NaNoWriMo: Reaching 50,000 using EelKat's Methods

Every year in November, thousands of writers gather at NaNoWriMo united with one goal in mind: to write a novel 50,000 words long and to do in in 30 days or less.

The secret to achieving this goal is to write each and every day and to write at least 1,667 words per day for 30 days. That is the bare minimum. If you can write 2,000 words per day you'll do even better.

Why do it at all? Because if you have a book you want to write, the only way to get it written is to actually write it. Getting a book out of your head and onto paper is the hardest thing for writers to do. It's much easier to talk about your book than write it down. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get that book out f your head and onto your page.

Write 1667 words a day. This can not be over stressed enough. In order to reach 50,000 in 30 days you must write a bare minimum of 1,667 word per day. You can (and should) write more than that per day, but what ever you do: DO NOT WRITE LESS!

This is even more important than writing 1,667 word per day: WRITE EVERY DAY!

This can not be stressed enough. Writing every day is the true secret to winning NaNoWriMo. Not writing every day is the #1 reason why 65,000 people failed to reach 50k last year. They wrote a bunch on day one. Wrote a little bit less on day two. Skipped day three thinking "I'll write double tomorrow." Skipped day four thinking: "Well it's only two days that I missed and I still have the rest of the month to finish." Day 20 came along and they still had only written 10k and now had 40k left to write in 10 days: That's 4,000 words a day. I have no problems writing 4,000 words a day, I can easily write 10,000 a day. But you know why I can do that? Because I've been writing for 27 years, and I write every day, and the more days you write, the easier it becomes to write and in the end the more words you write per day! For someone new to writing though, it's pretty hard to reach 1,000 words a day, and that is why writing EVERY DAY is so very, very, VERY important.

It is a common folly to start out writing 3,000 - 5,000 words the first day. Not that writing 3,000 - 5,000 words in one day is a folly, it's pretty good, and you should go right ahead and do it. The folly of this is that many newbies look at that and say: "That's 3 days worth of writing, I can take a break tomorrow."

Tomorrow comes and goes. Than so does the next day. And the next. And than Thanksgiving rolled around and you realize, you have 4 days left to write and now you are really in a bind.

Writing a bunch each day for the first few days is good, but never let that be a reason why you skip a day of writing. Getting ahead is easy, falling behind is even easier, and catching up once you've fallen behind is pretty hard. So, write every day, even if you're ahead.

Write every day, even if you don't feel like it.

Every writer has a day when they wake up a say:"I don't feel like writing today." But you know what, if you are a career writer; a writer who writes as a career, you can't do that.

Why?

Well, how many times have you woken up and wished you didn't have to go to work? But did you call your boss and tell him: "I'm sleeping in today, sorry, I'll come to work tomorrow." No, you didn't, because you'd have been fired. You got up and you went to work anyways, because that's what you have to do.

Writing is the same thing. You don't write, you don't get paid. You can not take a day off from work, even when you work at home as a writer.

The same thing goes for NaNoWriMo. You don't work, you don't win. You got to work at it every day to win.

Write every day, even if you REALLY don't feel like it.

Now maybe you are the kind of person who would call your boss and say you was sick even when you were not. If you are, than eventually it well catch up with you and you will lose your job.

Same thing goes for NaNoWriMo. You miss one day, and than you miss another, and it catches up with you quick and you lose your job as a NaNoWriter, because you lose the contest!

Do not give in to your feelings. Push them aside and write anyways. You'll be glad you did.

Write every day, even if you get bored with your plot. You have several choices here.

First off you can stick with your plot and hope it gets better as you write. But remember if the author is bored with the plot, than how do you think your readers are going to feel when they read it?

Secondly you can change your plot. Keep your story and characters, but give them something different to do. Or kill one of your characters and don't tell your other characters about it, just let them try to figure it out themselves.

Thirdly, you can toss it aside, and start a second story. Keep you first one though, because you can still count that as going towards your 50k word count.

Fourthly, you can write a set of short stories to start off, and than go with the one that you like the best after you get going.

But whatever you do, make certain that you write each and every day.

Write every day, even if your story ends at 15,000 words instead of 50,000. It happens. Just start writing a second story. A lot of NaNoers write multiple short stories instead of one long novel. If you have to than write 5 stories at 10,000 words each or 10 stories at 5,000 words each. Doesn't matter how many stories you write or how many words in each of them, as long as their combined total reaches at least 50,000.

Write every day, even if you have school or work do deal with. Get up an hour earlier so you can write before you leave the house. Write during your lunch break. Write for an hour before bed. This can be done, I know, because I did it: 3 years in a row!

