What a Month of CampNaNoWriMo Taught Me About Writing
(that I hadn’t figured out in 25 years)
I woke up on June 30th this year with a dream stuck in my head. In the shower, waking up, the dream prompted the first line of something. A short story? A novel?
It was a sort of familiar feeling. In 2006, the same thing had happened on the night of October 31st, hours before the official start of NaNoWriMo. Then, my attempt at a novel had stalled half-way through the month.
Why worry though? It was June, not October, and NaNoWriMo was months away. Even after my bus to work, when more lines queued up in my brain and I started writing them down, I told myself I had months to prepare.
Until that afternoon, and this tweet.
Uh-oh. Camp NaNoWriMo? What fresh hell is this?
For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is…
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. Participants work toward the goal of writing a 50,000-word draft during the month of November. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought fleetingly about writing a novel.
… and, as it turns out, it has friends:
Camp NaNoWriMo is a more open-ended version of our original November event. We have Camp sessions in both April and July, and we welcome word-count goals between 10,000 and 1,000,000. In addition, writers may attempt non-novel projects. Camp is a creative retreat for whatever you’re working on!
Well, that changed everything. By early evening, I was seriously considering ‘going to camp’.
Call me a glutton for punishment. I had no idea if I could make it. The spectre of my previous failed attempt — even if was 9 years ago — was still present, and joined by the ghosts of many other failed writing projects.
But here’s the thing: I did it.
It’s July 30th as I write this. I crossed the 50,000 word mark two days ago, ahead of schedule, on July 28th.
That means I ‘won’ CampNaNoWriMo (or indeed, any NaNoWriMo) for the very first time.
This is how I made it, and how I learned more about myself and writing in four weeks than I had in the previous twenty-five years.
How to succeed at NaNoWriMo by really, really trying
1) Write every day. No, really.
If every time a professional writer was asked “Any advice for new writers?” and they replied “Write every day”, we added a nickel to a metaphorical swear jar, then that jar would be as big as a Stephen King royalty check.
“Write every day.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to say. It’s also, as William Goldman once said, the easiest thing to not do.
Telling anyone who’s trying to write that they should “Write every day” is arguably the most unhelpful piece of advice you can give. They know they should write every day. They’ve heard that advice from every writer they’ve ever admired.
But just like a pro-athlete telling you that all you have to do is “Practice every day” and you’ll win the Super Bowl, or an artist telling you to “Draw every day” and then you’ll be on display in the Louvre, there’s a big gap between intention and action.
Which is where NaNoWriMo succeeds.
When you sign up, you get presented with statistics about your chosen word count. (In the traditional NaNoWriMo, that’s 50,000 words. In CampNaNoWriMo, it’s more flexible.)
Your stats are graphed, with a diagonal trend line going up. It looks like a really steep mountain climb.
You start at the bottom. Your target word count is at the top. All that’s between you are the daily words that you need to write.
(Just like all that’s between you and the top of Mount Everest are the steps that you need to take.)
When I started CampNaNoWriMo I chose a 50K word count. I had the 31 days of July to get there. That meant on average, I needed to write 1,612 words a day to hit 50K by the deadline. (Well okay, 1612.90322580645161 words, but what’s a few decimal places between friends.)
That might sound like a lot to you. It might sound like a little. I’d be willing to guess for most people who’ve written before, it sounds like a decent amount, but not too terrifying.
Here’s the trick though. During NaNoWriMo, if you skip writing for a day, the average number of words you need to write per day for your remaining time goes up. For example, say you started on July 3rd and missed two days, for whatever reason. Your average number of words per day to complete 50K would now be 1,724. Again, seems okay, right? But over the course of a month, the more days you skip writing, the higher that average becomes. The further the goal slips. Miss a week and it’s 2,083 a day. Miss ten days — a third of your writing time — and now you’ve got 2,381 words a day to complete in three weeks. The number quickly starts to become daunting.
The solution is obvious. You have to write every day. Now however instead of it being an abstract thing that can be put off indefinitely, it’s a deadline. It’s a challenge. Which can make all the difference in the world.
2) Write more than you need to.
(Yes, every day).
The trick to dealing with the NaNoWriMo pressure — and it’s definitely pressure, especially if you miss days early on — is to exceed your goals, every day. Even if it’s just by a little, because it adds up. Just as walking a few extra steps up that mountain will get you to the summit quicker, so a few extra words gets you to to your overall word count.
I started out with 1,916 words on July 1st. The neat thing about the NaNoWriMo website (and also my writing app of choice, Scrivener) is that as your daily word count fluctuates, it will adjust the average number of words you need to write per day to get to your goal. In my case, the extra 303 words I wrote on July 1st meant from July 2nd, I needed to write 1,602 words per day to get to the goal. A whole 10 words less per day! Ahem.
Okay, that doesn’t sound like much — but as I put in the effort to get above the average number of words I needed to write every day, the average count required got lower and lower. The early efforts I put in paid off later. In other words, writing a little extra every day means you can write less, not more as you progress to an overall word count.
