How to win at NaNoWriMo
[You can find my NaNoWriMo profile here – please Buddy me!]
On 28th October 2014, I made the snap decision to attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. On the 1st of November I had nothing more than a vague idea of a theme and how the first chapter would end, by the 28th I had the 50,000 words in the bag. I learned a lot from the process and am doing things slightly differently this year but, hopefully, with the same result. Here’s what I think, in a nutshell:
1 Do or do not, there is no try
I hear and see a lot of people saying they’re going to “give it a go” or “try” this year. I think that’s a huge mistake – I believe it’s much more useful and powerful to use phrases such as “I intend” and “I’m going to” when they talk about winning NaNoWriMo. Yes, of course life sometimes gets in the way but I think, if we’re to take ourselves at all seriously as writers, we should have the self-respect to treat 30th November as a priority deadline in line with an important work or family commitment. Intend to get it done and you set out with the final destination in mind and everything you do moves towards that goal. Simply “giving it a go” is more like meandering off randomly and being satisfied with wherever you end up. Relish the pressure – commit to 50,000.
2 Success = 50,000
Remember that winning NaNoWriMo means writing 50,000 words – you are not attempting to write the next great novel and especially not to a 30 day deadline. However, if you never finish a first draft, you can never have a second, third and subsequent drafts that lead to a publishable novel. By simply aiming for word count, you can free yourself of your Quality Demon – he or she will have plenty to do once you have that initial draft to work on.
As it happens, I discovered last year that once the pressure of the deadline forced me to simply bang the words out rather than spend time “getting it right” the quality of my writing increased substantially so the novel got better as it went on and I sped up. For me, at least, speed is of the essence. Get it down, get it finished and you’ll have something to work on in the new year.
3 A little preparation is a good thing
You might be a prepper, currently slaving over your card index list of scenes, your mindmaps and post-its so you’re already sold on the importance of preparation. Me, I’m a pantser by nature – I love the thrill of discovering what happens next as my characters do. I fully appreciate that this sounds like pompous nonsense but when I’m writing at speed, the ideas come thick and fast as I’m immersed in my world and the next step just emerges with little thought. You might imagine that this would result in a chaotic mess of a plot but actually it all worked out well. I stopped at the 35,000 word mark and spent time outlining what would need to happen to get from there to the end and I found even that challenging but I then had something of a structure to see me through to 50,000.
This time, I’m preparing a little more. I know the overall arc and I’ve begun developing the characters. I also set up a document to spew out random ideas and bits of dialogue that may, or may not, get used. I’m hoping that knowing a little more on day 1 will mean spending less time creating and defining characters when I should be getting words onto the page.
4 Make it easy to write
You’ll be spending many hours pounding away at the keyboard so do yourself a favour and make it as easy as possible. For me, it’s also important that I can write wherever I want to, partly for convenience but also because I like to have a change every now and again. I do most of my writing on my main computer (I work from home) which is equipped with decent monitors and a nice sit down/standup desk but it can be bloody cold in the UK in November so, last year, I often decamped to the sofa to write from there. If this sounds like you, you need two bits of technology – hardware and, most importantly, cloud storage. I do all my first draft writing using Google Docs/Drive partly because I like its fairly spartan feature set but also because it works perfectly with the cheap Chromebook that serves as my laptop. I can be typing at my desk then, seconds later, be continuing the document on my Chromebook with each synchronising with the other.
Exactly which technologies you use doesn’t matter. You can achieve similar results using Word and OneDrive or, presumably, Apple’s equivalents, and with Drive, OneDrive or iCloud, you can even, at a pinch, press your tablet or smartphone into action for the odd moment of inspiration. My advice is to keep your writing environment as simple and portable as possible so you can write from anywhere- desk, kitchen table, bed or bus.
5 Write what you want to write
You and your writing are about to have a very intense 30 day relationship so it’ll become obvious very quickly if your chosen story isn’t engaging you. The answer is to indulge yourself. Frankly, if you’re writing fiction, you should write what you want to write whether you’re participating in NaNoWriMo or not but a 30 day writing sprint is short enough that you can afford to ignore commercial considerations and just write something to please yourself. You’re much more likely to complete the challenge if you’re having fun and you’re also going to produce an end result of better quality which, ironically, makes it more likely you’ll find an audience than if you picked a genre or story type that, on the face of it, seemed more commercial. Quality is everything when it comes to a publishable story – if you write a great story, you’ll find an audience amongst the millions who buy ebooks.