This is the biggest NaNo stumbling block ever. Every year thousands of writers write every day, stay on track, start getting ahead, and than BAM! Four days before the contest ends they drop out. So close, yet so far.

So what happened? They stopped writing for just one day: Thankgiving Day. Wither it was the Macy's Parade, the football game, the cooking, the relatives dropping by, or a combination of all 4, there was so much hecticness on that one day that they never found time to write. Than they were so tired the next day, that they put off writing again and by the time they got over the slump of Thankgiving Day, the NaNoWriMo contest had closed it's doors for the year and they were unable to submit their entry.

So what do you do? Well there are several things you could do:

Turn off the tv for starters. I mean, do really need to watch the parade... it's the same thing every year! And why do you need to watch a bunch of men in tights chasing balls? Sounds pretty silly to me.

Lock the door and don't answer it. Only the worst relatives will break down the door, though I can think of two of my own who would do just that. And yes, I do lock the door and don't answer it on holidays, because I am feed up with my 24 aunts and uncles and there 64 kids and their 200+ grandkids and their 30+ great grand kids. I just want some peace and quite free from relative. Maybe your relatives are not as obnoxious as mine, but boy is NaNoWriMo a good excuse to lock the doors on Thanksgiving Day!

Don't cook. Twenty years of cooking Thankgiving Dinner made me realize, how much I love eating at a buffet for Thanksgiving. If it hadn't been for NaNoWriMo, I might never have given up cooking on Thankgiving. I feel so free now.

If you can't give up those things, than, write double, or even triple the day before AND write double or triple the day after as well. It's the only way you are going to reach 50k and watch the parade, watch the the game, cook dinner, and let your relatives in the house.

Another alternative is to plan to finish NaNoWriMo before Thanksgiving. To do that you need to raise your word count per day, from 1,667 words per day to no less than 3,000 words per day, with 4,000 words per day your best bet. It's harder, but it can be done and a lot of Wrimoers do it every year.

Write every day, even if you are sick in bed with a fever. (Been there, done that. No fever is going to stop me from writing every day! Granted I wrote only maybe 100 words per day, but at least I got something written down.)

There is a common phrase among NaNoWriters: Word padding.

Every year threads start up on the forums to brag about personal cheating skills and word padding.

Those new to NaNo may be wondering what is word padding, and how do you cheat?

Word padding is adding words that are not part of the story.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word story in 30 days or less. However, there are no judges to do a manual word count. On November 30th you upload your novel to the robot counter and it tells NaNo how many words it counted in the document you uploaded. The robot has no way of knowing wither or not it was counting words, numbers, something you wrote in the last 30 days, or someone else's ebook that you uploaded instead.

When NaNo first started with less than 100 contestants, cheating was rare and word padding was unheard of. Today ten years later with 100,000 contestants coming in from around the world, cheating has become paramont and word padding runs rampant. Because the robot has no way of knowing what it counts, writers who cheat are sadly becoming the norm with this new wave of NaNoWriters coming in.

Word padding varies from mild loop holes such as adding spaces between letters to trick the counter; to uploading something you wrote years ago instead; to outright plagerism of other people's work.

How do they cheat? The list is right there on the NaNo forums as they come in a boldly brag of there skills at beating the NaNo word validator, and here are a few of the astonishing things these cheaters have to say:

These are just a few that show up on the list each and every year. The list mind you had more than 500 "secret word padding tips" added to it during NaNo 2007. No doubt it'll get just as many this year.

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The goal of NaNoWriMo is to help writers to get the first draft of their novel written so that they have something to go back and edit and than send in to a publisher.

Now, let's think about something here: 50,000 words may seem like a lot to a newbie, but did you know that that is only the size of a 40 - 60 page novella? It's a 100 page book only if you use large print. What are some books out there that are 50,000 words long?

Nancy Drew Mysteries
Choose Your Own Adventure Series
Baily School Kids
Bunnicula series

uhm... yeah... kids books. Kids chapter books. NOT adult fiction!

This surprises most newbies.

The shortest books you are going to see out there are: Romance novels and Murder mysteries. These average 75,000 - 140,000 words.

It is actually quite rare for a novel to be under 120,000 words long. In fact there are only a handful of publishers that will ever LOOK at a manuscript under 120,000 words long.

And if you are thinking your book is the next Stephen King or Harry Potter, think again, because you'd need a whopping 200,000 - 400,000 words just for one volume!

