No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition

Google Maps is my best friend. You can move through the inside of the Palace of Versailles, or study the fallout zone of the Chernobyl explosion. Exquisitely simple and endlessly helpful!”

All words you write on your novel, no matter how misshapen or ill-advised, still represent crucial steps toward the 50,000-word finish line.

you do already have a sense of your plot, I recommend you spend as much time as possible “pitching” it to yourself before writing.

you do already have a sense of your plot, I recommend you spend as much t

Just focus on creating vivid, enjoyable characters, and a plot will unfold naturally from their actions. As I discovered the first time out, characters will eventually demand that certain actions be taken, and there’s something uniquely thrilling in that moment when you see them take charge.

If you do already have a sense of your plot, I recommend you spend as much time as possible “pitching” it to yourself before writing.

The lesson here is this: If you won’t enjoy reading it, you won’t enjoy writing it

“I churned out character biographies, world maps, and language keys,” says the one-time NaNoWriMo winner from Detroit. “I had developing cultures, societies, religions, hierarchical class structures—even regional clothing, genetic quirks, weapons, and customs.”

Some NaNoWriMo participants swear by an affordable machine called a Neo. This is a battery-powered word-processing device that looks like a cross between a laptop and a children’s Speak & Spell. The minuscule screen displays only four lines of text or so at a time, which can be helpful in warding off obsessive editing. The keyboard is large and comfortable, and you can work for up to 700 hours on two AA batteries.

From random graffiti to raccoon-shaped clouds to heavy-metal ballads on the radio, the natural world will be flinging so many novel-appropriate 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.