Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Occupy Your Brain

20111019 typecast

Dictated to the italic 1958 Olympia SM3 Olympia SM3 badge, c1958


Cameron said...

All of my Muses and Guests are keeping a respectable distance from me at the moment.

The silence is deafening.

Either they are very, very afraid, or they're gonna kick my a** soon.

I wish you the best of luck with YOURS. ;-)

mpclemens said...

I think the first year is the toughest, because it's so foreign to any other experience -- when have you been asked to put quantity over creative quality? My advice is really do try to get into the zone of letting your characters "take over", even if that means going off on tangents and dead ends. And write Every Single Day. Making it a habit will get you through the leaner middle weeks, when the bloom is off the writing rose, and 50K seems so far away.

Art said...

Hey Muse, I've got a friend that will help you out and off that mr. inner editor. She did that to mine years ago and it was the best move ever made.

mpclemens said...

At the risk of sounding preachy (or even more preachy)...

You want to know the secret to beating NaNo? The secret to getting to that magical 50K plateau or beyond? Five simple words:


Banish the fear. Fear that you don't know the ending. Fear that you won't "win." Fear that it sucks. Fear that it's too personal or revealing or awful or whatever. Banish all of that, and write. Write about the weather outside if you can think of nothing else to do. Have a character yammer on about where they grew up. It doesn't have to make sense in the story, and you can always cut it later, but if you follow those magic five words, you will find a story there. It will be messy and strange and disorganized, but you can shape it... later. Right now, it's a lump of word-clay. For November, just focus on forming that lump, and pouring all your courage into a daily write, and you'll nail it with words to spare.