Five Ways to Help Win NaPlWriMo (for only three easy payments of $19.95)

Hey there everyone. I am Dusty Wilson, one of the bloggers for this run of NaPlWriMo, here to supply a hopefully helpful list of things to make his insane process easier.

1) 'Backwards and Forwards' by David Ball - This is the Playwrights' Bible. Its only about fifty pages, but it details the fundamentals of how to read a play and what makes a play work. It is very basic stuff, but it is hands down one of the most valuable resources you can have.

2) Wrist braces and Vitamin B6 - Now, assuming the internetness of NaPlWriMo, I imagine everyone will be writing at a computer for most of their process. Hence brings one of the more sinister enemies of writers: carpel tunnel syndrome. If you start to feel any sort of pain in the wrists, get the braces and take the B6. Taking B6 strengthens the wrists and combats carpel tunnel incredibly well. The pain is usually gone in about three days. You don't have to wear the braces 24 hours, but usually when you feel the pain and overnight is fine.

3) Tell the internet to go fuck itself - Procrastination is one of the best things in the entire world, but not so much when a deadline is looming. The Internet is the crystal meth of the 'fuck this shit' world. There are many times myself where I waste hours 'doing research' or 'searching for music I need to write'. Granted these are legitimate things to do, and relaxing is incredibly important to the writing process, but we all know the Internet is just waiting to take us off to Facebook or Wikipedia or the Uncensored Site of Your Choice. Just, occasionally, unplug the Internet completely

4) Make sure your computer is your friend - Now, this is the very subject that torpedoed me last year. My computer died, fairly hard. Something about a Kernal Stacking Error and a driver gone missing. So, get rid of the SpyWare, Defrag the hell out of it, find computer saavy friends and have them look over the whole thing from top to bottom. There's no feeling worse than writing something you feel great about, only to be defeated by the crap-ass standards of Dell Computers or because Vista feels like it deserves a prolonged paid vacation.

5) Don't take the 1st draft too seriously - I don't mean don't care, but just realize one of the basic tenants of playwriting: 99.9% of all first drafts are never the final draft. Very few playwrights ever stop at the first draft and call it a day and there's definitely no expectations here for anyone to do just that. The first draft is there to help you get every idea out on the page whether its good, bad, or just filler until something better comes along. Like I said, don't just blow off the first draft, but use it to take every chance and use every idea you have.

So, I hope that is all helpful. Now, I must be off to fight the Battle of the Blank First Page with my cache of music and YouTube videos of To Catch A Predator at my side. Best of luck everyone.

Peace and Pie,

Dusty Wilson