I might be a long time writer, mainly for fun, but this was my first year hearing about and participating in NaNoWriMo for my professional career. While I pride myself in my organization and planning processes, I wasn’t ready for this epic month long challenge. To make this challenge easier on me (and anyone else who wishes to participate) next year, I’m going to make a list of what could have helped me make the writing goal.
First off lets go over what this challenge is all about:
NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. This creative writing challenge pushes authors, new and old, to meet a 50,000 word goal starting November 1st through November 30th.
Yes, you definitely read that right. 50,000 words in roughly 30 days! It was just as daunting as you think. The wonderful thing about this writing challenge is it pushes authors to get the ideas they’ve been holding on to down on paper. Don’t worry though, you won’t have a publish ready piece by the end of the month BUT rather a rough draft that just needs to be finely tuned if you met your goal. You just want to be able to write constructively enough to make the fine-tuning process easier for you overall.
How It Went For Me
I’m going to be honest here: I didn’t get close to the word count goal I wanted. I ended up writing a lot, but it wasn’t what I had pledged to get done for the challenge. I’d pledged 50,000 words but topped out at around 23,620 words. The hope for me was to finish up my second collection of poetry and a collection of short horror stories. If you’d like to see my progress for those, please check out my Work(s) In Progress & Ko-Fi. I update both but my Ko-Fi is where you’ll see me build my work step by step!
Before moving on to how I could prepare better for next year I just want to say: I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish this month. While I did struggle, I was happy to push myself and step out of my comfort zone. I know for next year I will pledge a smaller word count and see if that helps. This challenge really highlighted my weaknesses and my strengths. I’m ready to come back better and more prepared for 2023. Lets crush NaNoWriMo next year.
Let’s Prepare for NaNoWriMo 2023
Here are a few things I wish I had thought about before tackling this daunting writing challenge and that can also be applied to future writing processes.
- Planning: Go into this type of challenge with a goal in mind. Once you have that decided on, it’s time to get into research mode. This is the time to get to know everything about the subject you think is important. Write it down, type it out, bookmark, highlight, and what ever else you need to do and then ORGANIZE it. This “research” period really makes a difference, especially if you’re tackling a genre you’ve never written in. This is the perfect time to start getting your worlds built and characters fleshed out! This should happen AT LEAST a week before the challenge. I promise it’ll help cut down on your stress.
- Organization: Once your research is done and you’ve written out at least a rough idea about your worlds, characters, time periods and other important ideas it’s time to organize. Organizing all your thoughts, ideas, excerpts, etc. will make finding everything easy and quick. If you’re like me, and do everything on paper, get a binder with dividers! If you’re more technologically inclined make easy to access folders or bookmarks! The point is to save yourself time when you’re looking for a reminder about a characters trait or if the world is scarce on water. Do this the day before the writing challenge starts so your system is fresh in your mind!
- Additionally: As you write, keep your notes updated. It sounds like a lot of work but having your guide handy while your writing means you don’t have to play the “scroll to the top” game. We’re all about working smarter here, not harder!
- Discipline: This isn’t for the weak. NaNoWriMo is for the writer that wants to get closer to a publishable manuscript in a short amount of time. That means setting up a schedule and being able to stick to it. Doesn’t matter if you’re sick, tired, hungry, upset or a combination of them all. I struggled hard here!
- Having a daily word count you want to hit can help keep you on track; you’ll also be able to tell where you fall during the challenge duration. Are you hitting the milestones? Are you ahead or behind?
- Pick two to three hours you can write at that don’t impact your normal work/school/sleep routine. You might have to shift a few things around but picking a time slot that’s easy to stick to will make this so much simpler.
- Long Brain-dumping Sessions: Learn to be comfortable with writing whatever comes to mind on the subject. When the time comes to write you need to sit down and start; you don’t want to waste time overthinking a starting sentence or a dialogue transition. Brain-dumping is the perfect solution! Write what you think and don’t worry about how good or bad it is. You aren’t supposed to have a ready to publish book at the end. So skip around if you need to. Write out a specific scene you have in mind. You’ll come back to connect it later.
- What works for you: There is truly no right or wrong way to approach these challenges. You know yourself best and what does and doesn’t work. Maybe you work better on the fly or maybe you need weeks of planning. Start your book from the end and work your way forward, or start in the middle. The goal here is to get down 50,000 words for your next novel; get there however you want to, but you have to want to get there. My methods might not work for you: I just want to give you an idea and help you figure out your own method.
Overall
This is a challenge you can decided if you want to participate in. If you do decide to participate I hope this article was helpful in what to expect and how to handle it. Lastly, if you haven’t already, check out the official NaNoWriMo website linked earlier in this article! The organization does a lot of amazing things for the writing community and has it’s own How To Get Started FAQ. Happy writing everyone and I’m excited to share my experience this time next year!
