Chris Baty founded the now famous National Novel Writing Month in April of 1999 which makes NaNoWriMo 25 years old. He and his friends decided that in the current climate of all things possible, including sock puppets selling pet food online (before Amazon Prime made this feasible) why not complete a 50,000-word novel in a month? Despite or perhaps because of the sheer lunacy of such an endeavor, the project took off, especially after the event was moved to November a month in the north hemisphere so dark and depressing you may as well spend hours hunched over a computer drinking coffee and eating too many cookies.
In their own words: “NaNoWriMo believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page. – https://nanowrimo.org/“.
Chris Bay even wrote a book about how exactly to manage a November novel – No Plot? No Problem! Which sums up the founder’s cheerful can-do gestalt.
Why would you do such a thing? Write a novel in a month?
First, let’s be clear, what we embark on writing in November won’t end up a novel per se, but rather what I call, a raw draft. 50,000 words ready for editing at another time in another month.
There is much good in banging down a novel packed with little more than 50,000 words in the space of a month. I’ve participated in and “won” the NaNo challenge about a dozen times. And loved every minute even though my husband and the dog did not.
Deadline-Driven Motivation: The 30-day timeline encourages writers to stay focused and consistent. If there is one thing that spurs us on is a deadline. Bonus, because you are working to write those 1,600 words per day, the month will fly by.
Overcoming Perfectionism: NaNoWriMo emphasizes quantity over quality, pushing writers to silence their inner critic and write without overthinking. This is key, particularly if you discovered a propensity for re-editing, editing, and then editing the edits of the first chapter of your Great American Novel, which you began writing in 1986. Participation in NaNo forces us to just keep writing, no editing allowed.
Building a Writing Habit: The daily word count goal (about 1,667 words per day) helps new writers establish a regular writing routine. But also remember lowering the bar. If 1,600 plus words are too much, write 500 words. See if you can keep to a daily writing schedule no matter how many words you write. I suggest more than two.
Creative Exploration: The fast pace allows writers to experiment with new ideas and genres without the pressure of getting everything right on the first try. This approach is particularly helpful after about 30,000 words. Typically, writers get bogged down in the middle of their novels. Nothing works, you don’t know where you are going, and your characters have suddenly become mute with no sign language skills.
Writing up a NaNo draft allows you to not care. Stuck for ideas? Give your heroine a new hobby: lighting fires, running away, getting kidnapped, getting kidnapped by aliens. If you are struggling deep in the quagmire of the mid-point of the narrative (at 30,000 words or about November 20th) your only obligation is to search around for low-hanging fruit. And keep writing.
Snow White was in the middle of the forest when she encountered the dwarves. Belle was in the middle of the castle when she encountered the Beast (and the library). The Titanic was sailing in the middle of the ocean when it hit the iceberg.
The middle is soft, squishy and delicious. Except when you bite into that See’s candy to discover the middle is lemon. Lemon with chocolate is a travesty and should be outlawed. I have learned to toss the candy and choose a new flavor. At 25,000 words you can too. Throw in something new and get on with the novel. This is the opportunity to feature as many flammable aliens as you like.
Sense of Community: NaNoWriMo connects writers with a global community, providing support, encouragement, and a sense of belonging. Start a group to meet at that cafe and write together. Join the local outlet for NaNo, there are chapters all over the country and you can connect with them through the NaNo website. Plus, you have joined a very large tribe. All you need to do is try this process and you will belong to a group of roughly 413,000 writers all of whom at one time or another, signed up to write their novel in November. Odds are very good if you ask a writer if they’ve done NaNoWriMo, they will have a tale, and so will you.
Accountability: You sign up on the web and make the very public commitment to writing. Your word count is displayed next to your hopeful photo and woefully inadequate bio. This can either paralyze you in terror or galvanize you particularly after you realize that even though your writing commitment is public, no one in your professional field has even heard of NaNoWriMo. All the accountability, none of the notoriety.
Increased Confidence: Completing a 50,000-word novel boosts self-esteem. Congratulations, you wrote a whole novel in one short month! What is it about? Flaming lemon cheesecake. You really have no idea because that wasn’t the point. But you achieved the word count. That is the big win!
