Hi writers! No, I was not abducted by aliens. Yes, I did completely flake out on last month’s challenge. And just as I was feeling really terrible about that, someone posted this on social media: “Forgive yourself every night and recommit every morning.” I guess I’d like to amend that to “Forgive yourself monthly and recommit on the first of the month.”
I will say, I didn’t flake out completely. I continued to read Lisa Cron’s Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel. I thought it would be a good idea to pair doing that with working in a prompt book to generate a lot of raw material, which I hoped would give me an idea for something to write about next week for NaNoWriMo. But I felt like I was just going through the motions. As it turns out, there was an idea for a novel, simmering in the back of my mind, and reading Story Genius made me want to just steep myself in it and try to really figure it out. So I did a lot of daydreaming and spacing out and jotting incomprehensible notes. Procrastinating, you say? Perhaps.
So what’s the plan for October? I am going to continue to post tips I picked up from Story Genius. I’m also going to go through each of the exercises in the first part of the book, which are designed to get you to work out your protagonist’s internal struggle, the live wire that drives your story. I may also use, Ready, Set, Novel, a noveling workbook I’ve used before, which also helps you develop your backstory, characters, setting, and major plot points, all before you sit down to write that novel on November 1.
Whether you plan to work with these books or do some other kind of NaNo Prep, I hope you will stick with me and tune in for more regular posts as we gear up for my favorite writing month of the year!