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All About Sally Eggert
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GH Year(s)2009 (Trust Fall), 2012 (In Wolf’s Clothing) Completed Manuscript(s) Innocent (historical), Trust Fall (romantic suspense), In Wolf’s Clothing (romantic suspense), The Fallen Kind (romantic women’s fiction) Genre(s): Romantic Suspense, Romantic Women’s Fiction |
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Blog Posts from Sally
NaNoWriMo Survival TipsPosted by Sally Eggert Oct 27 2011, 12:01 am in NaNoWriMo What I Learned Last NaNoWriMoSuggestions for Surviving the Month and Meeting Your Goals Without Losing Your Mind It’s about to be November, and we all know what that means: for writers, at least, it’s time to test our limits, to roll up our sleeves, and turn that idea that’s been burning a hole in our brains into a novel! For some, the time pressure and the shared challenge of the official NaNoWriMo experience is an incentive to get that first novel down on paper, to demystify the process of novel writing so that they can finally go from saying “someday” to having a real draft in their hands to work on. For others, it’s this year’s (or this season’s) way of powering through a slump, and reminding themselves that writing is always better than not writing, even if they have real doubts about the genius of this November’s project. For still others, it’s just one more month in the life of a writer, made up of thirty more days of keeping a schedule, meeting word-count goals, and getting stuff done. (We love those people. We admire them. We want to be them when we grow up, even though many of them are younger than us…) But whichever category you fall into, you have a big job ahead of you in the next month. And you probably have a life, involving other people, work and family, and pesky little chores like the need to eat, sleep, and bathe on a semi-regular basis. So how do you fit all of that and writing at least 50,000 words into only thirty days? It’s going to be tight–let me warn you about that right now. Last year was my first time doing the NaNo thing, and I can’t say that I found the experience relaxing. But I did find it incredibly rewarding. By the end of the four weeks I marked on my calendar, I had a first draft I loved, totaling 72,000 words. I had set and broken my own record for the most words I had ever written in one day multiple times. And I hadn’t given myself a single migraine. So, how should we do this? Everyone’s life is different, as are each person’s reactions to stress, so there’s a lot we each will have to figure out for ourselves. I will be writing along with you this NaNoWriMo, still a relative newcomer to this process myself, figuring out new tricks and tactics as I go. I can’t claim to have all the answers, but here are a few things I figured out along the way last year that really, really helped with my particular batch of challenges, obstacles, and excuses. 1) Find ways to get put your creative brain in gear. I used to think I had to be in the mood to write. I remember thinking (and probably saying–oh, the shame) things like “I can’t force myself to write; it has to happen naturally.” Ummm…yes, you can. For a start, if you want inspiration to strike, it helps to meet the muse half-way. I started writing during my last year of law school, when I was desperate for an escape from a career path I had begun to suspect was wrong for me. When the alternative was sorting out the intricacies of administrative law, thinking about writing felt like the ultimate mental vacation. I had trouble keeping my mind off writing. The thought of sitting down to work on my first novel was beyond exhilarating, and the ideas flowed like water. It’s funny, isn’t it, how quickly fun things begin to seem like work under the slightest pressure to do them? But all that excitement and inspiration is still in there somewhere. So, give it a chance. Sit down to it, clear away distractions, and think about your story. Think about your characters and what you love about them. Chances are, you’ll be hearing violins and getting dreamy eyes about the whole project again in short order. If it doesn’t happen right away, keep trying. Don’t make me get up on a ladder outside your house with a violin. That would be dangerous. And creepy. 2) Identify your distractions. To really clear the decks and get down to business, it helps to first identify the things most likely to make you turn away from your NaNo manuscript, and try to come up with ways of pushing the snooze button on them, at least temporarily. It’s obvious that you’re in danger of derailment when the phone rings while you’re writing, or someone suggests an ice cream run. But what harm could an innocent little thing like a web browser do, right? Don’t listen to that voice! Here’s my rule: I’m not actually “writing” unless the web browser and the email are closed. If they are open, I will turn to them every time I hit the slightest snag on the page, and the next thing I know, a solid hour of writing time has been whittled down to seventeen and a half minutes, divided in five useless installments. The rest of the hour has been gobbled up by deleting spam, and catching up on all those crucially important things that my google news gadget thinks I need to know about, like who got voted off whichever reality show last night. Do you want to write a novel, or don’t you? (The correct answer is “yes.”) Close the browser. Close the email. Close everything except the word processor you are using to write your novel. Turn off the radio and the TV. Your life demands enough multi-tasking as it is–don’t build in any more unnecessarily. 