Five Tips for NaNoWriMo: Week Two

NaNoWriMo’s Director of Programs, Chris Angotti, brings you five tips to survive Week Two:

For my advice this week, I decided to journey into the deep, dark NaNoWriMo pep talk archives to find a few hints from authors I admire. After pushing aside cobwebs, evading rat kings, and wondering what exactly that weird sludge is, I emerged with five fine-quality ideas. (Tim, our editorial director, later pointed out that all these pep talks are conveniently available on a sludge-free web page, a fact I certainly wish he’d told me earlier. I hope the rat kings get him.)

Chloroform your inner editor.
Pursue the anthills.
Write by hand.
Do the Raymond Chandler.
Print your pages.

Let’s venture deeper:

NUMBER ONE: Chloroform your inner editor.

I don’t know if Karen Russell knew about our Inner Editor concept before writing her pep talk, but she certainly brings him to life in the form of derisive, foul-mouthed coach. What to do with him?

“In order to write your novel, you must get rid of this sadist. Do whatever it takes to shut him up. Chloroform him; drag him by his white Reeboks behind the dugout; bury his shrill, censorious whistle. Then return to your green, blank, mercifully silent playing field, and write.”

Don’t give him the sick satisfaction of an unfinished novel.

NUMBER TWO: Pursue the anthills.

This is my all-time favorite piece of NaNo advice, as shared by Aimee Bender. If you’re supposed to be writing about cereal boxes, but you really feel like writing about an anthill… Write about the anthill. She tells us,

“That anthill might be a clue, a little signal from the unconscious, like a finger pointing to a rock, which is saying, ‘Look! Pick me up! Look under me! Try me out! There’s stuff here!’”

I take a lot of tangents in my novels—some of which pay off, but all of which make me laugh. Yesterday, a scene in a library somehow became an extended aside about Hobo Quidditch (they ride bindles). It took my story nowhere, but I had fun writing it. See where the anthills lead you.

NUMBER THREE: Write by hand.

If you can’t bear the idea of showing up at your computer for another day, try picking up a pen. It might even change your storytelling. As Lynda Barry says,

“There is a kind of story that comes from hand-writing which is different from a tapping-on-a-keyboard-kind-of-story. For one thing, there is no delete button, making the experience more life-like right away. You can’t delete the things you feel unsure about and because of this, the things you feel unsure about have a much better chance of being able to exist long enough to reveal themselves.”

Remember that most of us learned to write stories by hand. Tap back into your early, brave narratives and try it again. (Also, there are never enough power outlets at the coffee shop anyway.)

NUMBER FOUR: Do the Raymond Chandler.

No, this isn’t some weird dance; it’s a great tip for fast-tracking your story. If you don’t know what’s going to happen next, try Jonathan Lethem’s reminder:

“Raymond Chandler said that when he was at a loss for a plot development he’d have a man walk through a doorway with a gun in his hand.”

It’s not always a gun, it’s not always a man, but it’s always something unexpected. Can a dragon suddenly show up and terrorize your townspeople? Is it time for a surprise meet-cute in your rom-com? Bring in something out of nowhere.

NUMBER FIVE: Print your pages.

It’s possible that Kevin Wilson has Hewlett-Packard stock, but I still think this is an interesting idea: get your in-progress novel on paper.

“As the month progresses, as you print out another day’s worth of writing and add it to the stack of pages, embrace the sheer delight of seeing the world of your making assemble itself before you. The story within those pages will hold the real power, but don’t underestimate the weight of the physical object.”

Cool, right? A Word doc is just bits and bytes with no physical weight. But with a pile of actual pages—full of your ideas—you can see, feel, and weigh how your work is piling up.

— Chris Angotti, director of programs