A Story About Stories — Or, How I Won My First NaNoWriMo, and You Can Too!

This year, 2018, was my first ever year of participating in National Novel Writing Month. I had only heard about it in 2017, when my housemate’s long-term boyfriend, a highly intelligent and creative graduate of English, had attempted it — sometimes writing in our house whilst we cackled in the background watching silly TV programmes. It seemed an insane task, writing a novel in a month. A whole 50,000 words just to consider yourself worthy of ‘winning’ and having some sort of first draft? I wasn’t convinced.

Then, my close friend nudged me in September. “I’m going to do NaNo this year. Do you wanna do it with me?” I had been complaining to her for weeks, maybe months on end that I wanted to get back into writing properly, that I had found old stories when I was cleaning out my room, that I missed that part of myself that I had discarded before University. It was around this time, at the start of October, that I had just quit a very taxing volunteer role that I had held for five years, having been working my socks off and dedicating myself to educating others that entire time. I accepted my friend’s proposal: I was ready to do something for myself, and regain my self respect.

So I declared myself a bit of a hermit for the month of November, and began to plan in October. My friend had meticulous notes made; her timeline, her character bios, her worldbuilding. I met her one day to discuss the upcoming challenge, and ended up pitching to her like a business meeting. I had four story ideas — which one should I do? Help me choose. I ended up picking the one that we talked most about, and which piqued her interest the most — it would be a rewrite and continuation of one of those half-abandoned room-cleaning artifact stories I had discovered; a relic from my school days.

I pondered on this story for the rest of October, trying to come up with a convincing plot and characters from the little material I had already given myself. As the month wore on, I grew more and more frustrated, unable to come up with any good history or plot devices that weren’t hilariously complex. Perhaps there was a reason that this story had been abandoned and left for dead in my old bedroom after all.

It was two days before the start of November, and still I had nothing. I felt like I was banging my head against the brick wall of my story; but I had to do this precise one — it was the one I had thought longest and hardest about through the whole of October. And I couldn’t pull a whole new story out of my brain now. I felt slight panic rising in me — and then it hit me. From out of nowhere, something stirred in the dormant creativity centres of my brain. A vague premise that a story could be based on, and the image of a main character that interested me. I didn’t know her yet, but I knew her name and what she looked like, and that was a start.

The first of November rolled around, and I went with my friend to the library after work, where it would be quiet and we could focus without interruption. She sat typing furiously, totally in the zone, whilst I pondered on the novel premise and my main character some more, deciding on her job and a compelling setting that would open the story. And I wrote — by the seat of my pants. In those two hours of discovery, where I sat down with a blank document and my imagination, I managed to crank out 2,000 words. I was on my way.

My friend of course, was well ahead of me, managing a whopping 3,500 words in the two hours. She had done amazingly! But I was still proud; I had written 2,000 words and had a lot of fun exploring my main character’s world purely through her eyes, without any prior notes or plan for the scenes.

I’m going to be honest, November itself as a whole, was a struggle. I work a 9–5 office job as a software engineer, I had at least 5 evenings of family commitments plus unforeseen commitments to friends, my boyfriend, and my pets, and I caught flu twice in the same month. I was away at a conference for three days in the middle of it all, and at one stage after said conference (which I drove 4 hours to and home from), I was over 10,000 words behind the ‘par’ of 1,667 words a day to reach 50k steadily. But somehow, I caught up, and I even finished three days early, after coming back from a Dungeons & Dragons game with my friends after work.

So how, how on earth did I do it? I have a few simple tips for people who find themselves in a similar position.

