Tips for Winning NaNoWriMo

Are You Entering National Novel Writing Month in November - This Will Help You Win!

November will soon be here. And to a select group of people that only means one thing....NaNoWriMo! NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month is a time when people join together with the goal of writing 50,000 word novels by midnight, November 30th.

Approximately two thirds of the people that enter NaNoWriMo win it by completing a 50,000 word novel. There are even people that far surpass that goal, writing 75,000 or even 100,000 plus words in that single month! 

National Novel Writing Month was created by Chris Baty, a writer in San Francisco, California in 1999. Originally it was just a fun project to encourage his friends to write a novel within a month just for the heck of it. Every year the project has attracted more and more people to it, with 2004 attracting 42,000 participants.

Last year I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. I crossed the finish line, so to speak, with about 53,000 words. It was a lot of fun but it certainly took a bit of effort. I was especially grateful for the camaraderie of the NaNoWriMo forum. Connecting with other people who were working towards the same goal was very helpful and it made the experience all the more fun.

People approach NaNoWriMo in different ways, but I offer the suggestions below because they helped me reach the finish line, and I hope they encourage others who are interested in doing NaNoWriMo – but may feel a little intimidated by that big 50,000 word count. It is do-able.

1. Write every day, or on some kind of a schedule. A schedule will help you keep that finish line well in focus. Let’s just do the math. If you write every day, 50,000 words divided into thirty is 1666 words a day. If you wrote five days a week, that is writing twenty days instead of thirty you will need to write 2500 words a day. I found that if I wrote usually every day, it was a manageable goal. I allowed myself a day off here and there. Usually I wrote for an hour.