Nano Lessons

There's a lot of chatter on the writing blogs I read when Nano rolls around--do you just end up with a bunch of crap? Is it actually useful? Etc. And now the blogs are asking: What did you learn this year from doing Nano?

The first year I did Nano I tried to create an actual complete story in 50 000 words. I didn't do that the next two times, because there are few books that are really that length--instead I write the first 50 000 words of a book and don't worry about getting to the end. I end up with something much more useful in the end--I end up with a dry run of my book.

The company I work for (like many) has a "pilot" period for any project it wants to roll out. I think they usually try the project in one or two stores first, and then roll it out to a larger group of pilot stores, and then roll in out in waves. And of course the point of being a pilot store is to find all the mistakes--because no matter how much you plan something out, there's no replacement for experience.

Nano is my pilot store. No matter how much I try to plot a book out, there are ideas I just can't come up with until I start writing. That's when I finally fill in the plotting holes, and try out my characters, and see who needs cutting, what scenes need revising, etc. For that reason I force myself to do zero editing on my Nano--it's a waste of time because the entire thing will get re-written.

So now I'm going to start up my "post-mortem" -- what worked, what didn't work, and how to fix. And hopefully I'll be ready for another draft in January or February.

Story of Me: In Memory

I just took a very short "Do you have ADD?" quiz, because I know someone who may have adult ADD and I'd like to learn more about it. This question made me laugh:


Because my foot was bouncing along to Sugarland as I was reading. And that happens even when there's no music on. (I also draw imaginary patterns with my feet.) Not saying this means I have ADD... I scored 27: "You appear to experiencing some type of attention and concentration problems which are often common amongst the general population, but border on the possibility of being more severe." There are a couple things on the list that are very me, and others that are very not me. But the ones that are Very Moi might help me understand this person I know better.

The main attention deficit I have is my poor short term memory. Someone will ask me for something at 4 in the afternoon, and I'll remember it at 3 AM. I've taken to carrying elastics around in my uniform pocket, and if someone asks me for something I put the elastic on my wrist til I do it. It works most of the time. I just wish I had a elastic with some code on it, so I could add a little info to the bracelet.


Something like this, but not for eating one's vegetables (though that's pretty clever.) It would have little symbols describing common requests I might forget: "Go to the cash office." "Edit the timesheet." "Call back Jane."