Preparation and Snowflake

Even with all this time to prepare for NaNo and start getting my outline in order I find myself procrastinating. What the heck? I have already failed at this challenge twice, am I trying to set myself up to fail again? Sort of feels like it.

I sat myself down to work on an outline several times now. I either get distracted (oh! Shiny!!), or flustered (it doesn't have to be in order right now!). Distracted is easy to understand. I have a houseful of kids, pets, and friends. I have a full time job and a full time hobby (not writing). There is a lot to do and many places to go. Flustered is less understandable to me. This is MY story. I can write whatever I want to.

Anyway, I think right now I am just going to do some scene mapping. I have scenes written and named in my head. My current goal, which will take some effort, is to name ALL the scenes, and get them in order. That should suffice as a basic outline.

SNOWFLAKE

I signed up for an e-newsletter more than a year ago. It's about writing/publishing (more publishing than writing I'm afraid, but that must be what most of his readers are looking for) and I enjoy reading it each month. The author, Randy Ingernamson, invented a tool to help writers. He also wrote the book Writing Fiction for Dummies (I wonder if it is for Dummies writing fiction, or for someone to write fiction specifically for dummies to read). The software is called Snowflake Pro. From what I can gather he says that writing is like building all the little triangles that go together to form a snowflake. His program helps you to define your characters and to put together your scene list (which is where I got the idea). There is a lot more to his program than just that, but the website show those specific examples. He gives tips on basic structure as well (3 Act Structure, etc). I'd really like to buy the program, but I'm not ready to spend $100 on this little adventure. I think that might be the reward I work for. If I actually *WIN* NaNoWriMo this year, I'll splurge on the program. I know it sounds back asswards to write the book and then buy software to help me write a book. But if I actually finish, I'm going to want to write another one.