national novel writing month | Literature and Libation

Despite a strong idea, a somewhat realized outline, and an opening chapter, I decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year.

I “won” NaNoWriMo in 2011 and 2012, but swore that after the chaos of last year’s 50,000 word, several short-story sprint, I wouldn’t start another big project until I had graduated. At one point I even said I’d do NaBloPoMo (these acroportmanteaunyms are getting a bit ridiculous) to change things up a little bit. Now, staring down the barrel of my final grad school semester, with lots of big plans for this blog and my other writing, dedicating an entire month to a project that will likely rot, untouched on my hard drive doesn’t seem like the best use of my time.

But I want to feel like I’m participating, sort of. So for all you other people NaNoing your little fingers off, here are links to some of my favorite writing and grammar related posts from the series “Craft and Draft.” I hope they can help you capture those coveted 1667 words each day and maybe nudge you the 50k word mark with some lilting grace.

Plotting, Structure, and Pre-writing:
Go Small or Go Home
Literary Smiterary
Plotting Progression
Sheet Music
The Write to Read
Idea-logical

Imagery and Metaphor
Metaphor Galore
Imagine All the Imagery

Grammar, Syntax, and Word Choice
Branching Out
The Diction Affliction
Frag. Ments.
Resumptives and Summatives and Appositives, oh my!
Parallelogrammar
I’ll take words that start with “Ad” for $2000, Alex
Grammar (with an “a”, not an “e”)

Characters and Dialogue
Character Counts
Dialognostics

Editing and Proofreading
The Editor is Dead, Long Live the Editor!
Fixing What ain’t Not Broke
The Proof is in the Reading

I’m also happy to answer any other questions about NaNo, NaNoing, having NaNo’d, or why I’m so obsessed with English grammar.

Ask away!

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

Or, as I like to call it: “National Novel Writing Month Freak Out Preparatory Blog”

After this week, and the next week, there are only four weeks left until NaNoWriMo! Time to officially start freaking out, if you’re into that kind of thing.

I participated in my first NaNoWriMo last year, and found the experience pretty interesting. I played by all of the traditional rules, writing every day, lusting after that tasty goal of 50,000 words in ~30 days. While I didn’t attend any local writing meet-ups, or really work within any writing community to speak of, I still found the entire event a great catalyst to plain getting shit done.

I’m going to play again this year, despite having even more on my plate than last year. I wrote nearly 80,000 words last year (ok, some of those came post December 1, but it was in the same fit of writing), which is more fiction than I wrote in the other 11 months combined (I don’t keep track of how much nonfiction I write, for whatever reason).

This year, I’m going to break from tradition, and write a collection of short stories. It’s the same idea in principle, words into stories into a book, it’s just a bunch of smaller narratives instead of one big, epic one.

I also hope to be part of a bigger community this year. If anyone wants to get in on some hot, word on word NaNo action, my handle is: OliverGray14 (my profile picture is the same as my twitter acount, me in a sweet bowler hat)

To prepare, I’ve already outlined the basics of the stories, as well as the plot lines and characters for each. I’ve also started mentally getting into “shitload of writing everyday mode” which involves finger stretching exercises and building my caffeine tolerance. I still need to figure out if my stories are all going to tie together, or if they are going to be stand alone.

Is anyone else out there doing NaNo this year? If so, are you preparing yet, or am I just freakishly proactive?

NaNoWriMo is no place for a pony, even one so brave as Bill.

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