What follows is an excerpt from my recently completed NaNoWriMo novel draft, The Divide. The story takes place in the days immediately before and after the 2016 presidential election, and the national zeitgeist certainly seeps into the plot. However, the story is not about the election per se. It portrays a number of different people on both sides of the widening national divide, and the ways their lives are affected by change and growing instability.
Here, without further ado, is chapter 15 (of 37 chapters in the first draft). The book’s chapters are numbered rather than titled but if you’re a fan of heavily underscored irony, you could call this one “Jump for Trump.”
As a writer with a technology background, I find apps designed for writing of more than ordinary interest. I’ve tried a huge number of them and have quite a few still installed. For the 2016 edition of NaNoWriMo, however, I basically chose one app and stuck with it most of the way through: Ulysses.
Most of my writing is done on a MacBook Pro, although I also use Linux from time to time (Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13). The Mac has a huge number of writing apps available, more than any other platform. Scrivener and Ulysses are probably the best known and most widely used.
For NaNoWriMo, I found Ulysses to be virtually ideal. The chapter summaries (in the middle column) keep you oriented as you work through your plot development. Progress toward your daily word count is graphically shown in the upper right hand corner, which is quite motivating. The application is streamlined and powerful, but not overly complicated. It can be configured in any number of ways to suit your preferences (full-screen mode is especially nice).
Note the graphical word count widget in the upper right corner—when the circle completes and turns green, you’ve reached your daily target.
Linux, unfortunately, lacks the Mac’s variety of writing programs. Still, there are options. For two or three days last November, I used FocusWriter, a nicely designed and versatile open source program available across platforms. It too offers a nice full-screen mode and a daily word count progress indicator, albeit text-based.
Ultimately, though, I felt most comfortable and productive during NaNoWriMo while using Ulysses.
I’ve recently completed my first NaNoWriMo, winding up with a 50,000-plus-word draft of a novel I’ve tentatively titled The Divide. I found it a worthwhile endeavor in a number of different ways.
First, there is the event’s quantity-over-quality vibe that is designed to overcome writer’s block—it works. In fact, I found incorporating the production of 1,667 words into my daily routine much easier than I would have imagined. So much easier, in fact, that at the end of 30 days I found I had mild withdrawal symptoms.
Second, if you successfully complete NaNoWriMo you wind up with a large chunk of text that you can rework as you see fit. Of course, your rapidly produced November draft is bound to be somewhat uneven (although I think the relaxation fostered by the event actually produces some worthwhile results).
Reworking your rough draft is what the “Now What?” months of January and February are for, apparently. NaNoWriMo says it supports the revision and publishing process “with the added aim of helping you fulfill your novel’s potential: from first draft to final.”
If any of you have gone through the “Now What” process I’d love to hear from you, either via a comment or an email (write to tpletcher [at] writeside.com).