(Of course, there’s another sneaky side effect to this. You’ll probably end up writing more every day because you get used to it… which means you may end up at your word count early. Which might encourage you to keep going and get to ‘real’ novel length. Or just let you pour that celebratory margarita a little earlier. Whatever works.)
3) Any idea can work. If it gets tough, keep writing (every day).
I imagine many writers who take on NaNoWriMo start strong and then peter out. I know I did.
As I mentioned, I attempted NaNoWriMo in 2006, when in a weirdly similar set of events, I woke up with an idea in my head the day before it started and then just began writing. In the end I stopped about 15,000 words in.
The reason why I stopped wasn’t because my life got in the way, or any other reason that could legitimately prevent me from writing. It was because I didn’t know where the plot was going, and that scared me.
Now, I should point out that NaNoWriMo ‘rules’ allow you to prepare to write as much as you like before the start date. You can plot the entire book scene-by-scene, plan every twist and turn, write extensive character bios, interview people for research or decide on your dream cast for the inevitable film version — you just can’t start writing.
You don’t need to plan, though. In 2006 and again this year, I started writing with practically no idea of where the story was going, but I had an idea that got me started.
The big difference between 2006 and 2015 was that when my idea took me to weird places, I just kept going. I told myself I’d figure it out the weirdness in the second draft. Or the third. Or fifth. Or maybe that I’d just keep that weirdness intact and it would become the cool thing about my novel that readers would talk about. I didn’t let it bother me: I just kept going.
Sometimes, you write yourself into a corner. At one point about a week ago, I did that almost literally. I typed “I have no idea what to do next” as a character statement, and it was true.
So, I took a little break, then went back and rewrote slightly to give the characters some wiggle room. There’s no rule against rewriting during the month of CampNaNoWriMo (as long as you get to your overall word count for the day!).
In the end you might think your idea is crazy, or you might think it’s unworkable, or you might think you’ve run out of steam. But keep writing. Even if the scenes you write are going to be thrown out in your editing, keep writing. Because as you write, your brain is thinking about where to go next. Forcing it ahead into the darkness will eventually get you somewhere. Writing will keep your idea alive, and that idea might just take you somewhere awesome.
4) Use peer pressure to your advantage.
When you sign up for CampNaNoWriMo you get assigned to a ‘cabin’ on the site, where you’re grouped with other entrants. (You can also choose to make a cabin with people you know.) Everyone’s project name, current and target word count is shown next to a chat box you can post in.
In other words, you’re all standing around the cabin with a pile of blank paper, a typewriter and a nervous smile.
So take advantage of that. I’m an introverted soul, but I’m okay online; I don’t mind speaking out to say hello to folk. So I did, and they came back to talk to me. I was unstinting in my praise and encouragement, and never pressed for details about anyone’s project, or criticised what they were writing.
What I also did was keep a close eye on their word counts. And an interesting thing happened; apart from the guy who had a 50,000 word count on day one and never posted (who I assumed entered the figure in the wrong box), I ended up having the highest word count for the entire month. Consistently on a day-by-day basis, I was higher than everyone else, too.
I can’t lie, that motivated me a little. I logged on and felt a little touch of pride when I saw my word count was a little higher than others, that I was getting further every day.
Now, I also felt plenty of sympathy for those who fell behind early, or who posted once and never posted again. I wish I could have done more to motivate them to keep writing. But in the end, I used this ‘passive peer pressure’ — for lack of a better term — to keep me writing.
I even ended up in a race to the finish with another writer, when we both realized we had about 4,000 words left to go. (For the record, I lost, being the second writer in our cabin to cross their word count. I never should have skipped a day in the last week!)
Honestly, I have no idea how I would have reacted if I was in a cabin with 10 other writers who blazed forward, putting my word count to shame every day. Maybe it would have disheartened me. Maybe I did that to the other writers in my cabin, despite my attempts to encourage them. But I sincerely believe that encouragement and forward motion, knowing that others are going through the same stuff as you, is ultimately net positive.
5) Keep moving forward, and don’t stop for the inner critic.
You know who the inner critic is. It’s the voice inside your head that says you’re not good enough, that what you’re wearing is ugly, that you’ll never amount to anything and that what you’re writing is sub-par dogshit.
NaNoWriMo puts you in the driving seat of a car careening towards a cliff, and encourages you to drive right off it. As long as you keep writing, you keep moving forward. You just can’t stop for the inner critic, no matter how much they try to take the wheel.
Because they will try. They’ll wait for any chance they can. They’ll wait for that brief second between paragraphs when you stare into space, thinking about what happens next, and then mutter to you None of what you just wrote makes sense. They’ll find you at work, daydreaming about your plot, and they’ll whisper You idiot, that plot was used in MacGyver.
Keep your hands on the wheel. Block them out with the writing. Beat them back with the word count. Look at that number at the end of the day — higher than the average, remember — and say to your inner critic “At least I wrote something today. What did you do?” They hate that.
6) Keep up momentum. (Even on vacation.)
When I told my wife on June 30th I was thinking about doing CampNaNoWriMo, her first words were “You remember we’re going on vacation for two weeks this month, right?”
