Think on the words, not how many of them you have. EJDawson.com
When you hear the terms of Nano it’s becomes a math game;
50,000
30 days in November
1666 words per day
Easy, right? Here is a small achievable goal you can manage every day. It sounds very reasonable, until you have a few days in a row where commitments don’t let you get to your computer, you can’t find the writing time and so when it comes to trying to play catch up you can feel hopelessly overwhelmed!
STOP.
You don’t *have* to write every day. You have to pick a way that works for you. You can do it in chunks.
I said I’d give you 30 tips for November but today I’m doing a bunch of them. There’s two up there, we’re on the six day of November here – I am going to do future Ejay a favour and build up a couple more for the next few days.
If you need convincing to sit and write when you have the time and don’t want to, I can’t stress enough how having an honest conversation with yourself (no, not one of those creepy, in the mirror, serial killer monologue vibes- look, fine, if that’s what works for you), can hep convince yourself to do it now. Do it because you know you’re going to have more days like that and you don’t want to feel like this later in the month. If at all again. It’s a horrible guilt trip.
So how to get past it.
You’ve got the time and energy so here is a blog post I wrote a few ways back that can be summed up as thus;
- Writing Sprints; time yourself and do nothing but write in that time slot
- Name Generators; use these beauties to find a name you can change later
- Description; put an X or [ description ] and move on!
- Don’t edit; I mean it. You’ll have time for that later
- Write; yeah, a cop out, but you do just have to sit and write
And you might be stroking your chin in cunning supposition and think; which tip are we up to? Did she just cheat and slide in 5 more tips?
*gasps* Did I?
Yeah you bet your writers butt I did.
When I first started doing Nano it infuriated me when people cheated. They started early, they used chunks of already existing scripts, they were using it to finish a novel they started months ago! And it was all, when you got right down to it, perfectly reasonable.
Nano is about challenging yourself. About writing as much as you can. Getting into good writing habits, and finishing that story. It doesn’t matter the path, only that you do walk it.
While we’re getting all philosophical, and not worry about how many words we’ve written, just like we aren’t worry about how many tips I’m up to. Because all that really matters is getting the words down.
So now you are thusly armed, go write, and wreck havoc on those novels!
E. J. Dawson 