3) Don’t actually glue your butt to the chair. I’ve been known to say things like “I really need to glue my butt to the chair and get this done.” And I always mean it. Sort of. It’s true that good, old-fashioned, butt-in-chair time is usually necessary to productivity for writers. But it can have some unfortunate side effects, when done in excess. When you find body parts are starting to fall asleep, freeze up, or hurt, it may be a clue that you’ve been holding still for too long. For me, the ultimate example of this is when getting up from a long session at the keyboard brings on an immediately visible migraine aura. What I tried to combat this last November–and it seemed to actually work–was keeping a kitchen timer next to my computer, and setting it for one hour every time I sat down to work. Every time it went off, no matter what, I stopped writing wherever I was, got up and stretched thoroughly before getting back to work. If you have a favorite workout video, try the warm-up section for guidance on safe stretching and ways to get your blood flowing again. Taking your eyes off the screen now and then can be a good thing, too. An ophthalmologist once told me to reduce the risk of eye strain by taking frequent breaks from work at the computer, and letting my eyes focus at different distances–near, middle, far, then find a blank wall and look into infinity. So take a break on a regular basis. Drink some water. Run up and down the stairs a couple of times. Whatever works for you. Then get back to work. 4) Learn to squeeze an hour for all it’s worth! This used to be at the top of my list of excuses. “I only have an hour. It takes me almost that long to get in a groove. I can’t write anything worth reading in only one hour.” Ummm…yes, you can. This is another place where that one-hour timer can come in handy. The average day is full of so many things that require our attention, many of which we can’t in good conscience put off for the entire length of a 2 to 4,000-word workday. But you can put them off for an hour, can’t you? Let’s practice! The phone is ringing–what do you do? Tell yourself “if it’s really important, they’ll leave a voicemail.” Then, don’t check your voicemail! …until the timer goes off at the end of the hour. See how easy? Here’s another one: your smartphone is making that super-cute noise you picked as your email alert every five minutes, and you’re dying to know who’s emailing you. What do you do? Remind yourself that you will not actually die from this condition for at least an hour and a half, switch your phone to silent mode, and don’t check your email! …until the timer goes off at the end of the hour. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been working hard to develop the skills and stamina for this kind of serious procrastination for years. Now’s your chance to put it to good use! The point of this is not to shirk your non-writing-related responsibilities–just to find ways of keeping up with them while limiting their ability to intrude on your writing time, one hour at a time. If you can really focus only on writing for one whole hour, you will be amazed at how much you can get done. Better still, you’ll be eager to carve out one more hour to devote to writing. 5) Keep trying new things until you find the one that works for you. One of the best things about this experience for me last year was realizing that there isn’t only one way for me to approach writing, and that trying something new can be valuable, even if it doesn’t become my tried-and-true, one-and-only, swear-by-it, go-to method for producing a decent manuscript. I started my first novel writing very slowly and painstakingly, editing every sentence to within an inch of its life before moving on. Last fall, when I forced myself to draft quickly for the first time to meet my NaNoWriMo goals, I found that it allowed me to focus more on big-picture stuff like plot arc, and the rhythm of the novel as a whole. Of course word craft is always important, and I had a lot of self-editing to do at the end, but forcing myself to shift my priorities for the length of one project gave me the beginnings of some new insight I really needed about other aspects of my writing. I don’t know yet where my habits will settle out on this front, but it’s good to know that there’s more than one tool in the belt, and when to reach for each one. If you have trouble settling on a strategy that feels right for you, there are zillions of books out there about writing your novel in thirty days, sixty days, ninety days–you name it! Try leafing through a couple of them, and see if anything strikes a chord. 6) Remember, there is always December. And January. Okay, I’m probably not supposed to say this, but it’s true. It’s only an exercise. If you don’t meet your goals for the month, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe you were shooting for 60,000 words, and made it to 25,000. That’s great! Do you have any idea how many people there are out there who have thought about giving this a try and never gotten that far? Or never tried at all because they didn’t think they could? You wrote this month, however much you could manage, probably more than you otherwise would have, and that’s an accomplishment in and of itself. If you’re trying to build a career as a writer, you know that it is destined to be about much more than just one month. There will always be lean times in your writing. And your family, your relationships, your health, and your solvency will all need your attention along the way. If you come away from this November with a few more tricks up your sleeve for cramming some writing productivity into your busy schedule, then you’ve achieved something important, and gotten closer to your writing goals, and there is no downside to that. Okay–now it’s your turn! What are your favorite NaNoWriMo rituals? Any favorite tricks or strategies that help you through it? We want to hear them all! Post a comment below to join the discussion! |
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I first began writing romance as an escape while studying to become a lawyer. I started law school with good intentions, but felt uninspired by much of the substance of a standard legal education. As a result, I spent far too much of my time at law school staring out the window thinking about other things. By the time graduation rolled around, I knew that the law was not for me. So, four days before I was scheduled to take the bar exam, I jumped ship. Since then, I have written four novels, and toyed with two others, one of which I am actively working on now. I am a two-time Golden Heart® finalist (2009 & 2012) in single-title romantic suspense, and seem always to gravitate toward the dark side of a love story.
