With no plan, but with FIGJAM
As a NANOWRIMO senior (I think I’ve earned the right call myself this when I managed 4 years don’t you agree?) I come here again to share with you this roller coaster ride of an event.
How my NaNoWriMo went
As usual the experience has been exhilarating, I spent 2 hours every day on writing the book and I have to say- doing NaNoWriMo is the closest to being on a roller coaster ride while the roller coaster is on fire- and keeping your butt glued to a chair (or something else idk your writing habits).
You go in with adrenaline, fear and want mixed up inside you- then once you are sitting in you start thinking “was this a good idea?” and suddenly the answer doesn’t matter because whoa- you are already moving and the fire is coming close. So you just hold tight and feel the ride. It goes up and down and you are somehow both excited and scared shitless. Yup, exactly as the NaNoWriMo.
Picking up the month and showing up unprepared
I haven’t done my homework this year…
Each year I do NaNoWriMo in summer because I have more time and we have lower pressure at work and such.
So I “picked” July this year (it’s usually August). And the picking happened somehow like this:
I looked at the calendar (where I saw that yes I. planned on July the 1st I will start to do some soft prep work for the book, writing down the vibe and stuff and then August 1st I will start writing.
Well guess what - on 2th of July I looked at the calendar again and I said screw it and I just started writing (yes on 2nd, not even 1st like what is my brain doing).
So I came last minute, unprepared but with the excitement (enough for 4 people). And I started typing.
I feel like this year I was the least prepared because even on a third day I only had the vibes- I usually have at least an IDEA or something. But I just knew I want to write something 90s vibe-y, very gay and very magical.
So I did. And it was fun as hell.
Writing the book and finishing it
I had zero idea on what is going to be happening. I had one character which was a smudge at his best, no real characteristics visible at the time. But I showed up every day as one does for NaNoWriMo, I had days when I had to write 6k words because I was late, but I managed and on the day 30 of August the last words I typed were “the end”. Another amazing experience.
Now the book goes to rest with the others on my hard drive for a bit of brewing until I choose to resurrect it again when the right time comes.
USEFUL Stuff
The kids’ toothpaste trick
I also dig a bit deeper in this topic in this blog post.
I don’t remember where I read it but there was this probably Reddit thread about a person who could not make themselves to brush their teeth - and they realized it’s because of the toothpaste taste - so they started buying kids toothpaste and badadam solved (also a lot of kid stuff is great- books have dragons and magic, clothing has cute bright bold designs, biscuits are smaller, gummy bears and pasta is also smaller and cute wtf ).
Anyway back to the point - the more silly you make something the less your brain makes it an issue. I know at least with my brain I need to approach silently, silly and from the side so it doesn’t have time to catchup with the fact that we are going to do this big heavily structured thing.
The advice is: Write in purple (or any color you like) (you can check my writing tools unicorn setup in here).
Write in purple silly font. I picked Lora for two reasons- it’s easy on eyes AND Austin Kleon uses it on his website and his blog is probably the one I’ve spend the most time reading on in my whole internet history.
Arsenal
From the books my picks were:
“Story Genius” by Lisa Cron who is really talking well and in detail (with examples!) about how should authors proceed while they are writing their books.
Mostly if I would summarize this to one sentence it would be - “everything that happens must mean something to the main character” (impressive I can summarize a book in one sentence really).
No plot? No problem! (that the founder of NaNoWriMo wrote). Very useful, pep-talk in the beginning and then every week some advice.
From the YT videos:
From Abbie Emmons (if you are a person with ADHD, able to hyperfocus and thrive on examples I think you will like her videos (on double speed of course) - and if you are not but you like to write, watch it anyway.
Tools:
Okay so back to the tools- I’ve learnt just today about the tool Ellipsus which is so far good (I am writing this article in it). It hase nicer interface than Google Docs (which means for me they understood the assignemnt - I mean the theme “cotton candy”??) and they say it’s not scraping your writing for AI learning!
Google Docs (writing)
Even thought Ellipsus is nice and good, I feel like it has a bit issues with syncing. Also it doesn’t have its own phone app and you need go through web browser. I usually use all of my devices (4) for writing so… it’s a bit of an issue.
Scrivener (writing + organization)
Again the same sync / online issue. They say that you can get a dropbox, but then I have to pay for 2 licences for scrivener (it’s one time pay which is fine but damn…). But also none of the above mentioned apps has such a good structure of dividing the book (in google docs I use the outline but it’s a mess in the end). Also Scrivener has this cool option that you setup how much you want to write, and then the amount of words written is showing the amount from all the chapters… it’s really good. Damn I think I will buy it. It has a trial in case you wanna try.
Using FigJam is the most genius IDEA I ever had- it’s sort of basic- I am using Figma and FigJam daily, it’s my database and my thinking tool and design tool and I just… for some reason haven’t used it for other stuff. You know the PTSD from work and such. However now!
How I used FigJam for my story structure
The paper timeline
I first sat on a huge paper and created sort of a time line (because in my book there is time travel so it was very much needed) and then I snapped a pic and put it into the FigJam - where I added sticky notes for each story beat (and scene numbers - you need to read the Story genius and watch Abbie’s videos to understand this).
Adding the story beats and the romance layer
I did this somewhere around week 2-3 so it means I was already in half of the book at the time - which tbh I feel like was better because that way I actually had something to put in - I had a few scenes which were usable and meaningful and I had a rough idea about what happens next - on top of that circle (see below) I added another layer of sticky notes where I noted down the romance and the beats of that how it’s supposed to be happening.
Creating the scene cards
After I had this rough idea I created real scene cards- as Lisa Cron in Story Genius advises and I put in the real work she advises to do so. She also says to do this before you start writing. I did not. I maybe should have made it sooner because suddenly some stuff I wrote didn’t make sense (but I always tell myself the quote from Neil Gaiman that the first draft you just vomit random words on page and in the second draft you just make it look like it was supposed to happen that way and you reorganize it to look like there is a structure).
Wrap up
Overall it was a success as it usually is and now I am leaving my book to rest as I always do. Maybe one day I will publish one of them. Or all. Let’s see.
Enjoy your writing,
BB
