My NaNoWriMo novel this year was inspired by an idea posted by roefactor on last year’s NaNoWriMo “Adopt-a-Plot” thread:

What if everyone started living the same day over and over again, but, unlike most situations, everyone knew about it?

I’ve adapted this marvelous idea slightly:

On August 10, 2008 at 2:39 am GMT, the universe reverts to the state it was in on August 8 at 9:28 pm GMT. Then on August 10, it happens again. And again. The universe is stuck in time loop that lasts 29 hours 11 minutes. Only one thing transcends the resets: consciousness. People retain their memories through the time loops.

That’s nearly all I have to start with. I currently have no plot and no characters. I do have a scene or two in mind to get my fingers moving. And I’m starting to flesh out some of the social, political, scientific, and religious implications of the time loop. All of that speculation has yet to yield a single plot idea, but this is NaNoWriMo, so it’s okay if I have no idea what happens next.

A year after running away from home, twelve-year-old Jeremy Crowther returns to resume the life he left behind. But when nobody recognizes him—not his mother, not his brother and sister, not his best friend—when even the physical evidence denies that he ever existed, what life is left for Jeremy to return to?

That’s the premise behind Jeremy Comes Home, my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I start writing tonight at midnight, along with a mixed metaphor of other enthusiastic NaNoers at a cafe in Dixon, CA.

I got the germ for this novel while sitting in a theater in Berkeley on October 2. Some writer friends and I were listening to Neil Gaiman read some of his short stories from Fragile Things. One of the stories, “October in the Chair,” was partly about a boy who had run away from home. As I listened, I had the thought, what if he went home and his mother didn’t know who he was? And a plot was born.

[Update November 1] You can track my progress on the NaNoWriMo progress sheet. Yes, my user ID on the NaNoWriMo web site is Bleen Booley.

50,074!!!

My progress on DaNoFiWriMo through October 28, 2006:

This week I wrote more words than I expected for each topic. I also wrote less coherently. During the first two weeks I usually had some idea of what I wanted to say about a topic. This week my writing was more of a brain dump. It will be interesting to see what it’s like to edit this week’s writing.

I drew mind maps for two big topics: how relationships affect resistance, and how context or environmental factors affect resistance. The mind maps give me plenty to write about—probably several days worth of writing for each topic.

I didn’t expect to write last night. I expected to rest for a class I’m teaching with Elisabeth Hendrickson. But at 10pm I got the itch to write. I ended up writing 2200 words in an hour and a half, and got too little sleep. I’m taking tonight off to get some well-earned rest.

Here are some thoughts from my second week of DaNoFiWriMo, my project to draft a 50,000 word non-fiction book in a month.

New word processor. I’ve switched to a new word processor called Rough Draft, which my writer friend Jennifer recommended. The thing I like most about Rough Draft is its simplicity. For what I’m doing, I don’t need styles, tables, diagrams, or change tracking. I may want those features later as I edit my rough draft into a smoother draft. For now, I need to type words, emphasize words, highlight words (to mark them as notes to myself), and count words. Rough Draft does all of that simply and cleanly, with few bells and whistles.

Rough Draft does have one distinguishing feature (either a whistle or a bell, I’m not sure which) that I’ve quickly come to rely on. For each file that you open, Rough Draft attaches a notepad, a simple text file in which you can type notes. Rough Draft displays the notepad as a narrow panel to the right of the main editing window. I’m finding this very handy, because it supports the spiral method that is central to the way I write. As I write about a topic, I think of other ideas that I want to write about, or questions that I want to answer, before I close the topic. I simply click on the notepad, jot a note, and go back to what I was writing. As I finish writing a thought, I check the notepad, grab an idea to write next, write it, and delete the note from the notepad. When the notepad is empty, I’m done writing that section. The notepad works as a high-priority list of micro-ideas. Very, very nice.

Version control and backups. Something I forgot to mention last week, probably because I was focusing on what was new in my writing process, is that I use a version control system to protect my files. I’m partial to the Tortoise SVN system, because it integrates nicely with the Windows file system. When I finish a writing session, I right click in my writing folder and commit my new material to a repository for safekeeping. Though Tortoise SVN takes a little bit of technical savvy, I highly recommend it for writers.

