I went to a NP?NP! get-together this evening with the Northern Connecticut NaNoWriMo regional group. It was the first time that I every actually caught up with fellow NaNo folks at an in-person meeting and it was definately worth it. In spite of navigational issues, about a dozen writers crowded around a cluster of tiny tables in the Manchester Barns and Noble bookstore.

NP?NP! stands for No Plot? No Problem!, the book by Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). Meeting at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore was a natural location for a quick NP?NP! exercise: We were each given 2 minutes to walk through the bookstore and pick up two or three books that were of interest to us. Then, we had about 5 minutes to come up with a character using one of our selected books, and a situation using the remaining book(s). Next, we had to title our work and identify the genre. Finally, we had to count the number of words written for the exercise. That was stage 1. For stage two, we handed our books to the second person on our left and repeated the exercise, but with the constraint of doing it in half the number of words used in the first stage. For stage three, we were to write the plot synopsis for our favorite book, again trying to reduce the word count by half. After the exercise, we each shared the results of the exercise and looked for similarities in each of the three segments (a key to finding your voice in your writing). If there is a way to translate this into a chatroom event, I think it might be fun.

With the conversation that ensued, I also learned about the Snowflake Method for writing a novel: http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/the_snowflake.html
I think I'm going to try it for my next project, which might be the NaNo story I tried to attempt last year, a GenE project I have in mind, or the story about the silver spoon that I concocted from a cookbook (The Silver Spoon), book about the Appalacian trail (A Bear in the Woods), and a novel by Harry Turtledove (End of the Beginning). The Snowflake method should take about a month, which is perfect timing, and get everything into place for November. If it all works, you'll be able to see how it unfolds on my private workspace at http://acmfox.com/notes

It could be an interesting fall!