A Post Mortem
So another November in Nanoland is over and it's time for the ritual post mortem
There are two things I have learned and one that I have confirmed
The easy stuff first
I have confirmed beyond all possible doubt that I am a plodder not a sprinter. I aim for around 2,000 words per day with a minimum of 1,666. Of course 2,222 is preferable since it produces such pretty daily totals.
Being ahead of quota keeps the inner serpent happy while being behind is less likely to produce an adrenalin rush and more likely to induce not quite a panic attack but the pressure to catch up is not conducive to inspiration. It’s funny. Other folks get the urge to slack off when they are over quota and being behind spurs them on to epic achievements.
The two things learned
Number One - if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.
Every single year doing Nano I have adopted a variant on the strategy of choosing between 66 and 88 tarot cards to represent scenes in the story. I then shuffle a deck and randomly draw cards in batches of between 12 and 18 cards. Not all at once but in different times and places. When all 80 something scenes are drawn I make up a bunch of numbered index cards. I then write 3 possible scenarios on each card. The first relates the relevant card to the chapter, the second connects the card to the one that came before and the third to the one that came after. And if the card appears more than once in the sequence of scenes then connecting it to the other occurrences offers even more possible story ideas. The simple act of making these links generates ideas that I never would have thought of on my own.
So going in to November I have a big fat stash of possibilities. Usually around 250 of them. There’s no need for much thinking. Just a couple of hundred words per scene is enough to get over the finish line and there’s no need to stick to strict chronological order. The simple act of creating these connections provides a basic safety net. Usually the tale then takes on a life of its own. If all else fails I then resort to writing about the cards that got left out. They invariably offer 101 reasons why they should be given a second chance and more often than not will try to take over the whole story which simply does wonders for the word count.
This time I decided to do things differently. It was a very dumb idea. I had a very basic story line with no plotting or planning, no scenes or index cards. In other words what normal mortals call pantsing. I could still churn out the words using the pictures as inspiration but without using an ordered sequence the story ended up being a just a bunch of random jigsaw pieces with very little glue holding them all together to form a coherent ‘bigger picture’.
Number Two
Make the most of what you’ve got
In theory I use the April Camp Nano to plant a whole bunch of story seeds - 50,000 words worth of them. I then choose the most promising ideas and turn them into a sort of Snowflake outline in the July Camp so that most of the thinking and heavy lifting is already done by the time November rolls around.
Well that is the map. This year the territory was rather different. While vaguely remembering some of the ideas from April, I never did get around to actually reading over all those words and picking out the golden nuggets. So instead of outlining in July I just did more brain storming and once again did not give the stuff a second glance.
Was tidying up a bunch of files and stuff on the last weekend of November and took a quick peek in the April and July stash. There were lots of interesting ideas that I had completely and totally forgotten. If I had done that only four weeks earlier then there might have been much more useful fuel for a hungry story engine.
Less story hoarding and more planning will be the lesson for next November.
There are two things I have learned and one that I have confirmed
The easy stuff first
I have confirmed beyond all possible doubt that I am a plodder not a sprinter. I aim for around 2,000 words per day with a minimum of 1,666. Of course 2,222 is preferable since it produces such pretty daily totals.
Being ahead of quota keeps the inner serpent happy while being behind is less likely to produce an adrenalin rush and more likely to induce not quite a panic attack but the pressure to catch up is not conducive to inspiration. It’s funny. Other folks get the urge to slack off when they are over quota and being behind spurs them on to epic achievements.
The two things learned
Number One - if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.
Every single year doing Nano I have adopted a variant on the strategy of choosing between 66 and 88 tarot cards to represent scenes in the story. I then shuffle a deck and randomly draw cards in batches of between 12 and 18 cards. Not all at once but in different times and places. When all 80 something scenes are drawn I make up a bunch of numbered index cards. I then write 3 possible scenarios on each card. The first relates the relevant card to the chapter, the second connects the card to the one that came before and the third to the one that came after. And if the card appears more than once in the sequence of scenes then connecting it to the other occurrences offers even more possible story ideas. The simple act of making these links generates ideas that I never would have thought of on my own.
So going in to November I have a big fat stash of possibilities. Usually around 250 of them. There’s no need for much thinking. Just a couple of hundred words per scene is enough to get over the finish line and there’s no need to stick to strict chronological order. The simple act of creating these connections provides a basic safety net. Usually the tale then takes on a life of its own. If all else fails I then resort to writing about the cards that got left out. They invariably offer 101 reasons why they should be given a second chance and more often than not will try to take over the whole story which simply does wonders for the word count.
This time I decided to do things differently. It was a very dumb idea. I had a very basic story line with no plotting or planning, no scenes or index cards. In other words what normal mortals call pantsing. I could still churn out the words using the pictures as inspiration but without using an ordered sequence the story ended up being a just a bunch of random jigsaw pieces with very little glue holding them all together to form a coherent ‘bigger picture’.
Number Two
Make the most of what you’ve got
In theory I use the April Camp Nano to plant a whole bunch of story seeds - 50,000 words worth of them. I then choose the most promising ideas and turn them into a sort of Snowflake outline in the July Camp so that most of the thinking and heavy lifting is already done by the time November rolls around.
Well that is the map. This year the territory was rather different. While vaguely remembering some of the ideas from April, I never did get around to actually reading over all those words and picking out the golden nuggets. So instead of outlining in July I just did more brain storming and once again did not give the stuff a second glance.
Was tidying up a bunch of files and stuff on the last weekend of November and took a quick peek in the April and July stash. There were lots of interesting ideas that I had completely and totally forgotten. If I had done that only four weeks earlier then there might have been much more useful fuel for a hungry story engine.
Less story hoarding and more planning will be the lesson for next November.