Why do you do NaNoWriMo? What benefits have you gotten from your participation?

It started out as a lark. Now I do it in part because it’s the only time of the year I have a consistent fictional writing practice and in part because of the joy I get in helping others rediscover their creative voice.

The realization that if it isn’t perfect out of the gate, that doesn’t mean it’s not a valid story or I’m a terrible writer and I should give up. It only means that I’m a human being. I’m also discovering that I’m becoming a better writer by tackling it over and over again without being attached to ‘making a living’ at it.

How did you keep yourself inspired and motivated during NaNoWriMo?

The first year it was pure dogged stubbornness. Since then, the forums, the write-ins, and the knowledge that I have anywhere between a hundred and three hundred people who ‘look up’ to me as one of the examples have helped.
From a less practical standpoint, bribery with everything from chocolate to evenings off to go to a concert if I make my word count has also worked. We’re big believers in my region in the power of gold stars and dime-store toys to motivate people.

What sort of planning, if any, are you doing this year before you start writing?

My story concept grew out of a conversation in May, so while I’m not a huge planner, I usually write a one page précis before I start, but I’ve never been a big outliner. I believe in coming up with a god hook and following the characters where they lead me.

What are some of the tools you use to keep yourself organized and on-track during NaNoWriMo? How do you use them?

Using the tools in the NaNoWriMo Hipster PDA (a derivative of the DIY Hipster PDA Creative Package; see www.diyplanner.com) helps me to keep things like eye color, hair color, and age straight. The 3x5 index cards are small enough to fit in the zipper pouch in my real planner, so they can come with me anywhere.

I also have been known to use the NaNoWriMo Report Card (see thread here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3004635) to keep track of where I am over the month and kick myself in the pants if I get behind.

How do you manage your time during NaNoWriMo to make time for writing?

Most of my family and friends know I check out of my social obligations during the month of November, so I tend to write in several short blocks of about fifteen to twenty minutes over the course of the day. I become very selective about what I do with my evenings, and thankfully most of my friends are very accommodating.

What advice do you have for other writers doing NaNoWriMo for the first time?

You’re going to write a certain amount of dreck. This is normal, even desirable, as writing, like sculpting, requires a certain degree of source material to be available for later carving. Don’t worry about being profound, profoundness comes in the editing process.

Just remember that at the end of the day, what defines a writer is that they write, not that they talk about it and decide they’ll never be good enough to be published, so if you get your butt in the chair every day, that’s half the battle.

Strangely enough, the more you write, the better you will get, which is why it doesn’t matter if sections are dreck.

Trust in the process, trust in the story, trust in the community. But most of all, trust yourself and give yourself permission to have fun with it.

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“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” poet Robert Herrick advised his readers — for all too soon, you’ll be old and rosebud-gathering will be just one of many things you are no longer capable of.

That’s the normal reading of the poem, but it occurs to me that it is in the very nature of rosebuds themselves to disappear — you have but a brief instant to pick them before they open into flowers, the rosebud gone forever.

For the writer, ideas are rosebuds — brief, fleeting thoughts that flit across our minds and then, if not captured in just that instant, disappear forever. Since those ideas are the stock in trade of a writer, catching them in that quick instant is essential. Unlike the flower-picker, though, writers’ rosebuds are not found only in the garden — they can be spotted at any time, requiring us to remain always alert and ready to pounce with our metaphorical shears.

There are a number of tools a writer can use to make sure s/he records as many ideas as s/he can — and great tools, also, for keeping track of them and calling them up when we need them. These tools range from decidedly low-tech pen-and-paper solutions to advanced freeform databases. In this series, I’ll offer a set of tools you can use in various contexts to capture ideas as they occur, and another set of tools to manage and reclaim them.

First, though, we need to think a little bit about process. Tying all these parts together requires work — not a lot of work, and not hard work, but work nonetheless. Ideally, it becomes part of your routine, a set of habits that occur automatically when triggered by a new idea.

There are four phases to idea collecting:

1. Generate: We don’t have to wait until ideas come to us — in fact, doing so can doom us as writers! Give yourself time to let your mind do what it’s best at: come up with new ideas.
2. Capture: Get ideas down wherever they occur to you..
3. Process: Transfer ideas into a central “repository” to keep them safe and available.
4. Organize and Evaluate: Review your system to pull out ideas worth pursuing right now.

As you look at the tools in the next few posts, think about how you can use them as part of an overall system. Each “phase” (except “Process”) will have its own post, with tools and tips for generating, capturing, and organizing ideas. Processing isn’t done with a tool, it’s done with time — sitting down and copying everything into your central system. Ideally, you’ll do this once a week or so — the point isn’t to figure out what’s good or bad, but just to handle the basic “bookkeeping” of transferring words from one medium to another.