For greater protection I use EMC’s Retrospect, which automatically backs up my files to a separate hard drive every day at 5am.

Depleting the high energy queue. Several times this week I depleted high energy queue. It’s pretty slim right now. Scary. But so far I’ve been able to find something to write about every day.

Bigger topics. I never know how many words I’m going to write about each topic. Most end up in the 300–800 word range, similar to my blog posts. This week I found a few topics about which I had more to say. A few topics went to several thousand words each. I love when that happens.

One of those topics was definitions of resistance. Another was, more or less, why we don’t do the things we “know” we ought to do. Lots of people have asked me about that over the years, and when I finally started writing about it, I got four or five thousand words from the topic. And I’m not done yet. The scare quotes around “know” are a clue to my ideas on the topic.

Obsessed with word count. I long ago developed the habit of typing CTRL-S into whatever editor or word processor I’m using. I want to make sure my words are saved onto my hard drive. Every time I pause in my writing, I type CTRL-S without thinking about it. (Like just then.) I’ve now developed another habit for this book: Typing CTRL-W to display my word count. I’m obsessed with my word count.

When my word count for the day reaches about 1100, my energy really picks up. It feels as if I’m in the home stretch, and I can see the finish line just ahead. Very motivating. And most of the time my energy carries me a few hundred words past my daily goal. Which brings me to another topic…

Building a buffer. As I exceed my word goal each day, I start to build a buffer of “excess” words, so that if I miss a daily goal I’m still on target for the month. My buffer at the moment is about 2600 words, about a day and two thirds worth of writing. I’m hoping to increase the buffer to 3 days, because I’ll be teaching a class with Elisabeth Hendrickson next week and may not write much during those three days. (On the other hand, the class will probably give me a lot of fodder for the book, so I may write more instead of less.)

The Fieldstone Method. As I was writing about energy last week it didn’t occur to me (duh!) that I am using Jerry Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method to write this book. The central element of the Fieldstone Method is energy. As Jerry says in Weinberg on Writing, “That’s the secret of the Fieldstone Method: Always be guided by emotional responses or, as Fieldstone writers say, by the energy.” I’ve attended three of Jerry’s writing workshops, and each time come away with new ideas and new enthusiasm for my writing. The Fieldstone Method is all about energy, and that’s how I’ve been focusing my work each day.

Johanna Rothman blogged about her current writing project. She’s writing a chapter at a time, and as she finishes drafting each chapter she sends it to her editor for review. It occurred to me that I’m not writing chapters yet. I don’t know the structure of my book. Instead, I’m writing “fieldstones.” Each fieldstone is single idea for which I have some energy. Later I’ll use some of organizing ideas from Jerry’s Fieldstone Method to create (or find) a structure for the book, and revise the fieldstones to work within that structure. But for now my focus is: One fieldstone at a time.

Waiting for the muse. Nearly every day I use an old, familiar pattern of mine: I wait for the muse to inspire me before I sit down to write. And nearly every day I find that my muse doesn’t work that way. Instead, as Madeline L’Engle says, “Inspiration usually comes during the work, rather than before it.”

Multiple projects. I’m planning to write a novel next month as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This week I’ve started to flesh out the characters and plot for the novel. That gives me something to do when I want to write but don’t have the energy for the resistance book. I find that after a half-hour or so of work on the novel I am fully into a writing mood and can use some of that energy for the resistance book.

Also, I’m finishing up the design for a workshop on power, which I’ll be presenting at the AYE Conference in a few weeks. It’s just dawned on me that if I’m stuck on the resistance book I can write a few fieldstones about power (maybe for another book for later). As with plotting the novel, writing about power will put me into a writing mood, which I can then redirect toward the resistance book. And of course power and resistance are closely related, so writing about power will trigger new ideas about resistance.

I’m learning about my writing process, and improving it, as I progress on DaNoFiWriMo, my project to draft a 50,000 word non-fiction book in a month.

