Saturday, October 10, 2009

NaNoWriMo: Soon, My Precious, Soon




Smell that, Guild folk? That's the scent of National Novel Writing Month, right around the corner. Sure, it smells a little like jerky, pocky sticks, and spilled soft drinks--but isn't it great? Everyone here should know what NaNoWriMo is. If you don't know, refer to previous posts or go to www.NaNoWriMo.org. In fact, one of our active challenges involves NaNoWriMo. And, oh how I plan on tackling that challenge this coming week. I'm hoping this blog serves as a NaNo reminder to Guild members who might like to participate. I know Patricia, Kimmi, and I have already started preparing for our novel writing experience.

I've been trying to get myself inspired. I've written an Associated Content article on the challenge (well, not specifically, but on preparing for NaNo through background stories), and it should be up within a few days.

In the mean time, I thought I might suggest a few activities to keep you motivated while you write your outline for your NaNo novel:
  • You could begin to gather your music playlist for November (thanks, Patrica, for reminding me).
  • Aside from this, the more artistic guild members might want to think about drawing character sketches or gathering celebrity pictures to use as character references.
  • Also, NaNoWriMo has a place to upload your "cover page" under Novel Info, if you'd like to create one for fun.
  • Maps can be your friend. For fantasy writers, draw a map of the areas, blue print the buildings, decide where to place the mudmen in your bog, etc.
  • Make a banner for your novel and put it on your social networking sites or use it in your NaNo signature to advertise your story. Mine is above, obviously :D Here's where you can go to make your own:
http://www.bannersketch.com/index.php?pid=home
  • Make a YouTube trailer. Yeah, I've never made a video before, but this morning at about 2am, I woke up and decided that it would be a good idea. This was the result of that experiment (leave a comment, haha):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clsQpHabBD4

or the video below might also work. (Disclaimer: I do not own the music or the photos. Better disclaimer located on YouTube, haha.)







EDIT: Another thing to help prepare and motivate is a calendar. Check out these calendars made by folks in the NaNoWriMo forums:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3264274?page=1

No comments: