I’m trying to write a novel this month. It has been a wild experience. The things I’ve had to research, would make even the FBI gasp at my search history. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:

Typos Are God’s Gift to Writers

A few nights ago, I was writing about an ant colony and accidentally wrote the following:

The aunts were furious. Inside the aunt colony…

I noticed my mistake and was about to correct the sentence. Then I stopped myself. What if there really was an auntcolony? I thought. I kept on writing, and soon the following was born:

In the aunthole, three egg timers all chimed at once. It was nursing time. The aunts climbed off their sofas and waddled over to three different holes, set around the room. They peeked down into the lower chamber. It was a huge cavern, larger than a football stadium. Lamps lit the edges, casting a golden glow on the center of the cavern. The cavern was filled with rows upon rows of pink baby cradles. Inside each cradle, a baby aunt slept. The day was coming. Soon the baby aunts would be ready to leave their cradles, put on their pink dresses, and lay upon their sofas.

I went back and added an introduction, tying the aunts to my original sentence about ants:

Auntie Sherry stuck her head out of the aunthole. “We done it! The battle is ours! Look at those puny ants flee!” Her hair was striped red and black. Her eyes were flecked with the tribal colors. Pincers from dead ants stuck out of her hair. She was biting a lollipop.

Aunt Cherry stuck her arms out of the aunthole and pulled herself up out of the ground. “We’ll see about that. You can never know what those disgusting insects are planning!” Her cherry cheeks were painted red and black. Dead ant eyeballs glittered in her hair. She had a bag of toffees in one hand. Her jaw opened and closed forcefully as she chewed, spraying spittle in all directions.

Aunt Jerry just kept laying on the sofa in the aunthole, admiring her bloated reflection in a handmirror. “I told you so,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We won a long time ago. Wont you come back into the aunthole and bake some more cake for me?” Aunt Jerry’s teeth were stained red and black. In her right hand, she held a martini glass filled with jellied aunt larvae. She popped a spoonful of the delicacy into her mouth, rolled it around on her tongue, and then snapped her jaw shut. She gnashed the oozing larvae between her teeth.

The other two aunts let go of the ground and they fell back down into the aunthole with a plop. Their sofas were positioned underneath each hole. The three aunts looked at one another and began to cackle. They were short, no taller than three feet high, and had large overgrown heads. In all their eyes, the reflection of one thing shone – the center of the cavern, where Sarah’s gun sat smoking on a pedestal.

That’s much better than the original sentence about ants. It’s interesting. It’s strange. It makes me want a jellied-aunt-martini!

Lesson learned: Accidents happen. Embrace them. Take ideas from wherever you can find them. Cheat! Steal! Hell, even plagiarize if you have to! Use unexpected ideas as a pivot point, and worry about the legal implications later.

Write in Pairs

The extreme programming methodology calls for programming in pairs. Likewise, extreme writing works best if you have a partner. Without my writing-buddies, my reckless endeavor to write 50,000 words this month wouldn’t have gotten past day 1. We splurge on coffee together. We call each other frantically at 2AM, when our characters start acting up. Most importantly, we each know that we’re not just lone and crazy writers. (Okay, maybe we still are.)

Writing with friends reminds you that there are others out there, who are also mad enough to write a novel in one month. If they can do it, then so can you. More importantly, when the doctors come for you, you wont have to be locked up all alone! Now, go get some writing buddies!

Always Be Ready to Write

Carry a notebook or phone with you at all times. I take notes while laying in bed. I take notes on buses, in classes, and at the dinner table. I even jot down narrative as I walk towards my laptop.

Yes, it’s that important to me that no word gets lost or is forgotten. There might be something good in there. I can’t afford to miss that!

Make a Schedule and Keep To It!

I’m writing the novel as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), so that gives me one month to write 50,000 words. I need to write 1667 words a day. Even with a broken hard drive, I’ve barely fallen behind.

Okay, that’s a lie. But I wish I had been better about sticking to a schedule.