Before we get into this week’s blog post, I want you to know that I am running a giveway through this Friday, October 28th, where you have the chance to win a complete 3-book Night Buddies set! Enter on my Facebook page here.
Well folks, we are only one week away from the most hectic, exciting, and difficult writing event of the year—National Novel Writing Month. That’s right, all across the globe writers are going to be taking on the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November, and I want you to be prepared to reach this milestone in your writing life! If you follow these guidelines, prepare to be a NaNoWriMo winner…
Write an outline. I understand that some writers like to outline heavily, while others like to just write and see where the story takes them (plotters vs. pantsers, respectively), but if you want to write close to 2 thousand words every day, you’re going to need a plan to keep you on-track. Just having an idea of plot points you want to happen in each chapter is enough, but feel free to go into as much detail on your outline as possible—you aren’t going to let writer’s block get in the way of your 50,000-word goal!
Plan for off-days. Even though the classic NaNoWriMo structure budgets for writing every single day, we all know life sometimes has other plans for us. With the Thanksgiving holiday, heavy work loads, and weekend outings (as just a few examples) on our horizons, sometimes it’s helpful to budget higher word counts on days you know you will be free to write to make up for the days when you know it will be hard to find alone time.
Make a daily schedule. You won’t ever find the time to write your day, you’re going to have to make it. Find any time slots you can dedicate to writing for even ten minutes—lunch breaks, the wait when picking your kids up from school, write before bedtime—and schedule those times specifically as writing time. We don’t all have hour-long chunks to give to NaNoWriMo, but there are small spaces where we can give up our social media scrolling for getting our word counts in.
Get support! Tell your friends and family about your goal to write a book in one month, and ask them to keep you accountable to it. If they are supporting you in your NaNoWriMo journey, they’ll be less likely to try to come to you with distractions, and you’ll have a built-in group of cheerleaders getting you through the hard days.
Are you planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Let me know how I can keep you accountable to your goal over the next month!
Your books all sound fantastic!