One Month To Rule Them All by Jennifer Spiller

November. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Perhaps you’ve always associated that month with turkey and the most rabid shopping day of the year, or elections. Perhaps you think of it as the month ushered in by All Saint’s or All Soul’s Day, or Armistice Day, or Guy Fawkes Day, or Independence Day (or any one of these other numerous holidays from around the world found here. Wow. There were a lot of revolutions in November). Or perhaps, if you’re a writer, you also think of it as NaNoWriMo, one of the most unpronouncable word mish-mashes ever created .

Yes, November is National Novel Writing Month, that curious time of year when would-be novelists forsake food, friends, sleep and even Dancing with the Stars, so they can hunch over a keyboard, develop tendonitis, and type fifty thousand words with a beginning, middle and end, and say they won NaNoWriMo.

Perhaps, you too, are thinking of joining the insanity. I won’t officially be joining the fun, since 50k words is only half of a first draft for me, but I am starting a new project. It’s in its infancy, and I do hope to cash in on all that awesome NaNo energy by busting some serious hump on the keyboard in November.

But that’s A WHOLE MONTH away.

Between us and the insanity, lies October. Yeah, that’s right, the month of candy corn and slutty costumes, and parties giving parents nightmares when sugar-addled children return with an Exorcist gleam in their glassy eyes. So, what should a prospective Insano-Nano be doing?

The NaNoWriMo site has tons of information about plotting and getting ready to sit down and write your novel. But what if, like me, you’re a devoted pantser? How does a pantser prepare for something like NaNoWriMo?

Psst! I’m going to tell you. (I know you're all wilting from relief, now). There are as many ways to write a book as there are to get dressed in the morning, but here's what I’ll be doing this month, and I invite you to join me.

First, I’ll be writing--specifically, something called "morning pages."

Morning pages are  basically three pages of stream of consciousness free-writing to get your writing day started. They don't have to be done in the morning. Just like morning sickness, you can have morning pages at any time of day. Luckily, they're a whole lot easier than puking your insides up and making a tiny human. Morning pages will help you get in to the writing habit. Like a light walk when you're just starting to exercise, morning pages get you moving without killing you. Three pages are not intimidating, and there are no rules to worry about. Julia Cameron introduced me to them in her book, The Artist’s Way, many years ago. Now she has a website, too.

Second, I’ll be saturating my mind with images.

This is a lesson I learned in theatrical design classes. We put together research boards for costume design (and set, and lighting). As a costume designer, I created huge poster boards with image collages. One board was called “The World of the Play.” The other boards were for individual characters. Set designers did collages as inspiration for settings, places, even shapes they were thinking of using. Color and texture and small details popped out at you in interesting ways.

Research boards in theatre are a communication tool amongst the designers and the director, before they jump into the actual design. But the process of creating them is also a powerful tool for stirring the imagination, for bypassing your analytical brain and going straight to your gut. Sometimes you don’t even know why a particular image is screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!” You just know it belongs. Later, when you get into the nitty gritty, that same image may become critical.

For my last novel, I used Keynote, a program for Mac that works a bit like Powerpoint. That was before I discovered Pinterest. Now that I’ve started pinning, I’m in love. Even as a neophyte pinner, I’ve already got a couple of boards in progress for my new project, and it’s amazing how much my juices are flowing to get into this story.

Creating pinboards for the book as a whole, for individual characters, for settings, for color, for the clothes your characters would wear, these are huge steps in time-saving for your imagination. You can design your main character’s apartment, or workplace, figure out what they’re wearing in the final battle, and zero in on mood visuals that can save you when you’re struggling in week three of NaNoWriMo. Try using Google’s image search function. Scroll through the images fast. The ones that jump, you click on. Don’t second guess yourself. This is free association. It’s a pinboard on the internet, not a marriage ceremony. You can always delete it later. The beauty of this is that you don't have to know the whole story to do this. This helps you CREATE the story.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, you can check out my work-in-progress world board for my new project here.

Third, I'll be researching.

There are a few parts to this for me. I’m basing my fantasy/magical world on a particular series of legends, so I’m reading both the translated original stories and literary and anthropological writings on them. I'm reading stuff  about people and places in Ireland I don’t know how to spell, let alone pronounce. (There’s this awesome site which will speak the Irish word for you, if you happen to be struggling with Irish. That rabbit-hole is here. Enter at your own risk).

For the mystery portion, I'm researching police procedures and blood spatter analysis and the psychology of how cops think. This has already taught me that a few of my orignal story ideas aren't viable. Yeah, there might have been some weeping, but better now than in November, right?

The second part of my research involves music, a huge influence on the story. I’ve asked friends to suggest albums, songs, and indie bands to go see. I’ll be making play lists for my characters. This will tell me a lot about them. What kind of music do they listen to?

Later, when I know more about the story, I’ll probably create a playlist for the scenes. Film scores work great for this. Music is another tool for bypassing my analytical brain and tapping my inner creator. It’s primal. When we’re creating, especially in the early stages, primal is where it’s at. Good stuff comes from there. Give it a try.

Fourth, because I’m a pantser, as I think about the story, I try to keep some big picture things in mind. One of them is Michael Hauge’s Six Stage Plot Structure. I keep a printout of that graphic taped to my desk. His website has tons of articles with great advice, like this one, Ten Simple Keys To Plot Structure.

Another helpful tool for plot thinking comes from Donald Maass’s book, Writing the Breakout Novel and its accompanying guide, The Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. There’s a plot checklist for revision at the back of the workbook which is fantastic for revision, but I also have it printed out and pinned up near me when writing. Glancing at it from time to time can help keep me from charging down too many exciting dead ends.

Finally, I plan to immerse myself in language. Poetic language. Reading poetry is not something I ever enjoyed when I was younger, but now I see how reading it can subtly infiltrate my brain and influence my word choice, syntax and rhythm. If you don’t have an extensive library of poetry at home, and a trip to a brick and mortar library seems impossible, try Poets.org. The poetry store has tons of free poems to read, right there on the site.

So that’s it. For all the nuts and bolts of writing, there are lots of resources out there. But beware, searching the internet is a perilous endeavor. There are wormholes like Dog-shaming.com, and its alter ego, Catshaming.tumblr.com. There are fascinating blogs devoted to grammar, like this one from UPenn. Although I’ve tried to reach the end of the internet when actively procrastinating, I still haven’t managed it. This means the interenet is a vast mine-field of time sucks, just waiting to lure you in.

You have one month to prepare for the writing roller coaster of the year. Get busy.