Last month I wrote about doing
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November, in which authors write a
50,000 novel. In a month. Thirty days. Yes, a whole book, or at least the start
of a bigger novel.
All over the world, writers
gathered up their notes, laptops, research, and set out on November 1 to begin
their newest endeavors. And I was right alongside them. I had just attended a
workshop on Scrivener the weekend before (if you haven’t heard of it, Scrivener
is an AMAZING software program for writing. I’m hooked on it now!), so I was
raring to go. I can set a target word count for the whole project – 50,000
words – and also a smaller target for sprinting (writing as much as you can in
a timed interval).
Oops, got off on a side tangent.
Back to NaNo. I did great writing for a week. I had a general idea of the
scenes I wanted, who the characters are, what the goals, motivation, and
conflict are for my hero and heroine.
Then this past weekend, I stalled.
Every word was a struggle.
So I went back to the basics. What’s my hero’s greatest fear? I used the Characters Fears worksheet
template on One Stop for Writers and dug deep into Nash, my hero. And I came away with something golden. A big fear he has, way down deep. (Thank
you, Angela, Becca, and Lee from OSFW!)
