NaNoWriMo Jumpstart

      Last night I took a class called the NaNoWriMo Jumpstart.
M. Molly Backes was the instructor and started us off with exercises intended to get us brainstorming about the time and place of our novel “to be”.
     Then she led us through an exercise where we wrote our main character’s #1 goal inside a circle, the #1  main opposition to that goal in another circle and the #1 fear of our main character in the final circle.
     Then we wrote multiple secondary goals around circle #1, secondary oppositions around #2 and secondary fears around the last circle.
     Lastly, we wrote possible scenes and situations around all the goals, oppositions and fears.    
     The final exercise was  based on a writing exercise where an author is supposed to write for ten minutes without stopping or censoring themselves. However, Molly had us do that exercise from our main character’s POV. I enjoyed this one. It helped to get a sense of the voice of the character and after a while I found the character started to tell me how the story should go.
     All in all, I thought it was a successful NaNoWriMo Jumpstart.
     I’m excited for NaNoWriMo to start, but is anyone else out there doing NaNoWriMo feel as nervous as I do? I feel like telling myself to fasten my seat belt because its gonna be a wild ride!