Photo Credit: A6U571N (Flickr.com) Used under CCL
Chances are good that if you’re planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month, you’ve already got a good idea about what your novel’s plot is going to look like. In your mind, you’ve probably got some idea of what the finished product should look like, and you may have already imagined many of the most exciting elements of the story.
But after the first week of NaNoWriMo, it’s also pretty likely you’re going to find yourself panicking, wondering why things aren’t coming together on paper as well as they do in your head. You might even start to fear that you’re burning out creatively and that you’re really going to have trouble keeping this novel thing going for three more weeks.
The good news is that things won’t be as dire as they might look. In fact, the best thing you can do when you start to feel creatively depleted is to close your notebook, take a deep breath, and take a walk so you can recharge your batteries with some solid inspiration.
Here are five places you can go to find some new inspiration for your story.
1. Visit a college campus. One of the areas in which you’re most likely to get burned out will come with character development. Writing good characters is hard work, especially if your characters are too much like yourself. But if you start walking around a college campus and allow yourself to just sit back and observe the sights and sounds of students at work and play, you might be surprised how many ideas you get for shifting those characters in a new direction.
Student unions are often a great source of inspiration, because you’ll see students who are focused on their assignments, shutting out the world and attempting to get some work done sitting next to students who are just hanging out and probably procrastinating. The human interactions that occur in these instances can be quite intriguing. Libraries are also interesting, particularly when you can sit near a group working together on a project and listen to the way they speak to each other. There’s usually an interesting group dynamic at play, and often, someone with a strong personality dominating a group of people who don’t really care about the outcome of the work.
Campus quads are also rife with demonstrations, musicians and quad preachers who can be quite interesting to take in, particularly during the lunch hours. There’s often such a variety of activity that the juxtoposition itself is inspiring.
2. Go to a busy 24-hour diner during breakfast. Aside from fueling yourself with greasy food, a trip to a diner can really offer you some insight into folks you might not get to see every day. I always enjoy sitting at a booth in a diner and watching the people around me because the stories can be quite interesting. Some will be regulars who order the same thing every day, while others will be travelers on a trip or old friends meeting up for a meal. Some will be just getting a start to their day, while others might be ending theirs (sometimes in a walk of shame from the night before!). The dynamics of diner customers can be quite fascinating, and by simply observing what’s going on around you, it’s quite easy to find inspiration in the folks who will come and go for breakfast.
3. Go to a small town gathering. It’s a little hard to find fairs during November, but many small towns still have gatherings to celebrate Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving or Harvest. Don’t miss out on these gatherings; they often bring together an interesting mix of people whose interactions can be extremely interesting to watch, particularly if there’s a good mix of rural and urban people. Depending upon the event, you might also get to hear some really bad cover bands, or watch some parents losing arguments with their children, or see someone drink a little too heavily and lose their temper in a comical way. You might even get to experience some new types of junk food you’ve never seen before, like chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick. All of these things are excellent fodder for writing.
4. Go to a busy shopping mall on a Friday night. If you need some insight into youth culture, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better place to go than the mall, especially on a weekend. You’ll often find large groups of teenagers wearing their trendiest clothing and trying their hardest to be noticed by their peers. It’s almost like going to the zoo and watching heavily-plumed birds interacting with one another. And often, you can find some really human moments in seeing a group of junior high-school girls parading around in high heels, short skirts and pancake makeup, or seeing a group of boys nervously sitting by a fountain, making a lot of noise but finding themselves too afraid to approach the girls. What might be otherwise irksome during a shopping trip can be great fun as you search for new ideas for your novel.
5. Go out to a park, on a trail, or by a lake. Find someplace quiet where there are few or no people, sit down and just allow yourself to observe what’s going on around you. Feel the breeze blowing on your face and watch the patterns it creates in the forest and the grass. Smell the crisp autumn leaves, and listen as they crinkle beneath your feet. Notice the desperate dance of insects that know their end times are on the way. Smile at that squirrel who skitters away every time you make eye contact. Try to be one with the tree that’s blowing above you. Allow your eyes to take in all of the stillness and quiet of nature, but also to be surprised by the amount of activity that’s going on even when human beings aren’t there to interact.
I hope all of these ideas are helpful to you should you actually find yourself burning out during November, and I’m also sure you’ve got plenty more of your own sources of inspiration to cite. Please share them in the comments below!
Great ideas Sean. I have been known to write down snippets of conversation around me, especially one sided cell phone conversations.