Puts some perspictive on just how very little NaNoWriMo's 50,000 really is, when you start looking at it in comparision to published works already out there.

Now you have to stop and ask yourself, what are the advantages of word padding? Is it really worth it? If you are planning to publish your NaNoNovel (and that is the goal of NaNoWriMo, to help you get published, by helping you take that first step and write your story), than word padding has no benifits at all. Why? Because on December 1st you have to go through your NaNoNovel and DELETE all of that word padding, and than replace it with REAL writing if you plan to publish it. On top of that, 50k is not enough to get published anyways, you'll still have to write more to your story than 50,000, so cheating to reach 50k, means more for you to write after NaNo than you'd have had, had you not cheated.

I don't *pad*, never have, never will, no reason too. I just write and write, the words always come.

Here's what I try to do... I don't always stick to this schedule, but of the schedules I've tried, this is the easiest on for me. Here it goes:

First off:

I do not write in chapters.

I do not write to a set "hours per day"

I do not write to a set "words per day"

What I do is, I write small segments or scenes from my book. Say a conversation between two characters. Or maybe the description of a room. Something like that. I find this easier, because I can see a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Not the beginning, middle, and end of the entire book. Not the beginning, middle and end of the entire chapter. Just the beginning, middle, and end of that one scene, which in most cases is 2 to 4 paragraphs long or about 600 - 800 words.

I make it my goal to write three of these segments each day. One in the morning as soon as I wake up, before I even get out of bed. One in the afternoon, when I get back in from taking my dog out for his daily walk. One in the evening, last thing just before going to bed. It takes about 15 - 30 minutes for me to write each segment. Or about 40 minutes to an hour and a half each day. In the end I end up with about 2,750 words written at the end of the day. That is, if I actually sit down and write at all! I should be writing my NaNoNovel right now, cause I haven't written anything yet today, but instead I find myself reading blogs from other NaNoers. LOL! Some days it's just hard to get motivated to start writing.

Anyways, When you take it and break it down into tiny chunks like this, it seems like you haven't written very much at all, when in fact you have gone well above and beyond your word count goal and have not needed to worry about padding at all. I hope this helps. Good luck with your story!

~~EK

Writing Tip: Reaching 50,000 using the 13 Step method

I wrote this for NaNoWriMo, but it works for all your writing. My secret to reaching 50,000

I use the 13 step method actually it's the 10 step method, but I like 13, so I changed it.. The 10 Step Method it's quite a popular method used by many professional best selling writers, not sure who invented it. anyways it helps me to write a lot of words, real fast, so I thought I'd tell you guys about it, in hopes that it'll help someone else reach the 50,000 goal too but here is my 13 Step version of it

Write down

Scene 1

Scene 2

etc, all the way to 13 these are your chapters, plan on having 13 of them

Think about your plot, in terms of 13 tiny stories, than write a title for each now you have your 13 Chapter Titles

Your list should now read:

Chapter 1: title here
Chapter 2: title here
etc, all the way to Chapter 13

Now, go back to your list and add the actual scenes:

Chapter 1: The Title Here

scene 1
scene 2
scene 3
scene 4

etc, all the way to 13 scenes

do this for each chapter.

Now go back and write one sentence to describe each scene of each chapter.

Once you have completed this, you well have a complete and detailed outline to take you step by step through your story print it up and keep it on hand when you are writing, so that you can keep your story running smoothly from one scene to the next (though you can change anything in you outline that needs changes once you start writing it's not a hard and fast law that you stick to the outline the outline, just helps you to write faster, by keeping your original story idea where you can see it) once you get going the actual writing, you plan on say, write 5 scenes a day and you'll find that by using the writing a scene at a time, rather than going for word count or page count, you well write more and write faster