Overcoming Writer’s Block: The sheer volume of writing required forces participants to push through creative blocks. You can’t just sit and stare at a blank screen, you must put down words. One of the reasons NaNoWriMo is so popular is because it uses brute force to push through blocks and it is hoped, realize some creative breakthroughs.
Foundation for Future Work: Even if the NaNoWriMo novel isn’t perfect, it provides a substantial first draft that can be revised and polished into a complete book later. You can’t edit a blank page. At least there is something now to revise, and that is, again, the win. I have found that in a 50,000 crazy-word novel, I can use about half those words to build up a coherent narrative. It’s a start, that is what we are all about.
Once you have that draft in hand on December 1st. What is next?
Very likely you are not only exhausted but currently squinting at the living room wondering if a well-lit holiday tree will distract the family from the five inches of dust on the backs of all the chairs. They will not notice. And you, you marvelous author, will take December off.
You’ve probably read and forgotten countless writing articles suggesting that after four intense weeks of creating a novel or any work, an author must take a break. But, you argue, no one takes a break working on the bleeding edge. No one calls in sick, no one takes all their vacation time. You do. When it involves your creative process, breaks are critical for artists. And cars, brakes in cars are also important.
Even though you are “finished”, your book and characters are still fully living in your head. If you return to your MS to edit the day after you finish the draft you will automatically fill in spaces and sentences with what you think, totally and predictably clueless that not all your thoughts translated into words on the page.
After a month of intense writing, you may hate all your characters and would happily kill them all in the end. Leave them alone, this is not Hamlet, and besides, murder is a lazy way to resolve plot troubles.
The solution? A break, ideally a vacation. It doesn’t matter where or how; the goal is to literally distance yourself from the work and think of anything and everything else. Visiting the family? Great, walk outside and explore the neighborhood. Learn something new from a family member, read, cook, bake, listen to music, watch a popular film, or uncouple from the book. This alone will help renew you and improve your writing.
Take as many walks as the weather permits. Walking is a time-honored way to ruminate over creative work. Hit the streets carrying nothing more than a question about the book (and money for coffee). Resist playing that podcast about how to be a best-selling author, don’t start up the audible best-selling book, pop out your Air Buds and turn off the music. Be quiet. Think about the question. Notice the trees, the change in seasons, the weather. Think about your characters, notice the walking path, the sky. Just allow your brain to breathe a bit. You can breathe a bit as well. And yes, carrying a small notebook or index cards to capture fabulous but fleeting thoughts is acceptable!
If you can’t get out, get into another project. Dive deeply into one of those tangential creative projects or take up something new. And decorating a holiday tree or your whole house counts!
And a couple of ideas to consider when you return to the manuscript:
Read the messy first draft through, ouch! What were you thinking? You were thinking 50,000 words by Dec. 1st. Everyone does.
Is there a theme you hadn’t noticed before that can be expanded?
Do your characters need more backstory? Less backstory?
Did a character go rogue? Did the pyrotechnic heroine steal the plot? Did you end up creating a sympathetic alien despite his propensity for snapping up humans like they were on sale? Sometimes our characters get away from us, and before you reach the end of the draft, the buddy character has emerged as the heroine. Who knew?
Has a subplot emerged?
Can you expand on the subplot and ideally connect it to the central narrative?
Move scenes around to support the now obvious narrative arch.
Modify and fill in characters and dialogue.
The second draft is a good place to improve and clear up dialogue, making sure what the characters discuss advances the plot.
Be prepared to cringe over hastily scrawled cliches used as placeholders back in November.
Ignore the spelling. Spelling corrections often are tackled in the 3rd draft.
Resist the urge to re-write the first chapter, over and over, remember NaNo was created to bomb us out of constant rewrites with their 50,000-word shock and awe offense.
Do not ask for feedback. At this point, the book isn’t even close to ready for other eyes, and you don’t want your own imagination short-circuited by well-meaning readers (AKA family members who still aren’t clear about what it takes to write a book).
I like spending November working furiously, taking December off to eat more shortbread than is good for me and starting all fresh in January. It’s satisfying and it follows our seasonal patterns. Give it a try!