I did. And I was worried about that. While you might think that vacation time = lots of writing time, it doesn’t always go that way. Luckily for me I have a super understanding wife who’s awesome, and she gave me time every day as we drove up the Oregon coast to get some words down. There was only one day during the break that I didn’t manage to write, and only one other day when I came in at less than my average word count.
That said, it’s not the extended chunks of down time that kill your momentum. It’s the loss of momentum in the moment. It’s that two seconds you spend picking up your phone to check a text. It’s the five minutes you spend on Facebook, where you intended to send a research question to a friend and instead ended up looking at a video of a cat attacking a koala bear. All of this stuff adds up and mounts up. It breaks your flow, it slows you down, and it makes getting to that daily word count much harder.
Banish distractions, as much as you can, when writing. That doesn’t mean you have to sit naked in an empty, hermetically sealed room with soundproofing. But turning off your wifi would be a start; follow that with your phone, and maybe shut your door and put a sign on it. Protect that writing time. Time means words, and words mean winning.
7) The first draft is about getting to done.
A lot of writers will tell you ‘writing is rewriting’. Many believe their first drafts are terrible. You might be one of them! You might also be one of those people, like me, who strive to get it right the first time (even though we generally don’t). You might spend a lot of time picking the perfect word, crafting the perfect sentence, writing the perfect paragraph.
It doesn’t matter whether you speed through your first draft or you agonize over it, word by word. What matters is that whether you think your first draft is raw stone or polished marble, your first draft must get done.
This is what NaNoWriMo helps you achieve. You’re given a word count to aim for and a deadline to meet. All you have to do is write the words and you will finish. In some ways that’s scary as hell. But in all of the other ways, it’s fantastic. It teaches you that finishing isn’t only possible, but achievable, and in a really short period of time. (A novel in a month?!?)
This is the most important lesson I learned during CampNaNoWriMo. You’ve got to finish to win. I’ve been an inveterate starter my entire writing life — getting a first chapter done, maybe a first few pages, but very rarely finishing. NaNoWriMo makes you finish.
The first draft can be perfect or it can be crap, but if the first draft gets done, it’ll teach you a lot more than rewriting your first page ever will.
And now, the Secret of NaNoWriMo
(and quite possibly, life)
Somewhere in the middle of this crazy month of writing, something happened. It made me start to take notes for this piece, because I wanted to share it. It’s so ludicrously simple it probably won’t shock you, but I was surprised at how something so simple needed such an ingenious Trojan Horse to enter my brain.
Because believe me, NaNoWriMo is a big ol’ Trojan Horse.
Here it is.
The word count doesn’t matter. Winning doesn’t matter.
It’s the process of writing, every day, that matters.
I started CampNaNoWriMo thinking it would be a good jumpstart, that it would get my creative juices flowing, that it would keep me moving in a good direction. Maybe yield something decent at the end. I was thinking about having written — but I wasn’t thinking about the solid, hard craft of writing. Of sitting your ass in the chair and working the keys and blocking out the world and getting the words done.
That’s what CampNaNoWriMo taught me. Passing that 50,000 word mark (and continuing on, because baby, that book ain’t done) taught me that not only could I write, I could write fast (by my own standards) and best of all — I could write without worrying about what I was writing.
Because that’s always been what held me back. For the last 25 years. I’ve read countless books on writing advice, I’ve written fan fiction and half-finished novels, I’ve tried and tried and tried — but the inner critic always got me. The (self-applied) pressure always got to me. I ‘cared’ (read: worried) way too much.
When I let the pressure go from internal (my critic) to external (CampNaNoWriMo) and when I stopped over-thinking about what I was writing, how I was writing, or where it was going to end up… that’s when I started to enjoy myself. That’s when I got the words down. That’s when I succeeded. The bottom line was simple.
NaNoWriMo made me stop worrying and start writing.
And that’s the best feeling in the world for anyone who wants to write.
The next chapter
I’m still writing. The average length of a novel these days is generally pegged about 80,000 words. You can write less, you can obviously write more — but it’s a good number to start with. So that’s what I’m aiming for. Besides, the story wasn’t done at 50,000. So I’m off again. This time I’ve set myself a three-week deadline.
It’s going pretty well so far. The first draft will get done.
A month or so later
That first draft? It got done. With another month and change of (nearly) daily writing, I finished the first draft of Overdue (WT!) on September 5th, 2015. About 104K words, unedited.
I wrote a novel in just over two months. You can do it too.
(By the way, getting to the end of that first draft wasn’t easy… but that’s probably another post.)
If you want to know who wrote this…
Hello! I’m a 42 year old community / social media / marketing professional with a full-time job, a wife and three cats.
I’m a British expat, and currently live in Oakland, CA. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid.
While I did become a journalist and later an ‘internet content guy’, I never got any of my fiction published. In my mind, I’m an ever-aspiring writer.
If you enjoyed this piece, please recommend it. If you’d like to talk to me about writing, NaNoWriMo or cats, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter.
The ‘official’ NaNoWriMo is every November. I hope to see you writing then.