The most surprising thing I’m learning is that my only real writing challenge is managing my energy. As I decide what to write next, if I pick an idea that I have a lot of energy for, I can quickly write 500 or 1000 words. If I pick a low energy idea, I slowly write 80 words, then discover that the towels in the linen closet desperately need to be rearranged. Unfortunately, rearranging the towels doesn’t add to my word count, so I’ve been working on ways to keep my energy up.

Two factors seem to drive my energy: Keeping a short list of high energy topics, and receiving support from my friends.

Since 1993 I’ve been keeping notes about any topics that interest me. I’ve jotted notes on index cards, note pads, scraps of paper, and paper tablecloths from restaurants. Nowadays I use a small Moleskine notebook that I carry everywhere I go. I highlight the books I read. In the car I take notes and even “highlight” audiobooks using an Olympus DM-10 digital recorder. And I have two dozen hour-long microcassettes full of notes that I recorded before I bought the DM-10. I’ve transcribed most of those recorded notes into text files on my computer.

Naturally, these notes have been invaluable as I draft my book. When I’m stuck on a topic, I open X1, type a few keywords, and scan the notes I’ve made about the topic. It’s likely that I’ve already thought about it (repeatedly), and made notes of my thoughts.

To track my ideas for the book, I’m using EverNote, a wonderful, simple program for writing, storing, categorizing, and searching notes. As I think of ideas, and as I gather notes from my files, I copy each into EverNote and categorize it according to the topics that the note is about.

I also tag each note with a status, such as To Do or Drafted. For the first few days of DaNoFiWriMo, whenever I finished writing about a topic I would scan my To Do notes for another. As my EverNote file grew—it now has 194 distinct ideas to write about—I had a harder time choosing the next topic. I found myself reading and re-reading topics that I didn’t have the energy for right now.

That gave me an idea. I added a new tag called High Energy. Whenever I make a note that I have High Energy for, I tag it. Then when I’m looking for the next topic to write, I look first at the High Energy topics. One of them usually grabs my attention, and I dive in and write about it.

Sometimes as I’m adding a note to a particular topic, the new note combines with existing ones so that the topic reaches critical mass and I suddenly have more energy for it. When that happens, I tag some of that topic’s old notes as High Energy.

One of the keys to energy seems to be keeping my High Energy list short. The list now has 18 items, which is a little larger than I can scan quickly. I may have to drop some items and keep the list to a dozen items or so.

My energy for each topic comes and goes. Just because I marked a topic as High Energy yesterday, or this morning, or twenty minutes ago, that doesn’t mean I’ll have energy for it now. Sometimes I scan through my High Energy topics and don’t feel like writing about any of them. Now what do I write about?

I created a “Jiggler File” to help with that The Jiggler File is a file of ideas for remembering or creating ideas. Whenever my I can’t find anything I want to write about in my EverNote file, I open up my Jiggler File and give myself a jiggle.

Here’s my current Jiggler File:

• 60000 words about resistance. (This is a file I started in 1997 with a goal to write 60,000 words about resistance. I wrote about 15,000 words before fizzling out.)
• Quick takes on resistance. (A list of about 70 principles I’ve learned or invented for responding to resistance.)
• Recorded notes. (Notes I’ve taken on every topic under the sun, and on every writing medium under the sun, since 1993.)
• Highlighted passages. (Passages that I highlighted as I read books.)
• Flip book. (My “flip book” is a spiral-bound book of index cards, and on each card I’ve described a model of some aspect of being human and relating to other people. If I’m stuck for ideas on a given topic—resistance, for example—I can open my flip book to any page, and ask “How does this relate to resistance?” This always gives me fresh ideas.)
• Mind map. (Fire up MindManager and spew a mind map of whatever connections pop into my head.)
• Reasons to; reasons not to; examples of resistance. (A list of examples of resistance, and lists of reasons people have given for doing or not doing something that someone else has requested. I’ve collected hundreds of each during my resistance presentations and workshops over the past 10 years.)
• Presentations. (PowerPoint slides from my presentations about resistance.)
• Make up a story. (If I have a principle but can’t remember the story the led to it, make up a story. This will get me writing, and I can find a real story later.)

