NaNoWriMo – What should you expect?

As many of us start gearing up for this year’s NaNo my thoughts turned to last year.

2010 was my first NaNoWriMo. I was challenged to take part by that there RosieBunny and after looking into it, I decided to have a go. Of course knowing what NaNoWriMo is and knowing what it’ll be like to actually take part are two very different things.

So if you’re thinking about doing NaNo this year or have already signed up, I thought you might like a bit of advanced warning about what to expect.

In my last post, I mentioned the people who will be slagging off NaNoWriMo and all who take part. They are a royal pain in the arse and what they want is for you to give up.

Do not listen to them. There will be plenty of NaNoers around to offer you support so seek them out. You’ll have plenty of other things to worry about without these jokers battering your self-confidence. Things like,

sticking to your target

As you must know by know, NaNoWriMo requires that you write 50,000 words in 30 days in order to be declared a “winner”. That means you must write 1667 words per day if you want to reach your target.

For some, that will be no problem. For others, it will sound easy until they actually try to do it.

If you fail to hit target in your first few days, the panic will set in and you’ll start to wonder why you signed up for this stupid event. But before you give up, have a close look at your writing technique. NaNoWriMo requires a technique that is very different from that used by most writers. This becomes especially apparent if you’re one of those scribblers who likes to edit as they go.

The NaNo mantra is, Editing is for December. Write that on a post-it and stick it near your screen at about eye level. There is no time for editing when you’re writing for NaNoWriMo.

This is the one thing that knocked me sideways last year. It drove me mad and I only managed a few hundred words for each of the first few days and had to write over 4000 words over the first weekend just to catch up. It was at that point that I cracked.

My writing, although not great anyway, was just awful. I knew I could do better, but to do so meant losing words. When I write blog posts for clients, I’m always trying to lose words to tighten up the text. But with NaNo, I can’t afford to be losing words. I had to convince myself that this was a good thing.

And it is a good thing. Once you get a handle on the main idea of NaNoWriMo, it all falls into place. And the main idea of NaNoWriMo is, of course, the word count.

Get that into your head now. The word count is all that matters. You will be very lucky if you produce anything like a first draft in 30 days. What you will most likely have is draft zero, a working version of the story or a full length synopsis. Once you’ve got your head round that, the writing becomes easier.

Now you can stop worrying about getting the text just right. You can stop those repeated attempts at trying to make your dialogue realistic. None of it matters, it’s all about the word count.

Once I had realised this my manuscript started to flow. The finished version is full of notes disguised as description and dialogue. Characters have long and very odd conversations about nothing while I try to work out what I’ve forgotten to mention earlier on. Excuses are made about objects that suddenly appear in the hand of a protagonist just when it’s needed.

All of it is horrible writing, that’s for damn sure, but it hits the target for wordage and serves as a reminder to me that it needs tidying up when I come to do the rewrite. The lesson is, don’t be precious about your writing, you’re not producing a finished or polished product at this stage.

Most likely you’ll be the only one who reads this draft (unless you’re a huge show off) so don’t worry about it.

Yes it’s hard to get over yourself when you start, but once you do you’ll feel the weight lift and you’ll start having fun. The writing will flow and your target will vanish. I finished last year’s NaNoWriMo a few days early having hit my pace at 2000 words per day which I completed in a few hours. It was much more relaxing than the fretting and hair pulling of the first week.

So take my advice, concentrate on the numbers rather than the words and leave the editing for December. You’ll have a much happier time of it.

Tagged as: advice, editing, nanowrimo, technique, word count