What year(s) did you participate in NaNoWriMo?
2009, 2010, 2011
Tell us if you won or not, and what you learned from the experience
Yes, I have won every single year that I’ve entered the contest. Interestingly, every year I’m over-confident going in, and write quite a lot on the first and second days. On day 10 I feel like I’ve used up my ideas. On day 15, I’m typically struggling and writing just to fill my daily word quota, all the while thinking, “Why did I undertake this?” or “This sucks” or “I don’t think I want to write this story any longer.” Every year it takes some severe soul-searching (and reaching for every last personal and creative resource) before there comes a moment when I understand what the novel is really about… and then I write feverishly to the end, usually catching up fast for any deficit of words. Sometimes that has started to happen on day 20; sometimes on the 25th. But if I hadn’t continued to “clock in” every day to add to the word count, I would never have crossed the finish line on the last day. (And then, of course, had a first draft to start polishing within a couple of weeks of the end of NaNoWriMo.)
What specific advice do you have for someone attempting NaNoWriMo?
As a yoga teacher and as a writer who’s completed several NaNoWriMo novels, here are my suggestions for peak performance, from most important to least important:
1. Sleep well. Sleep better and longer than usual. Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, allocate more time for sleep and you’ll find your brain not only less fuzzy but also filled with the sometimes surprisingly good ideas arising from that helpful co-writer, your subconscious. And yes, the premise of NaNoWriMo is that you’re writing a novel in addition to the million other things you’re doing in your daily life; and how can you do those, write the requisite 1700 words a day or so and allocate more time for sleep? Part of what a focused endeavor like this does is force you to live a more mindful life. You have to make moment-to-moment choices in terms of your time and activities; and maybe, just maybe, that level of greater consciousness might mean that paradoxically, you actually have more time in your day. Use that extra time not just to write in a balanced fashion; use it to sleep well.
2. Watch your posture. Sitting in a position that only after a few hours is noticeably uncomfortable is a sure way to make you tired, diminish your concentration and literary output and start a subtle association between exertion and your writing endeavors. It doesn’t have to be that way. Change positions often, play around with standing while writing (a la Hemingway), use an inflatable ball as your chair, switch things around with a posturepedic chair or just be sure to stand every ten minutes, even if for a couple of seconds, to reset your sense of how you’re breathing and how you’re positioning your body relative to your writing tool. Double all these suggestions if you’re using a laptop.
3. Get extra exercise everyday. The level of endorphins, physical energy, and ideas generated will make the time spent exercising a worthwhile, productive side endeavor. Dance, walk, run, swim, lift weights, do yoga – whatever gets your body physically balanced. No time to exercise? Forfeit cars, elevators, any form of motorized transportation that you can avoid. Sure, it takes 30 minutes to walk someplace that you could drive to in ten (if you figure parking and traffic lights in the equation), but by walking, have you lost 30 minutes or gained 10? I think of it in terms of the latter. If you already exercise daily or almost daily, congratulations. Don’t let it lapse: stick with it to derive even greater benefits than usual.
4. Eat well. Easier said than done, right? In the midst of adding a new thing into our lives, where do we find the time for anything other than take-out or frozen dinners? I’m the first one to concede that there’s nothing like the convenience of both of those, but it’s not “brain food” – stuff that nourishes both your body and your mental acuity. The solution? Make your own take-out. Once a week (especially during those times when your plot seems to go nowhere, or your characters are in mutiny against your well-crafted plan) cook a large batch of several dishes, package them, and make it simple for you to reach into the fridge and grab something that nourishes you. Junk food tends to be consumed first perhaps more on the basis of the convenience than their junky-ness; so make it convenient to eat good, tasty, balanced, whole-food items that nourish you and your creativity… and require no more effort than the less beneficial food.
5. Speaking of junk food… It’s easy to go overboard on the treats. If it’s hard to break the habit of reaching for something whenever you get to the point in the story where things seem flat, consider switching the sugary, carb-full treat for vegetables. It’s mindless eating, right? Since you’re mindless here, might as well make it mindlessly good for you. Or just get up and go do those other tasks from daily life and then come back (more in point 8 below).