So far I haven’t used the last three jigglers. And I haven’t exhausted the ideas from the other jigglers. I’m in no danger of running out of things to write about.

One condition I’ve placed on DaNoFiWriMo is not to use ideas I’ve already written about. In addition to writing directly about “Resistance as a Resource“, I’ve also written popular articles about the closely related topics of communication and change. And I’ve written dozens of blog articles about resistance, communicating, relating, power, and related topics. My choice not to use any of what I’ve written in those articles has been marvelously motivating. It means that when I’m done writing 50,000 words this month, I also have tens of thousands of words of additional material that I can add to the book.

In addition to tagging my notes with topics and status, I also tag it with an indication of… I don’t know what to call this… some sort of rhetorical category. What kind of idea is this? Some ideas are stories. Others are principles. Some are models. Others are definitions, quotations, or procedures.

Somewhere around day 4 I noticed something horrifying. Though the large majority of my notes are principles (110 of my 194 notes), I have very little energy for writing about a principle unless I have a story to go with it. When I remember a story about some aspect of resistance, the words flow easily. And once I’ve written the story, I can describe the principle easily and clearly. But when I start with a principle and try to write about it, I suddenly feel constricted.

The notes I’ve taken over the years are largely notes about principles. When something interesting happens, I tend to summarize it into a principle, and then forget the details of the story. I’ve noticed this when I do classes. People ask me to give examples of the ideas I’m talking about, and often I can’t remember an example. I can see that I’m going to have to change the way I take notes. In addition to writing down the lessons I’m learning from some experience, in the future I will want to write the story of the experience.

Another big lesson (though not a new one for me) is that the support of my friends means a great deal to me. My first sign of support was from a very bright friend who, 12 minutes after I announced DaNoFiWriMo, wrote to tell me that he too would write a book in October, a book he’d been thinking of writing for a long time. He sends me (and other writer friends) daily progress reports, and seeing his progress always gives me a boost of energy. Thank you, as-yet-unnamed author friend!

Second, several people responded to my request for questions about resistance, and several others have talked to me in private about some of their puzzles about resistance. I always have more energy to write when I know that real people care about what Im writing about. Thank you, Richard, Doris, and Elisabeth!

Third, when I complained to a fiction-writing friend that I don’t remember the stories that led to some of the ideas I’m writing about, she said, “Why not make up a story?” Aha! That would get me writing, and I could find a “true” story later. Thank you, Melinda!

Fourth, a number of colleagues I admire, and who have recently published books of their own, wrote to cheer me on. Thank you, Johanna and Dwayne!

And last but not least: That fracking public commitment I made keeps me going when I want to bail out after writing 900 words each day. Thank you, younger Dale!

Perhaps the biggest lesson of DaNoFiWriMo is that I’m learning how to manage my energy, and that in itself is energizing me.

Several years ago, Chris Baty and some of his insane friends created the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Many people use the month to create what Anne Lamott calls “a shitty first draft,” and then use the following year to rewrite the draft into a passable novel.

This year I want to do something similar, but with non-fiction. I’m tempted to call it NaNoFiWriMo, or National Non-Fiction Writing Month, but I’m refraining for two reasons. First, at least two other people already thought of that. Second, I don’t care whether this goes national; I’m doing it for myself.

So I’m calling it Dale’s Non-Fiction Writing Month, or DaNoFiWriMo. I’ve chosen October for my first DaNoFiWriMo, because for the first time in years I have a whole month with no scheduled training or consulting.

Part of the NaNoWriMo process is making a public commitment. I hate that. But I hate it less now than I will three days from now, so here goes: I will write a 50,000 word draft of a non-fiction book in October, 2006. I’ll let you guess the topic.

Do we still switch to standard time in October? I could use the extra hour.

[Update October 27, 2006]
Daily DaNoFiWriMo Progress Report

Lessons Learned from Week One

Lessons Learned from Week Two

Lessons Learned from Week Three