NaNoWriMo 2019 Prep- Week 2

Back to working at my daughter’s dance studio and it is one of my favorite places to write. I don’t have laundry calling me, the dishwasher is not in the next room waiting to be loaded or unloaded, and dinner (on the weeks I’ve REALLY got my stuff pulled together) is already made and ready to reheat for those at home or packed in my daughter’s dance bag. That means, on those precious nights, I’ve got nothing between me and those hours of her dancing but space to focus on my stories. And I strive to take full advantage of it.

I’ve found myself pulled to write out a lot of the ideas and work through my thoughts on the story I’m writing for NaNoWriMo in my journal.  This week I let myself write out the little vignettes that pulled at me, getting to know my main character and her sister better.  I created my Scrivener document for NaNoWriMo, which is something I did last year that I found very helpful.  I created a document and titled it NaNoWriMo 2019 and created a page for each day of the challenge.  I also created pages to hold any character or scene notes as I go along.  It’s a little thing that winds up being a huge thing in the long run of the challenge. It helps on those days in November (see pre and post-Thanksgiving activities) when I am struggling to get my word count, to have the least amount of barriers between myself and the words.  I’m also making my way through Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story through Action, Emotion, and Theme by Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld and hope to have it finished before November.  I will be using go-to book, one of my very favorite resources, Fast Fiction by Denise Jaden when I start doing some of the more in-depth planning.  I haven’t felt pulled to start that yet, so I’m not forcing it. But this story continually calls me like a siren song. The other morning I woke up with a scene in mind that I wound up writing as an email to myself before I even got out of bed so I wouldn’t forget the idea I had. I’m excited to keep figuring out where the characters and the story will go.

What are some of your favorite writing resource books? When you have a scene or story idea that catches you, how do you keep track of your notes? Do you keep a document on your phone or always write them down pen to paper or a combination of both?

Happy Writing!