Free No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty Page A
Authors: Chris Baty
purloined plant’s offspring in Ceylon. Soon thereafter, the Dutch colonies of Java, Sumatra, and Bali were overflowing with coffee beans and java junkies the world over breathed a sigh of ecstatic relief. Over time, the destinies of Haiti, Brazil, and Guatemala have each been radically altered because of their connections to the crop, with the commodity bringing about everything from slave uprisings to political revolutions to utter economic collapse. All part of the rich legacy of brewed novelist-helper that you’re sipping today .
Bottoms up!
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THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Speaking of snacks! There are a few things you’ll need to purchase for your upcoming novelist travails. Like any good vacation, half the fun of writing a novel is getting properly outfitted. A month-long noveling trip requires a shopping spree every bit as enjoyable as a jaunt to the Bahamas. And if you pinch pennies, you can get all the high-tech gear, low-tech tools, and copious amounts of treats you’ll need for under $35.
The stuff you need falls neatly into two categories: things you can put in your mouth and things you shouldn’t. We’ll tackle the inedible writing tools first, and then move on to the essential snacks and drinks.
A NOTEBOOK
The universe loves novelists. During the novel-prep and book-writing period, you’ll watch, delighted, as the cosmos parts to reveal a rich vein of pilferable, copyright-free material explicitly for your noveling use.
A couple will sit down next to you on the bus and proceed to have an argument that you’ll use verbatim as a pivotal turning point in your character’s love life. Friends will tell a story about an embarrassing, misrouted email at work, and it will inspire an entire subplot. From random graffiti to raccoon-shaped clouds to heavy-metal ballads on the radio, the natural world will be flinging so many novelappropriate artifacts, phrases, and characters your way that the most difficult thing during your noveling month will not be finding inspiration but fending off an excess of it. Your notebook, the most powerful apparatus a novelist can own aside from a coffeemaker, is a bucket for catching the downpour of material the universe provides. The notebook you buy should be small enough to fit comfortably into a pocket or purse, and discreet enough for it to be wielded in public without arousing too much suspicion. Avoid brightly colored, spiral-bound notebooks, as they are prone to shedding pages and snagging on clothes.
A MAGICAL PEN
This is the peanut butter to your notebook’s jelly, and as with the notebook, it should be somewhere on your person at all times. When picking out your pen, you must be absolutely sure that you have found the right one. Don’t grab the first ballpoint that catches your eye in the office supply store. The magical pen will be both your conduit of mystery and a documenter of epiphanies. Getting the wrong pen for the job would be a disastrous start to the writing process. Try every pen available, writing phrases like
“I am an unstoppable writing dynamo” and “future bad-ass novelist” on the sample pads. After you do this for long enough, one pen candidate will rise above the rest. That enchanted implement is the one that has been slated to help you on your noveling journey.
If your workplace happens to have a broad array of pens on hand, you can save money (and a trip to the stationery store) by picking out a winner from the supply cabinet when no one’s looking. A WORD-PROCESSING DEVICE
This is the vast digital warehouse for your novel, and it will likely be the one thing on this list of musthaves that you already own. Because of their go-anywhere, can-do attitudes, laptop computers are the best tool for the job. If your laptop is somewhat past its prime, you can increase its usefulness as a noveling tool by ordering a new battery (or two) for it from online auction sites, such as Ebay. Some NaNoWriMo participants swear by an
Bottoms up!
--------------------
THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Speaking of snacks! There are a few things you’ll need to purchase for your upcoming novelist travails. Like any good vacation, half the fun of writing a novel is getting properly outfitted. A month-long noveling trip requires a shopping spree every bit as enjoyable as a jaunt to the Bahamas. And if you pinch pennies, you can get all the high-tech gear, low-tech tools, and copious amounts of treats you’ll need for under $35.
The stuff you need falls neatly into two categories: things you can put in your mouth and things you shouldn’t. We’ll tackle the inedible writing tools first, and then move on to the essential snacks and drinks.
A NOTEBOOK
The universe loves novelists. During the novel-prep and book-writing period, you’ll watch, delighted, as the cosmos parts to reveal a rich vein of pilferable, copyright-free material explicitly for your noveling use.
A couple will sit down next to you on the bus and proceed to have an argument that you’ll use verbatim as a pivotal turning point in your character’s love life. Friends will tell a story about an embarrassing, misrouted email at work, and it will inspire an entire subplot. From random graffiti to raccoon-shaped clouds to heavy-metal ballads on the radio, the natural world will be flinging so many novelappropriate artifacts, phrases, and characters your way that the most difficult thing during your noveling month will not be finding inspiration but fending off an excess of it. Your notebook, the most powerful apparatus a novelist can own aside from a coffeemaker, is a bucket for catching the downpour of material the universe provides. The notebook you buy should be small enough to fit comfortably into a pocket or purse, and discreet enough for it to be wielded in public without arousing too much suspicion. Avoid brightly colored, spiral-bound notebooks, as they are prone to shedding pages and snagging on clothes.
A MAGICAL PEN
This is the peanut butter to your notebook’s jelly, and as with the notebook, it should be somewhere on your person at all times. When picking out your pen, you must be absolutely sure that you have found the right one. Don’t grab the first ballpoint that catches your eye in the office supply store. The magical pen will be both your conduit of mystery and a documenter of epiphanies. Getting the wrong pen for the job would be a disastrous start to the writing process. Try every pen available, writing phrases like
“I am an unstoppable writing dynamo” and “future bad-ass novelist” on the sample pads. After you do this for long enough, one pen candidate will rise above the rest. That enchanted implement is the one that has been slated to help you on your noveling journey.
If your workplace happens to have a broad array of pens on hand, you can save money (and a trip to the stationery store) by picking out a winner from the supply cabinet when no one’s looking. A WORD-PROCESSING DEVICE
This is the vast digital warehouse for your novel, and it will likely be the one thing on this list of musthaves that you already own. Because of their go-anywhere, can-do attitudes, laptop computers are the best tool for the job. If your laptop is somewhat past its prime, you can increase its usefulness as a noveling tool by ordering a new battery (or two) for it from online auction sites, such as Ebay. Some NaNoWriMo participants swear by an
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