The Great #NaNoWriMo Heist
National Novel Writing Month is coming up (also known as #NaNoWriMo, and even more commonly known as “November”). The general idea is that for one dreary winter month, millions of writers on earth will all bang out a full novel (50,000 words) from beginning to end. It’s a nice idea. Agents hate it because they receive very bad drafts on December 1st (note to self, never query on December 1st). While I like the idea of starting and finishing a new book in a month, it would be more responsible for me to channel this sanctioned writing frenzy into my current novel. Instead of starting on page one, line one, watching the cursor blink on the blank page until Thanksgiving, I am going to work harder than ever on my current WIP for #NaNoWriMo. In essence, I’m staging a personal heist.
Why a heist? Because heists famously take elaborate plans to pull off.
Why do heists always take a whole team of people? I asked my partner if he thinks it’s possible to do a heist alone, and he said that would just be a robbery. Apparently a heist requires a plurality of participants. Therefore, I will be attributing human attributes to a number of inanimate objects that will help me carry out this heist:
Two different colored pens—The Brilliant Strategists. estranged siblings whose parents pitted them against each other relentlessly until they were both full of nervous tics and unexpressed anger. They are willing to come together for this job because of their love for me--the only person who truly accepted them for who they are.
One or more packs of index cards—The Muscle. These captive cards were born hungry. They never feel full even while eating and follow an innate urge to hunt even though they’ve never known the freedom of the wild.
Noise-cancelling headphones—The New Kid. They used to believe everything they heard until they started systemically blocking out all the fake news.
Floor—The Driver. Not as big as I’d like but thankfully not carpeted, this floor keeps me grounded in the best times, but now I’m going to put it to the ultimate test.
Here’s the plan.
(The real plan, not the plan that they tell readers at the start so that when it goes terribly wrong the reader is panicking for the characters but then it turns out that there was a second, better plan that involved lying to the reader’s stand-in (the new kid) so that there is incredible tension throughout the entire second act, but of course they were one step ahead the entire time because they had a secret real plan. That’s just good storytelling, but this is a blog post, not a story.)
Nope. Here’s the plan:
I’ve written about 30,000 words of a book that I think will be about 80,000-90,000 words in total. I have an outline. I did a story anatomy exercise (h/t The Anatomy of Story by John Truby). I know how I want it to end, more of less, and I have a sense of what is missing, but it’s messy. So I’m going to go through what I’ve written already and with ONE color of pen (Black Sharpie), I’ll write a summary of every written scene (not chapter, because if I break it down by scene then I’ll be able to move them in and out of chapters). Then with the second color pen (Blue Sharpie), I’ll go through my outline and my anatomy to write down scenes that I have yet to write. These summaries will be looser and less specific than the written ones, naturally.
Then I’ll spread the blue and black cards out on the Floor. I may have to move some furniture around. I’ll need to see the spread in all its glory. The big unknown variable here is that I do not know how many cards I’ll have at the end of the first exercise. I’ll put down the black ink cards first because they are already in an order in the document, but I’ll put spaces between them where I think blue/unwritten scenes will go.
Once I have it all displayed, the fun will begin. Noise cancelling headphones will come on. I’ll start moving the cards around. This is the creative part. This is the part of the heist movie when some kickass song will start and signal the kickass montage is about to begin. I keep thinking about Vincent Cassel in Ocean’s 12 dancing around laser beams to instrumental French hip hop (I looked it up: Le Caution’s “thé à la menthe”). One-man heist!!
I’ll take a picture of a couple of promising arrangements for posterity (and for the ‘gram). Add number the cards in the order I’m happy with. Then I’ll write the new best outline, inserting chapter breaks.
When #NaNoWriMo starts in earnest, I’ll have a little pile of blue inked cards beside me, and theoretically, I can bang out a scene or two a day and already know where they fit. I hope to come out of November with a completed first draft. Whew.