6. Stay off the coffee. Sure, it may give you the necessary buzz to crank out a few extra hundred words, but coffee ultimately dehydrates you and takes its toll on your adrenals and the rest of your system. I’m not suggesting you quit coffee during NaNoWriMo, just that you don’t lean on it. If it’s a caffeine lift you’re after, try green tea instead – it’ll be easier on you and also give you a boost in the free-radical fighting department.
7. Restrict your media intake. You are breathing the rarefied air of the world your characters inhabit. News, TV, email, Twitter, Facebook updates and the like may be fun and entertaining, but they also split off your creative energy and crowd out the part of your brain where your characters live and develop. Each writer is different, of course, so this suggestion could not only not apply to you but be counterproductive if you’re the rare writer whose creative style thrives on overstimulation. But you might err on the side of less media, or being very specific about which media you choose, in order to give breathing space for your characters to develop. Creative media, on the other hand, may help to stimulate the imagination. The right music, the right visuals, the right book that you’re also reading, can be a source of what Julia Cameron, in her fantastic book The Artist’s Way, calls “adding to the well of creativity” – so we’re not just drawing out of the well, but also putting into it.
8. Find compatible and complementary activities for writing. Yes, dinner needs to be cooked, or the laundry needs to be done, or your child’s diapers need to be changed. Fantastic. Let the story and the characters continue to brew in your head as you take care of life’s details and then come back to where you were. Frequent mini-breaks can let your subconscious do the work for you. The key is to find compatible activities. For instance, for me getting lost in Wikipedia is not compatible with my writing: just like other media in the above point, it crowds out my creative impulses and tends to put me in a passive “entertain me” mode rather than the active involvement that creating requires. So the question is to welcome “no brainer” activities from your daily living that permit the story to continue to write itself in the background of your awareness so when you return to the keyboard, you have new things to say.
9. Other “take good care of your writer” areas include… drinking plenty of water while writing (it’ll keep you and your brain hydrated and will force you to change posture every now and then by running to the bathroom); using a neti pot on a daily basis (it’ll keep you breathing better and hence give you greater mental focus); eating a higher protein to carbohydrate ratio (it’ll keep you more alert and less prone to get the post-meal lazies); meditating (it’ll clear your mind and relax your eyes); and not making the novel-writing endeavor your be-all and end-all for the month: yes, you can get there, but with a mix of your other responsibilities, enjoying your friends, other good books, and life in general.
Does this sound like a lot to do on top of writing a novel (and leading your regular life)? Maybe. Do as many as you think you can incorporate with balance. But writing a novel in a month whether you’re doing it as part of NaNoWriMo or on your own, is the Olympics of Literature, and you’ve got to keep yourself fit in every area in order to get the necessary edge to compete and win.
Except in this case, it’s a competition against yourself, against a deadline, and against a specific word count.
In your opinion who do you think is a good fit to do the challenge and who is is *not* for.
Everyone can do it. But you need to be strategic about it and realize that you’re a better writer when you take better care of yourself.
Author Bio:
Ricardo das Neves is a screenwriter, novelist, and yoga teacher. At the tender age of 18 months he hinted his desire to be a writer when he reached for his father’s fountain pen and inkwell… And spilled the inkwell. The huge blotch he left on the table may be the only lasting mark he leaves on the planet.
Three years later he foreshadowed his lifelong spiritual quest when he demanded to know who this God person was… and has been fine-tuning the answers he got ever since.
In the interim years his talents have come to straddle the world of writing and the world of yoga. He’s a graduate of the University of Washington’s screenwriting program and has seven screenplays to his credit. He’s also the author of five novels blending spirituality and his own brand of quirky humor, and has published over thirty articles on humor, spirituality, and yoga. His most recent book is a light-hearted look at the world of yoga with Unenlightened: Confessions of an Irreverent Yoga Teacher. (www.UnenlightenedBook.com)
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