Christchurch Writers' Guild

NaNo Prep 2012

Posted on October 26, 2012 Updated on December 12, 2012

We have less than a week until NaNoWriMo hits. I always love the first day of NaNo. We here in NZ get to start first, and we get the top spot on total words written for a few hours. How cool is that!?

This year I have decided that our trash room (aka spare room) should be better utilised, and needed to become my room: a reading and writing room!

So I set about clearing and cleaning, and here we are, three days later, my NaNo-ing space 🙂

Setting up the room as a writing room really made me think about what’s essential to me, and what isn’t. I don’t tend to use a desk, just my laptop on my knees. The key was that it had to be a comfortable space away from the pressures of life such as housework, and distractions of the lounge such as the toddler watching tv (valuable writing time). The other huge essential was an accessible spot for my mug, all set for drinking too much tea.

I love how nature meets literature in here. There’s frogs in the terrarium (on the right), and masses of books up on the dresser (on the left). With the window open right by the chair there’s bird noise and fresh air streaming in, and if I’d rather not have that then there’s a speaker set up on the dresser with my iPod handy.

I don’t want the room to become overwhelmed with paperwork, so there’s limited free surface area, but if I do need more then there’s a foldout table in the corner. I’ll peg up a few potential scenes to write on my noticeboard by the door so I have something to look to if I get stuck, and if I need to I’ll bring in my index cards which will have my characters, places and scenes on.

In the pantry I’ve got some Whittakers mini choc bars, and if I hit word count for the day I get one. I may place one next to my coaster each day so I’m driven to hit the 1667. Call it bribery or reward, either way it’s delicious.

I feel like I’m ready this year. The one thing I’ll be lacking is Time! Not much I can do about that. I’ll just have to chip away at the word count throughout the day rather than expect to get a block of time to get it done. (I also want some art on my walls, but I think that will have to wait until after November, though it’s not November yet and there’s still a few days open…)

As for the novel itself, it’s currently called Entangled Anecdotes. It’s mainstream-ish fiction, it’s set in Chch (NZ), and it’s not a new project but this is the first rework of it to make it into some kind of form similar to a novel. My 50k will all be new writing, rather than reworking scenes.

If you want to join in noveling pop over to nanowrimo.org

Good luck!

~Fran 😀