NaNoWriMo 2023
It’s been 10 years and I’m nearing my 10th project with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Yeah, it’s September, but it helps to prep something before I grind out words for a month. Is this post about what I’m planning to write? No! It’s about how I’m preparing to write and the process of writing!
NaNoWriMo has cute shorthands for 3 general types of people who prepare: planners, pantsers, and plantsers. Planners are considered people who plan (shocking), from character profiles, to setting details, to the overall culture, geography, climate, and politics, and to plot outlines. Pantsers are considered people who don’t really plan and go off some vague idea or inspiration, whether it’s any element of a story or what they had for breakfast, and let the idea grow as they write. Plantsers are the in-between people who neither fully plan nor fully wing it. I’d place myself as a pantser or plantser who’s closer to pantser than planner. I like to let characters breathe and find their own ways, and maybe or maybe not approach the vague idea for a scene, event, or plot point I may or may not have. I’m also a fan of slice-of-life anime, so that might have something to do with that.
So, yeah. In my pantsing I’ve come up with a launchpad for my NaNoWriMo story and I’ll wait and see whether more ideas form or if they’ll all come when I start writing. That tends to be my method, though I’ve outlined some before. But planning too much just always seemed to me like preemptively editing, which is like tilting at windmills. Editing something that isn’t written feels vain. This sort of relates to another topic NaNoWriMo is prone to involve, and that’s writer’s block. During the November grind it’s very likely people get spent on ideas or inspiration. Overpreparing for writing could potentially confine what writers do with their story, and they may find themselves stuck. Or they may be stuck with preparing and never get to the actual writing. I can see how underpreparing could lead to getting stuck as well; if no new ideas are gracing you and you have no structure or aim to follow that could’ve been planned ahead, then you very well could get lost or stuck. That rarely happens to me, and when it does it doesn’t persist since I have my ways of finding inspiration. But in both cases there is another big reason, at least in my opinion, for why writer’s block happens: expectations.
Finding inspiration can be more trouble for others, but for me it’s not. What I find more troubling is expecting a great scene or chapter to come out of what I’m about to write, and as a result I overthink how a sentence is structured, what has to happen, and whatnot. With too high expectations, I’ll either slow down or stop writing. In the moment I realize I’m not writing what I want to, but I don’t notice what I want is probably impossible to capture in a first draft. And because I’m not writing what I want to, I consider it a failure and start rethinking whether what came before should change. Now, there may be different opinions on the correct way to write, and there really is no “right” or “wrong” way to write, but I do believe editing a story before you’ve reached the end is wrong. Everyone I know who’s done it has yet to finish their story. I’m sure at least one of them will reach the end, but that end is needlessly prolonged (in my opinion). Which brings me back to expectations; expecting the first draft to be great by the time I reach the final sentence is the bane of my writing. Sure, it’s easy to tell myself, “No first draft will be perfect. Duh. Doi.” But when it gets to the specific details or scene or chapter I’m not thinking about the entire draft, I’m thinking about that detail, scene, or chapter and how it’ll be perfect. Well, not perfect, but still great.
Anyway, autumn’s on the way and that’s cool. Stay hydrated.
