As an educator, I always believed that the most important thing that a teacher could have is a tool belt of all sorts of ideas to help kids learn. Like a handyman’s tool belt has the right tool for the job, so the teacher had to find the right motivation to stimulate the process for each resistant learner.
And so is true for me this month. Not a resistant learner, but a stressed out and resistant writer. I’ve been reveling in novella writing and have done little more than conjuring ideas for further novels. Not that I don’t love writing novels. Boy, have I enjoyed crafting them! But I’ve been indulging in the shorter items so long that, frankly, I’m out of practice.
So I needed a new tool.
Don’t get me wrong. I still LOVE my Scrivener! I’ve still never found a more valuable tool for organizing and crafting stories (blogs, business plans, articles, etc)!
But I was so thrilled to get to do NaNoWriMo for a third year! With the challenge of the November program and the support from some of my writing buddies, I got 50K down in my next novel. A sequel to the one I wrote the first time I did NaNoWriMo.
(And if all goes well, I’ll actually publish that first one next year! Woohoo!)
This tool, while not exactly new, was recrafted after taking a year off from the challenge. And it was an amazing success for me during a month when I not only didn’t have time to do the writing, I hadn’t prioritized my writing either.
Your Turn: Do you have a tool that makes your job easier? Tell me about it!
Marji Laine 