Step One: Start on project like you didn’t do last month. Get paranoid about it going so well and stop.
Step Two: Play around with project for the next three days. Don’t get very far.
Step Three: Start talking with people on forums. Have idea.
Step Four: Make up websites for this idea. Realise you’re a total geek.
Step Five: Start wearing a Creative Unity Bracelet and acting like you’re living in a world where being creative is a crime and/or punishable by being locked up in an asylum.
Step Six: Realise this is probably really stupid (but fun). Create forum for other crazy people like you.
Step Seven: Get depressed for no reason. Flop back on your bed and stare out the window.
Step Eight: Notice you have eye floaters. Make a game out of looking at them and knocking them around until you get a headache. Realise just how dumb that was.
Step Nine: Try to write and get a little closer to back on track. Get distracted and decide to rearrange your desk.
Step Ten: Start using your desk for its intended purpose. Realise your keys clicking sounds really weird and hollow on it.
Step Eleven: Snag three cookies from the tin in the kitchen. Realise you probably shouldn’t be eating cookies at 1:58 in the morning. Decide you don’t care.
Step Twelve: Notice you’ve been getting more done while you’ve been sitting at your desk. Make your desk your new ‘writing zone’.
Step Thirteen: Lounge back in your chair like a diva while munching on a cookie.
Step Fourteen: Get quite a bit done and decide you can go play Amnesia without getting freaked out now.
Step Fifteen: Realise you were very, very wrong. Go back to writing where you feel safe.
Step Sixteen: Spend the next few hours on YouTube and debate with yourself about doing Let’s Plays.
Step Seventeen: Work here and there. Fall behind but not enough to panic over. Work on other things.
Step Eighteen: Get pulled into forum chatter and the daily chat threads. Spend a few days making a proboards forum and other pointless internet things.
Step Nineteen: Get into a Word War. Decide you really like them. Notice your word war companion really likes them too. Decide with them to do a word war every day.
Step Twenty: Use the word wars to get closer to caught up. Get almost caught up and get freaked out by a scene you’re writing. Be paranoid of mirrors for the rest of the day.
Step Twenty-One: Realise your computer had a glitch-fit and you missed your writing buddy’s messages. Apologise all over the place.
Step Twenty-Two: Change your blog theme. If you have project blogs, change their themes too. Spend the rest of the day looking through blog themes for suitable ones.
Step Twenty-Three: Lose the last day’s worth of work when your computer glitches out. Panic and catch up. Party when you reach the 30,000 mark.
Step Twenty-Four: Search around for fitting desktop backgrounds. Find one of Death on his horse and use the hell out of it. Decide monthly themed wallpapers are a good way to keep on track.
Step Twenty-Five: Get caught up reading Starfighter again. Realise you really love the story and want SciFiWriMo to get here already.
Step Twenty-Six: Get slowed down around 35k and get depressed. Keep working until you get closer to 40k. Have to change stories around the 37k mark.
Step Twenty-Seven: Start playing with Windows 7’s Sticky Note feature. Love it.
Step Twenty-Eight: Listen to Silent Hill songs, watch Let’s Plays and write like crazy all day.
Step Twenty-Nine: Get three chapters done and finally hit 50k at about 1 AM and party like a psycho (but quietly because, you know, it’s 1 AM).
Step Thirty: Start planning JulNo and being glad you can be crazy in good company.
Step Thirty-One (optional): Start working on Clarion project and enjoy the mental image of a formal party with girls in suits and guys in Victorian-style dresses.
WriMos start with a single blank page
A single blank page?
A single blank page!
And the single blank page goes onto the file as a title page
And the WriMo team then carefully moves to the planning stage
‘Cause when the clock ticks down, our team should be ready for scribbling, scribbling.
