NaNoWriMo: Are We Done Yet?

So we’re close to the midpoint of November and that means—for those of you participating in NaNoWriMo—that you’re about halfway along in your journey, assuming you haven’t pulled out your hair and run screaming from your laptops. But I feel like I need to lay a little truth on you: if you’re reading this, I suspect you might already be in the weeds.

Because the diligent-and-on-track NaNoWriMo participant doesn’t have time for reading blog posts or much of any other shenanigans…like eating or sleeping. The writer who’s got around 25,000 words is rather smugly humming along and we kind of despise her (or him).

But it’s not too late for you to become smug and detestable yourself. I’ve got a few tips to get you back on track and though you may not finish with the Great American Novel ready for submission, you WILL finish with…well, something. (Your lost hair is on you.)

Tip One: Make a Plan

Yes, I know, you’re a pantser. You don’t plan, you just write, write, write and it’s all whiskers on kittens and kisses on mittens or whatever. Until it’s mid-November and suddenly it’s Nightmare on NaNo Street because you have pantsed your way to 5,347 words.

Uh-oh. MAKE A PLAN. Take a look at the number of days you have left (18) and consider realistically the number of days you will write. That means, friends, that if you haven’t written on Saturday yet, don’t count Saturdays, okay? Next, assign a goal to each day you will write. But you cannot give yourself two days off in a row. And that’s not because I’m being a meany-pants; I have a very good reason for this part of the plan.

I know this requires a bit of math and figuring so I’ll give you a few minutes to make a plan. And no, you cannot wait till tomorrow.

Tip Two: Do Not Backtrack

When I am working on a manuscript, even a first draft, I will write, write, write. And then the next time that I go to the manuscript, I will go back and read what I wrote, wrote, wrote. Sometimes, I’ll dump it all and start fresh. Sometimes, I should have dumped it all but I edit, trying to make it nice. The point is, I edit as I go.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, going back over what you’ve written is the kiss of manuscript death. There is no time for editing or finding your voice; there’s not even time to fix some egregious grammar mistake (and seriously, I shuddered just writing that last bit). Just plow ahead with writing no matter what. But—and here’s a big but—that’s easier to do if you write every day.

Writing every day, even if it’s just 500 words, keeps your mind entrenched in the manuscript as well as your butt in the chair. And once there, you’ll probably write more because you’re doing off-to-the-races writing! So if you want to revise that plan you made (the one where you skipped writing on Saturdays), I’ll wait.

Tip Three: Accept Imperfection

Now you have a plan that may or may not mean you have to write 2, 471 words per day for the next 18 days. You have vowed that when you sit down to write, you will not, under penalty of manuscript death, look at any words you have written before but will have at it, mid-sentence if need be. But come November 30th, you must face that what you have written—and really, with no editing what can you expect?--could be a pile of steaming word mush (to put it politely). But that’s okay. Because you’ll be done with NaNoWriMo and you’ll have a 50,000-ish word manuscript-ish.

We shall talk about revision tips on January 1st.

~Cathy C. Hall