it. Try writing in closets, bathrooms, or garages. Anywhere with a door that closes is your friend. If you don’t have access to a room with a door, arrange your computer so you’re facing a wall, and get some oversized headphones or earplugs. Also, if you can do so without causing an uproar among your family or housemates, disconnect the phone and Web connections. You can return any calls or emails after the session is over.

-2) Create uninterrupted blocks of time, and limit yourself to them. Make it clear to yourself and anyone you live with that you will be working, uninterrupted, for a set amount of time—at which point you will stop and rejoin the normal, non-noveling human race. Knowing that you’ll be working for a bounded amount of time helps keep you on task, and it will spare any housemates or family members from feeling like they need to tip-toe around you the whole night.

-3) Make yourself comfortable.

Find a stable desk or table, and make sure your chair feels good and raises you up to a wrist-friendly typing level.

-4) Don’t write within view of a bed.

The sweet, sweet temptation of napping is simply too great. If you live in a studio apartment, or are otherwise obligated to write in your bedroom, do what I do: Pile a cumbersome assortment of boxes and other heavy items onto your bed to retard the onset of accidental slumbers.

-5) Keep your writing area neat.

If you’re anything like me, your life is chaotic enough already; give yourself the gift of sitting down to a tidy writing area each day. This doesn’t mean, incidentally, that you can’t storm and throw things around as you work. I find flinging balls of paper, pens, and other assorted office supplies across the room helps the whole writing process feel more romantically agonized, and I’ll throw things for fun even when my novel is going well. But at the close of each session, just spend a couple of minutes picking up the papers, coffee mugs, wads of chewing tobacco, and half-eaten animal carcasses and move them all into the kitchen (where they can be more effectively ignored). That way, no matter how messy the rest of your living quarters get, your runway for the next day’s literary adventure will be cleared for takeoff.

HOW DO I GET RID OF MY CHILDREN?

For parents, balancing the need for alone time with your kids’ needs for, well, everything can add a difficult twist to an already challenging month. Here are tips from six parents who have learned how to be creative writer types and benevolent guardians at the same time.

“I decided it was time for the twins to start learning to prepare simple meals. I juggled my schedule so I could write when they weren’t home or were asleep. Much of my writing was done between 4:30 and 6:30 A.M., then again at night. Be prepared to sacrifice sleep, but that’s okay, because when you do finally sleep, your dreams are almost guaranteed to provoke interesting chains of thought.”

—Amy Eason, 35, one-time NaNoWriMo winner from McDonough, Georgia; Amy lives with an eleven-year-old, thirteen-year-old twins, a fifteen-year-old, and a seventeen-year-old.

“With a small kid in the house, you have to steal time. Extra-long nap? Okay! Watch one more episode of the Wiggles? Sure! Of course, there is a backlash to that, but I figure December is the price to pay for the sins of November.”

—Tom Ferland, 39, three-time NaNoWriMo winner from Redlands, California; Tom lives with a threeyear-old.

“My daughter was eleven the first year I wrote a novel, so I did a lot of my writing in the cafe at the local bookstore and just turned her loose to amuse herself with books. She was very sad when November was over and we weren’t spending hours upon hours at Borders.”

—Rise Sheridan-Peters, 42, three-time NaNoWriMo winner from Washington, D.C.; Rise lives with a thirteen-year-old.

“I got a wireless keyboard, and we moved furniture so that I had the couch in front of my computer instead of a chair. She cuddled with me and I typed with her. And tried to keep her from adding to my word count. The ‘me time’ came into play in that my generous husband agreed that during the month of November, if he wanted a clean toilet, he could do it his damn self. I was in charge of the baby and the novel. He took care of everything else.”