I’ve decided NOT to do NaNoWriMo in November.
I feel a little weird because I’ve attempted it (sometimes half assed I grant you) every year since 2006 and succeeded 3 times, and I’m not counting this summer’s success at Camp NaNoWriMo.
I will be writing in November, but I feel that I’ve gotten what I’ve needed out of NaNoWriMo and now it’s time to move on and focus on other things. NaNo taught me that I could write every day and finish a draft in a reasonable amount of time. I learned that I can write and write well when I have a good story idea, decent notes and detailed outline. I learned that discovery writing is a sure path to failure for me, even though I enjoy doing it.
If you are beginning as a writer, I highly recommend trying the National Novel Writing Month challenge at least once. You will not regret it.
If you are doing NaNoWriMo this year and you care to receive some advice from one who’s been there, read on!
I originally wrote this advice out while commenting on Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds writer’s blog and I felt it was worthwhile posting it here as well.
Beyond making time for writing in November (duh!), these are the things that have helped me the most to succeed in writing 50K in days:
– Have a story idea in your head that you love. You’ll come to hate it before the November is done, but the more you love it at the start, the further you’ll get before it becomes a slog.
– Have an outline BEFORE November 1st and as many notes as possible. The better your outline and notes, the less you’ll be stuck staring at a blank page around week 3.
– Early on, when you’re stoked. Write MORE than your quota. Your daily quota to make it is 1667 words daily. Set your quota at 2000 and EXCEED IT as much as you can when you start. This will help when you run into days where you have trouble getting words down.
– Don’t try to reach the END of your story. If you end up at 50K and you write “The End”, you’ve done it wrong. It’s not a novel and you wasted time planning it to end up this way. Just write. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to reach 50K in a month, not to complete a story in a month…just make it to 50K then commit to spending a few more days finishing. I’ve learned from experience it’s easier to trim a 100K story to 80K than to make a 50K novella into a 90K novel.
These four bits of advice are the key to my succeeding. When I look back, I failed every time I did not follow these four points and I succeeded EVERY TIME I did.
Now get writing and good luck! Let me know how it goes!
The Basement Office 
> Have a story idea in your head that you love. You’ll come to hate it before the November is done
Six tries, six victories. This has not happened to me. Not once.
And I’m sorry to have to contradict all those smug bloggers you love to read who have appointed themselves arbiters of what is a novel, but 50K *IS* a novel.
50K is a fucking novel.
The Mourner by Richard Stark. 48000 words.
A Savage Place by Robert B Parker. 55000 words.
The Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope. 54000 words.
Have a look at the old British thrillers. They’re thin. You know why? Because they’re the right length.
Add ten minutes to Ramones, you dilute the power of it. Is it an EP?
The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney is 70min. Are you going to claim it’s a short film?
If you know – and you should be able to figure out – when and how and *why* 80K became the “official” (in the words of bloggers, “industry” people, and other liars) length of a novel, then you know it has nothing to do with storytelling, nothing to do with creativity, nothing to do with anything that matters.
Whose are these people to decide what writing is?
t!
For whatever reason the “standard” was extended. I find 50K a little light for a novel.
What’s the “right: length?
I’m not being smug here, but I do think that you have to consider your market. I would like to eventually sell my book through a publisher (whether I will or not is another matter) so that means that for me and my goals, a novel length is around 80K, maybe 100K. That’s how I’m thinking of novel length, how my market considers it…for whatever reason.
If I was publishing myself (which might happen as well), then basically, the length of the novel is the length of my story. It if feels right at 50K, then it’s 50K. That hasn’t happened yet.
> Six tries, six victories. This has not happened to me. Not once.
I do not think this is the case with most people, especially on their first try. I grant you that this is opinion from anecdotal evidence and is hardly empirical, but I never pretended to be any kind of arbiter on anything. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve never been frustrated while writing your NaNoWriMo stories? I envy you.