First, though, I should probably explain NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know, National Novel Writing Month is a thing wherein lots of people attempt to write 50,000-word novels over the course of the month. All of this is coordinated through the NaNoWriMo website, where you can also get a more specific sense of what exactly it entails.
Suffice it to say, NaNoWriMo is fun, life-destroying, and utterly insane. Here are some of my tips for getting through it:
- There is never a good time to write. Every time I've done NaNoWriMo, I've had at least twelve very good reasons not to. But a lot of the fun - and the importance - of writing that one-month novel is to prove to yourself that, insane though it may be, you are actually capable of doing it. Now as far as getting 50,000 words on the page, I have some suggestions:
- Make November an exception. Let yourself be less social. Let yourself drink way too much coffee/tea/caffeinated beverage of choice. Acknowledge that you will be sleeping less and stressing more than you would be if you were not writing a novel. Ultimately, it is only if you make November an extraordinary circumstance that you can accomplish the extraordinary task of noveling.
- Don't delete. Ever. This one is often the hardest, especially for those of us with very noisy built-in editors. But silencing that editor is one of the most crucial, and often most rewarding aspects of NaNoWriMo. The only way you'll get those 50,000 words written is if you free yourself entirely from revision. One helpful way to get yourself to do this: remember that you never have to show this to anyone. You don't have to give it to an editor, and you certainly don't have to turn it in for a grade. Some people find it helpful to highlight certain areas they find problematic, or take note of issues they've found. After NaNoWriMo is over, you can use these notes to make the novel something you're ready to show other people. But for those first 30 days, the novel is for you.
- Stop in the middle of a sentence. This technique is particularly helpful for getting yourself to start writing again the next session/day. After all, there's nothing more terrifying than the blank page. So if you stop writing in middle of a sentence before you've burned out all your inspiration, you can spend the time between your writing sessions cooking up the rest of the sentence. Then, when the time comes, it is so much easier to jump back in to writing.
- Write. The easiest way, by far, to win NaNoWriMo is to write and just keep writing. In fact, all of my other tips are just sneaky ways to make sure that you keep yourself writing. No matter what is going on at school, at work, in your life, no matter how tired and under-caffeinated you are, no matter how much you want to switch the 3rd and 5th chapters and get rid of that one side-character, no matter how scared you are that you won't be able to finish, if you write, and keep writing, I promise you can do it.
Good luck!
P.S. Andy and I will be tracking our noveling progress with the word-counters in the sidebar -->