I did NaNoWriMo back in 2010. (There’s a NaNoWriMo tag, if you want to read the related posts.) I wasn’t successful. Worse, I found it didn’t help me write more or better. So after that one year, I pretty much gave up on the idea of writing-sprint-type things. This year though, I’ve decided to give it another try. Specifically, I’m thinking of doing NaNo 2.0.
Why
The reason is simply that I’ve scarcely been writing at all for years now, and something like this seems like a way to get myself back to it.
I know how to get writing done, which is to write every day. I also know that (for me) it’s important to start writing early in the day. As I say in that post:
“Even just 20 or 40 minutes of early morning writing gets my head into the story space, and once it’s there I’ll continue to have story ideas through the day.”
It’s possible to get lots of writing done late in the day, but I know from experience that that my writing time is much more productive if I’ve gotten at least a little bit done early.
What
So, what am I going to do? Mainly, I’m going to write every day. That’s how I get writing done.
Less important, but not nothing: I’m going to set an ambitious word-count goal (1667 words per day). I won’t beat myself up if I don’t hit it, but I will take it seriously.
Also less important, but a trap I’ve been known to fall into: I’m going to make a point of refraining from going back and dicking around with the beginning until I have a complete draft. A complete draft is something I can fix. One-third of a draft isn’t.
The rules
Even the original NaNoWriMo rules made it clear that you didn’t need to write a novel specifically The point was simply to pick a large project and try to make progress on it each day for a month. But writing a novel would be cool, and given my experience of both my previous NaNoWriMo project, and of writing things since then, I’ve come around to thinking that a rather classic version of NaNoWriMo might work well for me.
So, my plan is very nearly straight NaNoWriMo. I’ll write daily from November 1st to November 30th. The 1667 word-count goal is simply a 50,000 words divided by 30 days. I’ll refrain from going back and editing my previous days’ work (except that minimal line-edits will be okay, as will making notes if I see things that I’ll want to change later).
You’re not supposed to start writing early. (It’s fine to start plotting early, doing research, making notes, etc.) Still, I’m not hesitating to capture some fragments of prose when something pops into my head. For one thing, that gives me some material for making sure that my backup mechanisms and file syncing mechanisms are working, so those are things I don’t need to worry about in November when I’m ready to start cranking.
I’ll try to post frequent updates here (although I won’t let such updates interfere with getting my writing done).
Wish me luck!
