For those of you who don't know, November is National Novel Writing Month. To shorten that mouthful, many have dubbed it NaNoWriMo. There is even a website called NaNoWriMo that can be used to track your progress on your book and compete in various challenges. One of which takes place in November. All writers are challenged to write 50,000 words of their current work in progress. Here are some tips I have learned to help you be successful if you want to participate.
1. Set a Goal That Makes Sense
Though it sounds weird, you need to set a goal for yourself. The 50,000 words may seem tantalizing, and you may think it would help you get a major chunk of your novel done, but it's more complicated than it seems. Set a realistic goal for your schedule. If you work a 9 to 5 job or if you have college/high school classes that have multiple hours of work with them, it may be more realistic to bump the word count down or lengthen the writing time. NaNoWriMo lets you set your own goals, so make it realistic for you and your prior commitments.
2. Make a Schedule to Meet Your Goal
You don't want to go into NaNoWriMo blindly picking and choosing days to write because you'll be at your goal sooner than you know it and have to pump out hundreds of thousands of words. Write down your schedule until the end of your goal and fill in any days that you have events that you have to attend. Traditional NaNoWriMo takes place over Thanksgiving in the United States. If you celebrate that, you may have parties that you have to attend and cannot write that day. Make a writing schedule to meet your goal and avoid commitments.
3. Choose the Story You Will Work On
You could always split time between a few work-in-progress novels, but that may make it more difficult for you to write and might make you feel like you aren't making any headway. It is recommended to choose one of your stories and write that one. It can be the one you have the most written or the one that you have the least written. It could be one that you wrote at the end of October or the one you haven't touched since last November. Just choose one and stick to it.
4. Create an Outline or Have a Plan for Your Story
If you are a pantser (Don't know? Find out here!), this may be the most difficult part of NaNoWriMo, but trust me, it will help. I powered through NaNo a few years ago and have an 83,000-word story that makes no sense and doesn't really have a plot. Have a general outline for your story to progress the plot. Even if you are just starting out on your story or have almost the whole thing written, it's good to have some plot points that you want to hit to be able to cross them off as you go.
5. Use Some Sort of Visual Tracker
NaNoWriMo is a great resource to use, but there are other ways to track your progress. You can use multiple online trackers or you can use Excel/Google Sheets to make a spreadsheet with a graph to track your progress. You can even use sticky notes with big milestones (e.g. every 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 words) that you throw away once you pass them. Visualizing progress will make you feel more accomplished, so find a way to track your progress visually.
6. Know Your Writing Limits
A common thing that happens when you complete NaNoWriMo is that you have writer burnout and don't touch your work in progress until the new year. That's the worst thing that can happen. If you feel burnt out, take a break. While it feels great to reach your goal, you should be motivated to still write when it's over. Sacrifice the goal to ensure you have some left in your creative tank once your time period ends.
7. Write with a Buddy or Group
If you are challenging yourself to write so many words in so many days and you're the only one who knows about it, it can be difficult to stay motivated. If you can sucker some of your writing friends or join a writing group of some sort to keep you on target, you will find it much easier. Find a continuity partner to keep you writing. It's easy to begin slacking off, but if you are having daily or weekly check-ins with a writing friend, you won't be able to. Also, once you start missing your goals, it's easy to keep going. Have a friend keep you working on your goal even if they don't write.
8. Write and Have Fun
The most important part of participating in NaNoWriMo is to get words on pages. Give your inner editor a vacation. You will get nowhere if you keep going back and editing when you write. Though there are people who do that as professional writers, it takes a very specific type of writer to be able to do so.
Also, have fun with your writing. This is a fun challenge that is meant to help you make progress with your novel. You should enjoy the journey and don't take it too seriously.
Until Next Time,
Ally Mac
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