Eight Tips for Nanowrimo

As people who read writing blogs are probably aware, Nanowrimo starts this Thursday. (If you’re not aware of Nanowrimo, visit their website , and all will be revealed to you.) As a four-time successful Nano-er, and one-time Script Frenzy-er, I present you with six tips on how to write 50,000 words in a month.

1. Find a writing buddy
These are invaluable. The Nano forums may be there to let you know that other people are suffering with you, but if you have a writing buddy, you can tell them about your novel from the beginning, and when you say, “Archibald is too tall to be a cyborg!” they’ll know not only what you’re talking about, but hopefully how to fix it.

2. Write as much as you can on the first day
Having just started writing a novel, you will probably be super-excited, and overflowing with brilliant ideas. The beginning is usually the easiest part to write, in my opinion, because if you’ve only just started, you can’t even have plot-holes yet. Before the buzz of your super-awesome new novel wears off, get down as many words as you can. That way, when you are feeling sad and unmotivated, or when something comes up that drags you away from novel writing, you’ll already have a stock of extra words to prevent you falling behind.

3. Write every day
I know this isn’t possible for everyone, and a lot of people plan for November so that they will write a few hundred words every weekday, and catch up on the weekend. In that case, this advice should be ‘Follow your schedule’. It’s a lot easier to fit 1667 words into a busy day than it is to fit 12,000 words into a weekend, no matter how much time you may have. 12,000 words is intimidating. 1667 is achievable.

4. Don’t procrastinate
Achieving this is actually impossible, but in this case I only mean it in short bursts. Word Wars are your friend. The Nano website runs them through their forums, or you can find yourself a real-life writing buddy. Set yourself ten minutes, and write like crazy. Not only will this stop you wasting you life on the Nano forums and Facebook, but it will also make you realise how much you can write in ten minutes. If you can do 400 words, 1667 will only take you forty minutes!

5. Find something to motivate you
Hopefully, there is a motivational website out there to suit everyone. If you like looking at cute pictures of cats, visit Written? Kitten!, and you will be gifted with one every time you achieve a word-count goal. If you need to be motivated by something really cruel, go to Write or Die, where your work will disappear if you don’t keep writing. Otherwise, there’s always rewarding yourself with chocolate, or a nice long perusal of the forums.

6. Generate a plot-twist
If all else fails, and you’re staring at your computer screen, and wondering why you ever thought this was a good idea for a novel in the first place, and whether you have enough plot to fill the next 100 words, let alone 50,000 of them, generate a plot twist. After all, it’s Nanowrimo, and the aim is to get words down on paper (or, you know, screen), which you can always fix later. If your plot twist works out – brilliant! if it doesn’t, hopefully it will at least provide some inspiration, and if nothing else, it will add enough words that you  won’t start feeling unmotivated by being behind word-count tomorrow. Seventh Sanctum, TV Tropes and the Nanowrimo adoption forum are excellent for this.

7. Use pointy brackets
Pointy brackets are your friend. If you can’t think of what to name your character, write <name>. If you can’t think of that word you really want, write <that adjective that sounds kind of like ‘alpaca’>. If you can’t think of how on earth you’re going to write your next scene, <that scene I really can’t work out> will save you. This will save you all the time you would have spent staring in panic at the screen, and also the time you would have spent perusing naming websites, dictionaries, and other procrastination stations.

8. Don’t give up
A weekend of solid writing can always save you. There are people – and I don’t know what bizarre kind of people they are, but they are people – who complete Nanowrimo on November 1^st. All 50,000 words of it. If they can write 50,000 words in a day. It’s just a matter of sitting down, and writing without doing anything else, until you’ve reached your goal.

I hope this helps people with Nanowrimo. Do you have tips to share?

750 Words, and Other Such Things

After reading a blog post which raved about it, I decided to give 750 words a go. The premise of this website, in a nutshell, is that you sign up and write 750 words a day. It’s all very straightforward, really. It’s supposed to get you into the habit of writing every day, and to stave off writers’ block.

The site has a few useful (or perhaps ‘interesting’ may be a better word) features. Firstly, it times how long it takes you to write your words, and calculates your average speed. In terms of motivation to churn out words quickly (something that one always needs more of during Nano), this is definitely a plus. It also leads to mindless, punctuation-less, sometimes even word-less drabble. But maybe that’s just me. I have never been good at producing coherent work under time constraints, as anybody who has ever read my Nanowrimo works can attest. But generally, the ticking timer is nice motivational tool.

The second – and far more entertaining feature – is that for every entry you write, the site attempts to analyse your mood and compare it to the world average. I’m not sure exactly how this works, but it does fascinate me to know I am more upset that average, but less sad. My favourite part of writing on this site is when I finish and I get to see colourful little pie-graphs and charts of how I’m feeling. (Strangely, the seven options for emotions are affectionate, upset, self-expressive, self-important, happy, anxious and sad. I’m not sure how they chose these.) It’s also interesting – on the few occasions I’ve used the site for actual creative writing as opposed to brain-dumps – to see whether the mysterious bots picked up on the emotions I was trying to include.

Also, there are badges. As a general failure at consistent daily writing, my only badge is the turkey, which comes for writing three days in a row. It goes all the way up to the space bird – a weird kind of eagle in a helmet – which you get for writing 500 days in a row. Surprisingly, the site tells me 113 people have achieved this goal. Good on them. But yes, cute badges are definitely a good addition to the site. However, they aren’t enough to motivate me, because I can look at the cute pictures without actually earning the badges, and it isn’t really the kind of site where other people visit your profile and say, “My, what a lovely flamingo that is! You must have written 10 days in a row!”

Sadly, despite its perks, 750 words is rapidly losing its appeal. I’m quite happy to write 1667 words a day when it comes to Nanowrimo, and when I have something to work on, but at the moment I’m mostly editing and planning rather than just writing, so I don't have much reason to write 750 words a day. When I started, I was writing random rants of whatever popped into my head, but it quickly transpired that my head was very monotonous, and one post started to look a lot like the other. So alas, this site is not really for me right now. (And now I wonder why I wrote a whole blog post to tell you this.) Nonetheless, I definitely think it has the potential to be revived come the madness of November. 

While I’m on the topic of such sites, however, I do have a couple of others to mention:

Doctor Wicked’s Write Or Die – with the option for your words to start disappearing if you pause too long in your writing, you can’t really go past it for forcing you to continue.

Written? Kitten! – you set a goal, and every time you reach it, your screen flashes up a cute picture of a kitten. I find that negative enforcement works better than positive, but for those of you who are into cats…

I have also heard of One Page Per Day and My Tomatoes, although I haven’t tried either of them. Has anyone else? What are your thoughts on these types of ‘motivational’ writing sites?