If you’ve not heard about NaNoWriMo…well, what rock have you been living under? I mean, here’s what it is. It’s National Novel Writing Month where some 300,000 writers go for NaNo gold which is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November.NaNo2
I’m participating for the third year in a row and I just reached the 50K goal with 13 days left working on book two of the Seeds of a New Birth series. Want to know how I’ve done it when in previous years I struggled (like most NaNo writers do) to complete the 50K in time?
Here are the 3 key elements that helped make this years NaNoWriMo so successful.
1. Write a follow-up book in a series. Now, I realize not everyone will have a first book written that’s begging for a follow-up like I did with Seeds of a New Birth. But don’t worry, this is really the least important of the three keys. However, if you do have another book already written, then consider expanding it into a series, thus saving some time on character and story development.
2. Devote October to Prewriting. By spending time in October preparing to write the next book, you’ll be far ahead of the game, and no, this isn’t cheating. NaNoWriMo actually recommends it. In fact, I think I could have done more prep this year so next year I might just start planning a couple of weeks earlier, say by mid-September.
3. Plan on writing more than 50K. I consider this my most important lesson I’ve learned in this year’s NaNoWriMo. I applied a karate principle I learned over 30 years ago. If you want to break a board, don’t aim at the surface of the board but aim behind the board. That way you focus your energy to really break through.
So, knowing that novel one of Seeds of a New Birth came in around 92K words, I decided I didn’t just want to finish half of book two, but all the first rough draft. That’s been my goal, to write 90K rather than 50K. I calculated to do this I needed to write 3,000 words per day each day. I’ve stayed on track with this, thus making 50K a breeze. The NaNoWriMo web site also has a nifty Stats page where you can check your progress. (See example below).
50KStats
I may or may not take a day off tomorrow, but very shortly I’ll be back in gear to complete the second goal of completing the rough draft which looks I estimate will come in around 65-70K. But since I tend to write first drafts sparsely, I’ll probably add at least another 5-15 K when I start the rewrite and revision process.
Oh, and I can’t finish this blog post without giving a shoot out to the creators of Scrivener. This writing program has made the process of writing novels so much easier and more fun. If you’ve not yet checked it out, you owe it to yourself to do so. And with a less than $50 price tag, it may be the bargain of the century.