Let’s get something straight: I have only “won” NaNo once. Some may think that this doesn’t qualify me to provide advise. Personally, I think that it makes me even more qualified. I know what doesn’t work.
Remember, NaNoWriMo breaks everything you’ve ever been taught in that quantity is better than quality. Despite what naysayers might tell you (“They’re promoting crappy writing!”), this is a good thing. Most of us have a very strong internal editor that causes us to stress and fret and worry over every little detail, so we get caught up in a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word. NaNo teaches you better than your third grade teacher to do a rough draft. That’s it. We’re not expecting you to wake up on December 1st and start submitting to publishers. Write that first draft, then sit back and take your time making it perfect.
If you make mistakes? Leave them be. Unless it’s right where you’re at, it’s better left for editing. If you go back too much, you risk getting caught up in fixing all of your mistakes and lose precious writing time. Some things are simple: a basic find+fix to change Bob to George is easy, but if your talking walrus suddenly goes from speaking French to Tagalog, you might want to wait.
Take notes as you go along. This will help avoid having to go back and change things. My favorite program for NaNo, Q10 has this wonderful feature for notes. You type ‘..’ on a new line and follow it up with the note you need to provide. Perhaps something like a plot thread you need to pick up later, or a special event/date that was mentioned. Later on, you can open up your notes and view them all in one listing. And it doesn’t count in your word count, so you won’t be getting “false numbers” as it were.
It really helps you notate something and keep going, without having to stop and find a pen that works.
If you get 20,000 words in and realize you hate your story or you’ve written yourself into a corner, don’t give up. Start writing at a different point, or write from another character’s point of view… Heck, just cause a random deus ex machina to keep it going. I can’t tell you how much I regret scrapping things during the first few years. I would get 25,000 words in on week 2 and give up. Starting over, let me tell you, is next to impossible. Instead of 2,000 words a day, you end up trying to write 4,000 or more. It’s stressful and disappointing.
Speaking of stress? Don’t. NaNo is meant to be for fun. No one (except yourself) is expecting you to cross that finish line. They’d love it if you did and they’ll cheer for you the whole way, but if you have to give in on November 28th because work made you crazy, or your child got sick? No one’s going to blame you for it. In fact, from my experience, other wrimos will support you all the more for at least trying in the midst of all that insanity!
Carry a notebook. You never know when inspiration will hit and it sucks to be unable to take advantage of it. Typing up pages of handwritten notes may be unappealing, but it’s worth it in the long wrong if it means keeping up with ideas and word count. If you don’t like a large notebook, check out Moleskine for a hardy, nice notebook (my husband and I swear by them) or the small, flip-notebooks that B&N sells now. Those have metal cases and a pen included. They are a bit pricey, though, so beware.
Attend write-ins! From 2001-2003, I was living in Maryland, where they did not have a ML. This meant no write-ins and for me? No novel. From 2004-2006, I attended a few write-ins, but not enough. I generally got a lot of writing done at them and the camaraderie of fellow wrimos made the experience all the more enjoyable. The first time I “won” NaNo was in 2007, when I was going to as many write-ins as I could. It helped so much and I met a lot of really great people.
Things that have helped me:
- Q10: I know I mentioned this already, but I want to talk more on it. Q10 is, in their own words: “a powerful, but simple text editor.” It operates full-screen (so no distractions!) and is highly customizable. You can keep a total word count running, as well as a word count for the current session (good for word wars!). I also like being able to modify the background and foreground (text) colors, because black-on-white hurts my eyes after a while. Plus, I really love the typewriter sound it has.
- Music: Music is the soundtrack to my life, so why not my novel, too? I have a playlist just for writing at home. On the go, I use Pandora, which goes from good to amazing once you’ve created a few stations and “trained” them.
- Word Goals: I know a lot of people who set a goal to write 2, or 3 hours a day for NaNo. If this works for you, great. If not, try setting a word goal instead. 1,667 words a day will get you to 50k by November 30th. With that in mind, I set a goal of 2,000 a day. If I pass that, great, but if I miss a few one day, I can still be a bit ahead. This also means if I write a lot in a notebook while out at dinner, I’m not “wasting” time by typing it up later on.
Seriously, though. Have fun. Write a book, write a series of short stories, write some Winnie the Pooh fanfiction. The sky’s the limit. Some people even write non-fiction for NaNo. The goal here is to write and have fun doing it.
