7 Tips for NaNoWriMoand Why You Need a Shipwreck

A couple of people have asked me if I have any NaNoWriMo tips, any tidbits of advice I could pass onto them. I was trying to come up with something wise and meaningful to say, but of course nothing happened. Because, really, I don’t know. In the end, all I can offer is this — a few things that have helped me in the past, things that are now a part of my NaNoWriMo “methodology.” Are they fool-proof and fail-proof? Will they guarantee success? Oh yes, definitely. Money back and all that. They have helped me tremendously, anyway.

1. Don’t. Go. Back. I mean ever. For anything. I used to go back and try to read up to where I was, catch myself up, polish here and there. But I found that I inevitably got caught up in the beginning of the novel. I had a perfect first page after a while but not much beyond it. Now I start by reading the last paragraph I’ve written (maybe two), just to get back into the story properly, and then I push forward. Once, around November 15, I give myself the option of doing a lighthearted read-through of what I’ve written so far. I feel like it’s a way to calibrate a little. But seriously, that’s the only time I go back more than a paragraph or two, and even then I try not to edit. Of course, not-editing for weeks means that my writing is pretty bad — but fifty thousand words don’t come easy, and time ain’t cheap.
2. I sketch (sometimes outline) my plot out first. To me, knowing how the story ends is key. The worst feeling (and yes, I’ve had it) is going along smoothly and then realizing I have nowhere to go and no way to start winding down. It should be noted that NaNoWriMo categorizes writers as either “planners” or “pantsers,” that is, those who plan and those who “fly by the seat of their pants.” I am a planner. You might be a pantser. Do you.
3. I have to plan when I will write as well, that is, the time of day I will write. I used to think I’ll write every day or every weekend or whatever, but I found that if I didn’t actually set a particular time apart, things got tricky. And by that I mean, no writing happened.
4. Nanowrimo.org. The first time I attempted to do NaNoWriMo, I didn’t know it was a Real Thing — like a community with a website and advice and everything. The site is a great resource and also a morale builder. I like to enter my word count as I go along, it graphs it out. You can follow “writing buddies,” etc. I don’t know, maybe it’s cheesy; I think it’s fun — a little community. They give you a badge and a TON of swag if you “win” (write 50,000 words in 30 days) — but you have to be registered. Last year some of the swag was pretty awesome. If you’re writing this year, register on the site, and add me as a writing buddy!
5. For my planning and outlining, I use a program called Scrivener (which I got at a discount as part of a winner swag bag; I’m telling you — it’s good swag!). Scrivener is an awesome program, specifically designed for planning and writing creative works, though I only use it for the planning part. Not sure why; habit, I expect. For the writing, I use MS Word. Using Word can lead to come confusion when it comes to counting words, though. MS Word knows how to count words when you use em-dashes — which I tend to do. I don’t usually put spaces around my em-dashes, but that won’t work for NaNoWriMo’s word counter. You need to put one space after the em-dash or one space before, but not both— before you check the official the word count. Without that one space before or after (again, not both), your official word count won’t match the official what you saw in MS Word. So I write in Word and then find-and-replace all my em-dashes to an em-dash+space.
6. I try to have at least one cheerleader on call. I got this tip from the NaNoWriMo site. NaNoWriMo is a thrilling endeavor (in both the exhilarating and horror movie senses of the word), but it also gets pretty lonely. You’re alone for hours pecking away, and it’s easy to get discouraged in the middle of Week 2. Last year I asked a couple of friends ahead of time to be my cheerleaders. To sort of be “on call” with positivity when I needed it. They served me well. (BTW, if I asked you last year, you should expect a desperate text from me tonight, begging for your assistance again.)
7. This last thing is silly — I call it the Shipwreck Rule — but I really stand by this one. In the event that the amazing story I have planned doesn’t turn out to actually be 50,000 words long (despite an abundance of adjectives and semantic gymnastics that would make Dickens proud), I like to have something in my “back pocket” — a subplot idea I can throw in to lengthen the story. In one of my earlier stories, that subplot was a shipwreck (thus the name of the rule). In the last few days of NaNoWriMo, I inserted a shipwreck in the novel to add a chapter or two. Worked like a charm. To this day, I try to think of something early on, something concrete that I can fall back on later — a dream a character has, a spontaneous trip she takes, another shipwreck, etc. Something to toss in at the last minute if needs be. (Ideally, my planning is solid enough that I don’t need to use a Shipwreck, though.)

Is that any help? I do hope so…it’s likely to be the most coherent thing I’ll write for the next month.