Thanksgiving falls right in the thick of National Novel Writing Month. For every person who sees this as a blessing, someone else considers this a detriment to getting their novel done. I’m here to give you some tips so, no matter what your plans for the holiday are, you’ll be able to use your turkey time productively.
Being surrounded by friends and family is part of what the holidays are about, right? But how are you supposed to write with a house full of company? Or, if you’re the guest, how can you write in unfamiliar surroundings?
It’s nice to see family and friends but there’s always that point in the visit when you kind of wish everyone would just leave you alone for minute so you can write. If you can get away and lock yourself away to write for a little bit, great! But even if you can’t, there’s a few ways to use the holiday crowd to help you with your NaNoWriMo novel.
Tap into the cycle of bragging to give yourself extra motivation to finish
Tell your friends and family that you are writing a novel. Brag about it. Talk it up. You know why? Because then you’ll have extra motivation to finish or you’ll feel reeeeeeallly embarrassed when they ask you about it in December.
Which conversation would you rather be having when you next see these people?
- “Well, you see, grandma, I know I said I was writing a novel but… uh, yeah… about that…”
- “Thank you for asking after my novel! Well, yes, I’d love for you to read it! Proud of me? Aw shucks!”
Fear of looking stupid and shame are VERY powerful motivators.
Crowd source ideas when you get stuck
This can actually be a ton of fun. Stuck with what should happen next in your novel? Ask the assembled what they would do next. (You can do this even if you don’t let them know you’re writing a novel. Pretend it’s a random hypothetical situation.)
Surrounded by people by all sorts of walks of life and from different backgrounds, you’ll get some ideas you may never have thought of on your own. Also sometimes it makes for some great laughs. The younger members of the family especially love this game and sometimes they can give you the most creative ideas.
Soak up the atmosphere for characters and stories
Older relatives are full of stories and even if you’ve heard them a million times before, consider them this year with your writer’s hat on. Even a boring story or one told poorly is material for your novel. Not to mention that sometimes the interaction between family and friends who don’t often see each other can be fantastic potential for stories in and of itself.
The holidays throw several personalities together with often, ahem, novel results. Instead of plotting how you’d like to kill your mother in law for making a comment about your cooking AGAIN, can you channel that into your story? Does watching the unlikely friendship between your conservative grandfather and your lesbian cousin’s girlfriend seem like something you can use with your characters? Nothing you can make up can ever be as beautifully messy as the real interpersonal relationships you see come out at holidays.
What tips get you through the holidays?
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
