I’m asking myself this very question as November approaches
and another National Novel Writing Month comes along with it. I’ve done this three times and I’m thinking
about doing it again this year. Why
would I subject myself to this torture for thirty days?
The pros:
For one, it keeps me writing so it’s very good for
discipline. I won’t sign up at all
unless I’m committed to finishing by the deadline.
However, I think insanity also plays a part in this because
I have too much on my plate this year to give this a second thought. I have a PT job, the holidays are coming, and
we all know what that means when you work in a retail environment. The only redeeming feature here is that hubby
will be out of state for part of the month.
When it’s only me, I can eat anything at any time and not make a fuss
with dinner or clean up. I can also
adjust my sleeping schedule to a certain point, having to consider the job as
well. I’m thankful I can function on two
hours of sleep. Sometimes that comes in
handy.
Two, they have great discussion boards to take advantage of
if you’re stumped with your writing endeavor.
All you have to do is post a question and some brilliant person will
come along to answer. You’ll find a
discussion boards for almost every topic you can imagine. I have to admit I rarely take advantage of
this discussion feature because, as we all know, it’s easy to be caught up
socializing and not working on your word count.
NaNo requires you to write 50,000 words in a month. If you make it, you “win” and different
things are available to you, such as writing software and books at
discounts. There are also helpers for
editing and if you get your book finished in six months, there’s a discount on
self-publishing. At least there was last
year. This never happens for me. I’m still working on my last three NaNo
projects. Someday I’ll have a series
worth publishing.
The team at NaNoWriMo sends emails and pep talks to your
inbox. Some brilliant people write
these, designing them to keep you motivated, your butt in the chair, and your
hands on your keyboard.
There’s a great community of other writers at NaNo and if
you’re lucky enough to live in a bigger city, there will probably be organized write-ins
with others that live there. This helps to
keep you going too, although my town is too small to take advantage of this.
If you make your 50,000 words by November 30, you’ll feel so
great and have such a sense of accomplishment.
Your story may not be finished, or ready to edit, but you’ll have a great
start to a book.
Everything has a downside and NaNo does too.
The cons:
You must write 1667 words a day to finish by November
30. This is a huge commitment. It takes time away from your family and
holiday activities.
You need to prepare yourself for writing your brains out and
let nothing hold you back. You have to
stay disciplined and committed. There’s
no penalty if you don’t “win,” but you’ll feel better about yourself if you do
and also know you can do it.
Don’t get distracted by anything unless your house is
burning down. This means avoid FB and
any other social platforms. Don’t spend
hours on email during your writing time, if you want to finish. Save this for after you make your daily word
count.
Do not watch TV or anything else until you’ve reached your
daily goal. If you can do more words,
then you can take a day off during the month, which is the way I do it. That way you don’t feel totally left out of
things going on in your daily life and your husband and kids won’t want to kill
you.
Brew lots of coffee and stock up on snack food, which is bad
thing to say, but sometimes that’s all you can do if you want to keep
going. You don’t want your hunger to sidetrack
you. If you leave your chair, there’s a
good chance you won’t be back in it later in the day. I’m only speaking from experience here. When you’re in the zone, stay put.
Some last thoughts:
If you intend to participate, do your character sketches now
and write down plot points for your story.
You are allowed to do this beforehand.
You just can’t start writing your story until November 1. I usually make a few notes, even being the
pantster I am. That way you aren’t
totally lost and know what you want to cover in the story, and you don’t get
your characters mixed up that way, which helps later during the edit
process.
Resist the urge to edit as you go. I can’t stress this enough. You don’t want to spend any time on anything
except writing. Editing can wait.
Back up your work daily.
Don’t turn the computer off until you do. Writing is too hard to risk losing
everything. I back up everything twice,
once to my external drive and once to Dropbox, which is a great cloud storage
place and is free, up to 2 GB of space.
If you need this program, you can get it by clicking on Dropbox
above. THIS IS A CLEAN LINK. I downloaded one last year that had viruses
attached, so be careful. Now, or any
time, you don’t want to deal with that.
Sign yourself up here for NaNo, so that’s done when the
first rolls around.
Above all, have fun
and good luck.
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