Free No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

And know that claiming a deduction, especially deducting a home office, does increase your chances of being audited by a percentage point or two.
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QUIRKY PLACES
    For twenty-eight-year-old Carolyn Lawrence, a two-time NaNoWriMo winner from Atlanta, the gym emerged as a surprisingly productive place to get work done.
    “Treadmills always get my creative juices flowing,” she says, laughing. “Though most of the members of the gym now think that there is something seriously wrong with me, because I talked my plot out loud to myself while working out, all while I was wearing my headphones.”
    However questionable the results can sometimes be, one of the joys of the noveling journey is applying your creativity to some conventionally uncreative spaces. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and your tight deadline will transform formerly inert waystations into magical writing hubs. Take advantage of off-beat spaces; they can be a great way to keep your word-count high and your imagination stoked.
    Oakland’s Tim Lohnes, the come-from-behind writer from chapter two, swears by cheap motel rooms as productive places to get writing done (he uses the Web to book last-minute hotel rooms in out-ofthe-way suburbs). A more intoxicating option is to write in your neighborhood pub. Two-time NaNoWriMo winner Amy Probst, thirty-six, of Detroit, Michigan, likes to drag her writing group to a local watering hole called the Senate.
    Amy reports: “My fellow Detroit WriMos and I are fond of putting a mess of quarters in the jukebox down at the Senate for mandatory writing until the music stops. It’s good for inspiration. The bar has also provided us with incredible characters and dialogue from the regulars.”
    I’ve had similar luck with a brewpub in Oakland. Located next to the Oakland Convention Center, the place is a ghost town after the conventioneers head back to their hotels in the evening. While I was a little nervous to show up at a bar as part of a nerdy writing posse (complete with computers), the staff turned out to be all too glad to have us there.
    “It’s the laptop people!” one waitress would eventually call excitedly whenever we came in. We did get some strange looks from regulars at times, but mostly we were happily left alone to stare intently at our laptop screens while sipping our Guinness.
    If you’re looking for a truly anything-goes bar environment, try a hotel bar lounge. The stomping grounds of perpetually overworked (and perpetually working) business travelers, hotel bars are laptopfriendly, open late, and offer novelists a front-row seat on the kinds of activities that have filled great novels for centuries: nefarious deals, shady alliances, and steamy, illicit affairs—all accompanied by the salty perk of free cocktail nuts.
    -------------------THE WONDERS OF COFFEE
    Ah, sweet caffeine. If you ever needed any proof that coffee was the wonder drug for novelists everywhere, you won’t after next month. Whether you French press it, filter brew it, or buy it in steaming cups from your neighborhood coffeemoger, you will be thankful you have buckets of the bean on hand during your noveling adventure.
    Scientists who have studied caffeine’s effects on humans have discovered that the drug only takes a few minutes to spread to nearly every cell in the body. It’s also a natural antidepressant, elevating moods for up to eight hours per cup. And coffee contains antioxidants whose healthful effects rival those produced naturally by the body.
    Coffee’s history is a novel in its own right: The drink was first served in Ethiopia, where the leaves, not the beans, were brewed as a tea. Eventually the Yemenis got hold of the magic bean juice, and the coffee craze spread throughout the Arab world and beyond. Sort of. The Yemeni rulers forbade the export of unsterilized beans to the outside world, so supplies remained limited until Dutch traders absconded with a sapling in 1616, raising the