NaNoWriMo: Preparations, Part 1 (approach and tools)

As I discussed in my post on October 9, 2014, I have joined the National Novel Writing Month community this year. On November 1, I will begin writing my next novel. The goal is to write 50,000 words by November 30, ideally by writing about 1700 words each day. I usually write between 800 to 1400 per day, so I do not think putting the words on the screen will be difficult. Whether each day’s work is worthwhile is the greater challenge. This has to do with one’s approach to writing.
I have long thought of my writing as akin to sculpting. I first must choose a large marble chunk that I is about the right size, shape, and texture for what I wish to create: the genre, plot, theme, and meaning of the work. This is sometimes the most difficult part. Next, I begin chipping away at that amorphous mass, chunks fly off just get the general and rough shape I envision. This is getting the words down—it does not matter what it looks like right now as long as I get something to work with later.
The next stage is to refine the roughly shaped creation. I discover new seams and texture that I can explore and change, discard areas that proved not to fit as well as I thought, and perhaps even rethink the specifics of the complete project. This is the macro editing for story arcs, character development, and so on. The work becomes more and more focused as this process continues. At the end, there is the fine sanding and detailed polishing.
So, for me, the month of October is deciding and choosing the right stone, chiseling it out and getting it into place. The writing in November is to shape that stone into something that recognizably approximates final work as I envision it. I do not agonize too much over a word or a sentence or a plot turn, as one of my heroes, James Joyce. On November 30, the result will be rough, jagged, and perhaps misshapen. But I will have something to refine, to painstakingly shape the details, and to polish.
Of course, this approach means that I must have some general idea of what the end product will be. The type of marble, the basic outlines, its raison d’être from an artistic perspective. October is for devising themes, characters, and places, though these are can be malleable as the process continues.
I’ll share more about the preparatory work of the novel next week: its content, structure, characters, plotlines, and scenes. NaNoWriMo encourages that sort of preparation before the actual writing begins.
This post closes with a brief description of the major tools I am using for the preparation and the actual writing.
Scrivener from Literature & Latte. Many of you are familiar with this writing app. It has been a partner of NaNoWriMo for a couple of years now. I have been using it since it first beta around a decade ago. It is an excellent tool for the way I write: with outlines, scenes, a semi-Tunes style layout (before Mac OS X Yosemite). It serves for both outlines, card-style organization, scene-level and multiple-document level viewing, document and graphic storage, along with many options of categorizing, tagging, notating, and arranging your bits and pieces. It also has just about every export option you can imagine. It serves me for every stage of writing from gathering research, outlining, writing, editing, and final proofing and galleys for final printing. I use this for writing all my posts on spirituality and prayer blog, as well as on all fiction and nonfiction books I write. It is available for Mac and Windows.
Scapple from Literature & Latte. This is a more recent app, which I have also been using since it was in beta. It is a free-form mind-mapping/diagramming tool. I have used many of these, and for many years relied on OmniGraffle (a great program, but overkill for what I needed). The wonderful think about Scapple is how quickly you can start mind-mapping—not too much slower than writing by hand, and far more editable, of course. Available for Mac.
Aeon Timeline from ScribbleCode. This is a timeline app, and has features specifically designed for authors. It is easy to add events, flexible time-frames, grouping/categorizing of time arcs, tagging, and spans pre-history to the distance future. You can even design your own calendaring method (for you SF or fantasy authors), or even forgo dates and just use Day 1, Day 2, and so forth. It can also sync events with scenes/documents in Scrivener, which is wonderful. I made extensive use of this in my first novel, an historical fiction work that takes place in the first century Roman Empire. Available for Mac and Windows.
OmniFocus from OmniGroup. This is a project and task manager. I use it for all of my work and personal projects. I have been using it since it was in beta many many years ago. based on David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method of productivity, it goes beyond that and is flexible enough to use it how you wish. I find it the most detailed for the number of project, and kind of projects that I require. It is a fantastic program, and automatically syncs between my Macs, iPhone, and iPads. For the way I work, I wish there was a traditional calendar view with all tasks, and an automatic carryover for unfinished tasks. Available for Mac and iOS.
If you wish to join along and try writing your novel, NaNoWriMo is free to join. Click here for more. If you wish to subscribe to this blog, to follow along with me, enter your email address in the sidebar to the right.

Posts in this series

[box type=”bio”] We are pleased to publish this series of guest posts by Dr. Markus McDowell, an author and editor. He writes primarily nonfiction in the fields of law and religion, but we discovered that he has written fiction since he was 14 years old (but never published any). We convinced him to give NaNoWriMo a try, and to document the experience for us. Thank you, Dr. McDowell![/box]