I average 3,000 to 10,000 a day using this method. yet, when I try for word count, I usually get stuck after about 500 try it and see, you'll be amazed at how well this method works. Why does it work? because you are focused on your plot, not the word count, and when you stop thinking about the words, they just start flowing out of you with out you even realizing it, thinking in chapters has helped me so much I used to just slog along trying to write 1o pages a day that was the goal I gave myself, 10 pages it was murder, I kept looking down at the bottom where it said page 1 of 1, etc, and I'd stop and think: man I typed all that and I'm still on page 1! than I tried for word count and after every sentence I'd stop and check to see how many words I'd done. What only 7 words in that sentence! I'll never get done at that rate, than one day, I'm complaining about this to my editor, and he says get this book so I go and I get the book, and it's pretty good, than I get all the books by this author (writer's how to books) and all the books she recommended as well ended up with like 50 books on the art of writing and in one of them I found this 10-Step method well me writing horror I changed it to the 13 Step method, cause I try to always have 13 chapters and I tried it and wow I write so fast now! I can't believe it! 13 works for me, cause I write horror, and I design my stories to be in 13 chapters, with 13 scenes each, cause that's the way I've designed my stories to come out ; you can change it to whatever you need say you only need 8 chapters with 5 scenes each than that's what would work for you of course, you don't need to have the same amount of scenes per chapter either 5 scenes in chapter 1, 2 scenes in chapter 2, 12 scenes in chapter 3 whatever you need to carry your story across, is what you should use that's what's so great about this method, you can change it to whatever works for you and your story there are no hard rules it helps keep me focused on my story too for me, I have a BIIIIG problem, with rambling I'll go waaaay off topic inside the thoughts of a minor character which in itself is not bad, but it goes off the story. Good thing about it is it gives me ideas for a spin-off story, which I write a lot of. The outline thingy, helps me to stay on my story, I keep looking back at it, and I know where I should be, and I can stay on track easier bad thing, is, all my spin-off need outlines, and each of them result in more spin offs, and I end up with too many outlines and not enough stories LOL!

I hope this helps!

~~EK

This Article Copyright 2006 Wendy C. Allen

One problem I've noticed on the NaNoWriMo forums is that half way through the contest a lot of people drop out because they got bored. They leave a last post on the forums to say good bye and than they are gone. It happens every year. Why? Basically it boils down to the fact they they were not having fun.

Remember that in doing NaNoWriMo it's not the winning that counts. Long time NaNoers will tell you this again and again. Sure, aim for 50k, but you know what? No one cares if you don't reach 50k. No one. Why? Because they are too busy making friends with each other on the forums. They are so busy having fun and laughing about their own mistakes that no one cares if any one wins or not.

Fun is the vital core of NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo allows you to write the craziest, half-brained thing you could imagine, for no other reason other than to write 50k words and get them on paper. If you wanted to you could just sit there typing the word *FUN* 50,000 times.

The thing that really brings NaNoWriMo alive is the community of people who gather together, both online and in local book stores and cafes. They gather with one goal: to write and talk about writing, and to have fun in each other's company.

So remember, when you feel yourself getting bored and run down, NaNoWriMo is not about writing good or writing you best, it's about writing because writing is fun.

So, just relax, take a deep breath and have fun!

A question seen time and again on NaNo is: I don't know what to write. I'm totally in love with plot #1, but I think readers would like plot #2 better, but my best friend likes plot #3 best. But everybody else seems to be writing about stuff like plot #4. Which should I choose?

What's the most important thing for you to keep in mind when doing NaNo? Writing about things that matter to YOU. Forget about what the latest "hot topic" is. Forget about what you think "others" will like.

Ask yourself: What do you like? What are your hobbies? What are YOUR favorite things to talk about with your friends? What books do you read? Which characters do you like? That's what you should write about. Things that interest you. Things that you enjoy. Why?

Because if you like it, than you'll enjoy writing about it. If you enjoy writing about it, than you'll be inspired to put your heart and soul into writing it. And that's what people want to read. They want to hear your take on the subject. They want to hear your views. They want to know why you chose your topic. Lots of content is good... especially if it's content that you care deeply about. Write what you know. Write what matters to you. That is the secret to writing a best seller. LOVE YOUR STORY!

I hit 55k on day three of NaNo08, and I was not alone. Several others got there as well. And now, as expected, have come the forum questions, the comments, the IM's, the private messages, and the emails all asking the same thing: How can you write 50k in 3 days?

Some are actual questions from curious people wanting to know how to do the same, while others are accusations of cheating and demands of the actual 50k words being emailed to them so that they can see for themselves there are 50k words! OMG!

If you've already read the rest of this lens, than you know my answer, but here is a quick version to answer these folks:

The short version of it is this: I'm a professional writer. I write anywhere from 4,000 - 20,000 words each and every single day, and have done so for the past 30 years.

There are a lot of professional writers here on NaNo, and most of them hit 50k the first week.

Newbies need to look at the person behind the number, and realize that writing is like playing the piano. When you first start learning piano you are luckly if you can make it through Mary Had a Little Lamb in less than a week, but after you have played piano for years, you can play Mozart from heart in minutes.

In other words, people that write a lot, type fast. People new to writing type slower. Neither is any better than the other, because the professional writer, once upon a time was a newbie too, so they didn't always type fast.