This year and participated and won at NaNoWriMo. Here are guidelines I applied during the NNoWriMo month that helped me succeed in completing the challenge. Without these I would have failed.
- Write every day. No taking a break. It’s really easy to fall behind and playing catchup sucks especially if you’re struggling for ideas and in keeping up the word count. Ok, so I took one day off but that’s because I was loosing it. I had no ideas and was tired. And even then I took time to calculate what that meant for my word count for the reminder of the month. It was painful catching up after.
- Write 1,667+ words daily. This is the minimum you need to reach 50,000 words by the end of the NaNoWriMo month. There was one or two occasions where I didn’t reach my word count. Catch up, unlike catchup, sucks!! If you write more than a minimum per day you’re awesome. I’m not as great of a story teller as you.
- Have a set time to start writing. Otherwise it’s easy to let other things take priority especially if you’re struggling in your story. Set time every single fucking day!
- Have a tentative end time set for your writing session. It’ll be a good push to not too overthink your story and get your words out. You’ll edit it later (or not). But if you’re not done your word count by your end time, keep writing.
- Be comfortable. Whatever that means to you. Get s glass of wine. Get a wireless keyboard so that you don’t have to have your laptop on your knees on the couch. Get a snack. Get some background music happening (this is the only time I listened to techno. Found it to be great background sound. I streamed from SoundCloud). Or sit at your desk. Whatever is comfortable.
- Don’t edit. For gods sake don’t edit. It’s NaNoWriMo not NaNoEdiMo. Just write.
- Write and win. Don’t be a looser. I won and so can you. I did no character prep, changed my plot on the day I started writing and had no idea what will happen in the story. I didn’t even have an ending thought out until I was about 25% through. This made my time writing difficult go get through as I had no idea where I was going within the story most of the time. Which leads to my last suggestion
- Have a rough plot outline before November. It’ll help you come up with ideas on what happens next on your story.
Now go write!