• Don’t. Give. Up. If you tell yourself you’re not going to be able to make it, you won’t. It’s as simple as that. If you want it, you can have it. Even if you find yourself over 10,000 words behind like I did, don’t despair — write instead, because that’s the only thing that’s going to make that word count smaller. Every word counts towards the overall total, and every sentence takes you closer to the end of the story. I found the concept of timed ‘Word Sprints’ intensely helpful in this regard, where you try to simply type as many words as possible in a given time limit. This really helped me to stop worrying and just get on with it; I tend to overthink everything and agonise over small plot choices, because they could affect bigger story arcs later on. The secret is; stop doing this. Just get words down; your subconscious will figure it out. Or if you’re really agonising over a plot point, use a random generator to decide for you. Personally, I use a D20 dice as I’m an avid Dungeons and Dragons participant, and use odds or evens to decide between two minor plot points. Sometimes fate is your friend.
• You will own something new at the end, if you participate. No matter how much or how little you get done; at the end of November, there will still be a new work of fiction in the world that wouldn’t have existed otherwise, if you hadn’t participated. And that work of fiction will always be there and be yours; you can always go back and rewrite it. It will always be something you can be proud of, whether you ever show it to anyone or not. You will have worked hard on something, and have a piece of writing to show for it. That in itself is amazingly worthwhile.
• Engage with at least one person about your work. This doesn’t have to be someone that you know; the NaNoWriMo forums are buzzing with activity, and the organization holds Virtual Write-Ins on Youtube, live streaming timed writing prompts that you can use in your story. I found this very helpful for upping my word count, and I found that knowing other participating people were normal and were struggling just like me actually helped to motivate me. Oh right, I actually wasn’t just being useless and finding this difficult for no reason. All other participants weren’t some sort of demi-gods at writing. Everyone was struggling, but they were doggedly keeping going, trying to reach that word count par every day. Why shouldn’t I do the same?
• Use your time wisely. During the month of November, every moment is a potential time window where you could be writing or thinking about your story. Long bus commute to work? Think about the scenes you want to write today. Waiting for a friend to show up for dinner? Whip out your phone, load your document from the cloud, and type out a few quick sentences to ease the boredom. Seriously, it all counts, and when you find that you’ve managed to write 500 words simply whilst you were waiting around doing nothing today, you’ll realise just how much potential there is for productivity in day to day life, and how much time we really do waste. It’ll also boost your mood exponentially, because you’ll be automatically closer to those daily word count goals without even changing too much in your daily routine.
• Go with the flow. Sometimes, you plan a scene meticulously, and your characters just do something different. Don’t ask me how this works, but it’s not just me that’s found this: I’ve seen whole NaNoWriMo forum threads dedicated to this phenomenon. I’ll give you an example: In one scene, my main character was meant to fight and kill a monster, and then continue her journey. Instead, the monster pulled her off an overpass, they fell into an old abandoned secret lab, and another character, a looter, appeared out of nowhere when my main character woke up. What?! But I went with it; it was certainly more interesting than just killing the monster and continuing. But this one pivotal scene actually ended up influencing the entire story; so plan to make room for spontaneity and joy in your work.
• Hindsight is 20/20. When writing, that old sock you mentioned in chapter 1 could turn out to be the key to saving the kingdom later on down the line. Make sure to be aware of the descriptions and throwaway characters or bits of backstory you include; they could be really imperative to the story later on, particularly when you’re stuck and need a flash of quick inspiration. Everything you write can be a basis for another plot point if you play your cards right; giving you nearly unlimited options to concoct a great story if you include enough background, descriptions, character thoughts, and history.
• Jot down a scene summary. As a writing aid, if you want to save time and avoid frustration, at the beginning of your session, write down a sentence about what is going to happen in the next scene. It helps to have a summary you can look back on, as it defines a goal for the scene, and you can write around that to your heart’s content.
• Make a Story Playlist, and put it on when you write. Not only as an aid for emotional response whilst writing, but as an unconscious aid; your brain will slowly begin to learn that when these songs are playing, you have to be exploring your world. This point was really important for me, and influenced my writing massively. When you’re starting out, listen to a whole variety of music, and try to compile a playlist that encapsulates the feel of your story. If you’re really stuck, a good starting point is to take the title of your story, and search for vaguely similar song titles on any online music streaming service. I ended up with a list of songs that suited my story down to the ground, but were all very different. But I used those differences to fuel different parts of my writing, and as I heard new music throughout the month, I added appropriate songs, ending up with theme songs for most of the characters based on where they were emotionally in the story. I get really excited about music and associating characters with songs, so maybe this point only really applies to me. But give it a try!
• Remember that your story is yours, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it. I was on the verge of giving up on the first weekend of NaNoWriMo. I had proudly shown my parents the blurb I had written and posted on the site when I announced my novel, and they laughed me out of the room, telling me to cheer up and write something better. Or something not set on Earth. Or something just … different. But I had been really excited about the premise of my story, and that’s why I chose to write about it. Sure, I listened when my mum suggested an idea about incorporating telepathy into the story, but definitely not in the way she imagined. So for your first draft, and particularly for NaNoWriMo, take inspiration, but not criticism. This is your first draft; if a plot point seems stupid or out of place, but it moves the story forward and makes you laugh, write it. No one is reading this but you, and all that matters is that you get the words down on the page and tell that story. You can go back and fix the waltzing giraffe that distracts the bad guy later. What matters is, that the main character snuck past him and was able to get away — you end up in fits of giggles, and the plot keeps moving forward, because you’re driving. Driving down a highway towards 50k words and a first draft of your novel! Keep on truckin’!