Are you still making up your mind about whether you'll participate in NaNoWriMo in November, or have you decided that YES, November is the month you'll write your novel?
We discussed that picking a genre is your first step, because it gives you lots of ideas for your book. For example, if you're writing a romance, you know that there's got to be a romance that's front and centre in your novel. If you're writing a mystery, you'll need a corpse. If you're writing a thriller, then someone's in danger.
Your next step is to start squirreling.
Gather your nuts (emotions and ideas) for your project
Squirreling is gathering stuff that you may use in your project. You collect anything that feels as if it might be useful. This is a highly intuitive process. For example, if I were doing NaNoWriMo in November (I'm not, because this year I've got too much on my plate already), I would have squirreled away a news story or two about The Scream, because there's something that appeals to me about the story.
I'd also be watching for stuff -- anything and everything, including books, movies, advertisements and music -- to which I had an emotional reaction.
I wouldn't be using anything I squirreled as-is, I'd primarily be using the FEELING -- of intrigue, danger,or whatever, and working off that feeling to get inspiration for my novel. When you're writing a novel, your aim is to arouse emotions in your reader, which means that you need to arouse them in yourself.
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