By Catherine Gregoire
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)—the
time when serious novelists get down to business and write an entire novel in
one month—is upon us. Writers from all around the world join together to take
on this ambitious challenge that gives them a reason (and no excuses!) to write
that book they’ve been dreaming, planning, outlining, and putting off.
 |
| Catherine Gregoire |
Writing
is a solitary exercise, but this collective challenge means you’re not alone. The Writer's Center will be here to encourage and spur you on with prompts from our novel
instructors, links to resources and excerpts from novels written by our
workshop participants. The Center will also follow, me, Catherine Gregoire, marketing and communications intern, during my own NaNoWriMo efforts to finish a novel
this month.
Don’t
miss all the great resources on Twitter #NaNoWriMo or the official program
webpage http://nanowrimo.org/. And please send us updates on your own progress,
ideas, and inspiration for others.
_____
To
kick off NaNoWriMo, I chatted with Susan Coll, leader the Novel Year
Program at The Writer’s Center. She has written several novels, including Acceptance and Beach
Week. Her
latest, The Stager, is a comedy of rabbits and real estate in the
D.C. suburbs. I
asked her how she works, what advice she has for novelists, and she gave us prompts to get
started during this special month.
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| Susan Coll |
Catherine Gregoire:
What inspired the story of your latest novel?
Susan Coll:
The inspiration for this novel was simple—before putting my house on the
market, I was advised to hire a professional home stager. Her task was to strip
the house of personality, to make it so that other families could envision
themselves living there. This struck me as a concept rich in metaphor: the way
we create illusions about how we live, with shiny facades meant to obscure the
dysfunction inside. I knew immediately that this would be my next novel. For
me, finding inspiration is generally easy; it’s the rest that is a challenge—developing
a plot and a cast of characters and making the story come alive.
CG:
How do you motivate yourself to keep writing?
SC:
I break it down into small chunks and force myself to do just a little bit each
day. Even if I’m only slapping 500 words a day onto the page, and even if they
are a total mess, I find that once the scaffolding is up, the process of going
back to fill in the pieces becomes more rewarding.
CG:
What advice can you share with those participating in NaNoWriMo?
SC:
Take the long view. Use the month to get as many words on the page as possible,
but then take all the time you need to polish. Sometimes it takes days to get a
thought or sentence just right, and it’s worth the effort. That’s the part that
you can’t do in a month.
_____
Feeling
the grips of writer’s block? Take some inspiration from Susan Coll’s novel
prompts:
Prompt
1:
Your
protagonist has just about hit rock bottom. Unemployed, broke, and jealous of
what she perceives to be the more perfect lives of her friends, she spends too
much time trolling social media, where she is a lurker, not a poster. One day
on Facebook an ad pops up. “Improve your life in ten easy steps. Money back
guaranteed!” This has to be a scam. She clicks on the link anyway.
Prompt
2:
Your
spouse, who works for the Homeland Security Agency, has been behaving
strangely. He has used duct tape to cover the lenses on all of the home
computers, has drawn the shades on all of the windows, and has insisted you
hand over your cell phone so that he can destroy it. Fortunately you left it at work. He does not
seem to be delusional, but nor do you believe there is any kind of actual
threat. And what are all of those papers that you have been trying not to
really notice in the trunk of his car? What’s going on with him?
_____
Take
advantage of this month of NaNoWriMo to set in motion your dream by penning
that next bestseller. Who knows, you could be stumbling upon something great,
something new, and something worth telling! We at The Writer’s Center wish you
happy writing!
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