How To Survive (And Win!) NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is something any writer can benefit from and NaNo writers are of all ages, from all walks of life, and are located all over the world. Some write just for fun. Some are professional writers. Some do it as a school project or an activity to share with their friends. The reasons for participating in NaNoWriMo are as varied as the participants themselves!

As a full-time freelance writer who writes professionally, I personally use NaNoWriMo as a tool to make sure I get at least one novel-length first draft out of myself per year. My everyday writing for clients comes with the pressure of a deadline, the need to meet someone else's expectations, and many other rules that need to followed. NaNoWriMo is the time for me to cut loose and write whatever I want without having to follow any rules whatsoever, and like many NaNo writers, I look forward to it all year round. It's a wonderful way to make sure that at least once a year, I sit down and put in a significant amount of time into a piece of personal writing that's all about me and my ideas. That's more important than many people realize.

One of the main perks of using NaNoWriMo to get that first draft out of yourself comes in the form of the awesome support system you get from the rest of the NaNo community. There's just something about doing something creative just for the sheer sake of it right alongside all of these other writers that makes magic happen. Plus, if you get bored, stuck, frustrated, or just want to chew the fat with other participants, a trip to the NaNoWriMo forums is a great way to spend some of your free time not spent plugging away at that novel!

I've participated in (and won) a couple of NaNo's by now, so I thought I'd help others learn from my experiences by sharing a few things I've learned from NaNo's past.

1. Don't sweat it if you don't have an airtight plot or perfectly developed characters.

Especially if this is the first time you've ever sat down with the intent to write a longer work. A lot of writers work more efficiently flying by the seat of their pants anyway. The point of NaNoWriMo is to "just do it", so do that. Work with what you have and don't worry about the rest. You can always tidy things up after the fact in editing.

2. Write at least a little bit every single day.

Otherwise, it's really easy to fall out of the habit of sitting down to write. You also run the risk of choosing to procrastinate your way to failure if you write yourself into a corner instead of working on untying the knots. I always make sure I write at least enough every day to stay on schedule. If I feel like writing more? Great! If not, at least I'm not falling too far behind.

3. If you do fall behind, make it up as soon as possible.

A small word count deficit can quickly snowball into an insurmountable obstacle, and before you know it, you're in danger of not making it to 50,000 words by the end of the month. If you normally just write whatever you need to to stay on schedule, add a few hundred words to your daily goal for a while if you miss a day or two. Before you know it, you'll be back on track.

4. Prioritize your writing.

Yes, NaNo is mostly something we writers do for a fun challenge, but you're more likely to reach 50K if you make your novel a priority. Decide finishing your novel is as important to you as anything else on your to-do list and treat it that way. Schedule yourself blocks of writing time in your day planner. Unplug the phones when that block rolls around. Keep your butt in that chair until you've met your personal goal for the day.

5. Don't overedit.

Nobody's first draft is perfect, NaNo novel or not. While I personally don't buy into the idea that you should do zero editing as you go along, I do feel you should keep it to a minimum. Go over what you've written just enough to feel good about going forward, but don't obsess over every period, comma, or semicolon. Also, complete your writing ration for the day before you go back over it and tidy it up.

6. Spend some time on the forums.

While spending too much time on the NaNo forums can be a time waster, some time spent there can be a valuable resource. There are threads there where you can request help with accuracy issues or plot problems from your fellow NaNoers. You can find a buddy to word-war with if you need to get your word count a boost. Sometimes even just ranting (or raving) about the writing process can help keep you excited about your novel and about the NaNo experience.

7. Stick with it... even after it starts to get old.

Because it will. Trust me. Even the most enthusiastic writer hits a plot snag sooner or later, begins to think their novel sucks all around, or just plain gets tired of pounding the keys every day "no matter what". (All of the above pretty much describes Week 3 for me every single time!) Stick with your project anyway. Part of writing is sticking with it even when things get knarly. Chances are you'll get excited about it all over again once you're over the hump, so don't quit!

One thing you often hear NaNoWriMo participants talk about when the subject of word count comes up is word padding. What is that, you ask? Well, it's really exactly what it sounds like. It's focusing on word count and not content.

It's stuffing as many words into a sentence as you can without any real regard as to whether or not they should be there in the name of simply increasing your word count. Word padding often results in a first draft that's nearly useless due to the ridiculous amount of extraneous text you'll have to edit out of it before it's any good.

Now I have a question for you. Is that really the way you want to win? Is that really the way you want your first novel (or your second, or your third) to be born? While I'm all for focusing on getting as much content down during the month of November as possible, I'm also a firm believer in producing quality content. I want to be proud of what I come out of the event with, and I'm sure so do you.

I don't see the point in signing up for NaNo just to win it. I do honestly believe, and always will believe, that the beauty of NaNo is that it makes a wonderful catalyst when it comes to getting those stories I've always dreamed of out of my head and down onto paper. It's not just about writing any old thing long enough to reach 50,000 words. It's about learning discipline and forming good habits when it comes to writing. It shouldn't be used as an excuse to cultivate bad ones.

I find that the best way to come up with a high enough word count to reach 50K is to spend enough time before NaNo actually rolls around when it comes to planning my novel, forming my characters, and at least roughly outlining my plot. Sometimes I even have "reserve characters" created in advance that I can bring in to shake things up if I feel things are getting stale. Sometimes I have subplots planned in advance that I can bring onboard to help keep things moving. All of these things keep me writing and keep my word count on the rise, but they do it in the name of actual content that I'll very likely be able to edit (or at least recycle) so that it's actually something worth reading at a later date.

Probably the biggest mistake I see new NaNo-ites making is thinking that they need to somehow sit down and churn out the Great American Novel on their first try. The plot needs to be perfectly compelling, the grammar needs to be perfect, and the characters have to be the most fascinating, well-rounded set of imaginary beings ever imagined by man. Sound familiar? It's OK. You can admit it.

Hell... I'm not too proud to say that I made that mistake and had been making it for years! That's actually the reason it took something like NaNo to actually get me started on writing that first novel in the first place, so don't let the same thing happen to you. The truth is that all first drafts pretty much suck -- especially first first drafts. Trust me when I say it's not just yours. As with anything else, practice makes perfect when it comes to writing novels, and the only way to get that practice under your belt is to sit down and start.

The going will be a whole lot smoother if you just loosen up and give yourself permission to suck though. I'm not telling you to give yourself permission to just spit out any old thing for the hell of it without caring at all about what you're writing down, but I am telling you to give yourself allowance to make mistakes, take chances, and experiment. There's no better way to learn, and it's actually a lot of fun if you allow it to be.

Maybe your novel will suck when it's done, but if it does, so what? Delete it after NaNo is over and use what you learned through the course of writing it to make your next novel that much better. Every novelist has to start somewhere. However, sometimes something wonderful happens when you loosen the reigns a little bit and allow your imagination room to move. Sometimes you find yourself producing great, imaginative content that can be polished into something worth holding onto later on. Either way, you will get to say you actually did something that most people only talk about. You wrote a novel, man! Isn't that something?