NaNoWriMo2020

Can you feel it? The excitement in the air? The buzz of ideas and the sparking of imagination? As October (more commonly known as Preptober) closes, NaNoWriMo draws near.

What is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and runs the month of November. Although it is called “national” novel writing month, the phenom has grown from 21 participants in 1999 to 455,080 participants in 2019 from around the world. According to the stats, only 13% of the participants who declare a project win the challenge.

Although you can change your goal, a ‘win’ is typically writing 50,000 words during the 30 days of November. Granted, most novels aren’t finished at 50,000 words, the idea is that you can write most of a book, a short book, or a skeleton version of your book that you can flesh out later during the editing.

How Do I Participate in NaNoWriMo?

While you could open a fresh notebook or Word document on
November 1, I highly recommend you create an account on the official https://nanowrimo.org/ site. It’s free to join. Once you’re there, you fill out a brief bio (optional) and declare your project (required to participate in the challenge). You can add as much or as little detail about your project as you like.

The site has a lot of resources about NaNoWriMo, writing productivity, and other tips to help you meet the challenge. There are also resources to help you build your story, your world, and your characters. There are forums where you can interact with other NaNoWriMo hopefuls and veterans, and there are regional groups that you can interact with to find other writers in your area.

In past years, the regional groups will host in-person writing sessions. Obviously, that’s not happening this year, but it’s still fun to engage with people who live around you.

NaNoWriMo Tips

Once NaNoWriMo starts, you’ll want to update your daily word count to watch that needle move. To meet the 50,000-word challenge, you need to write an average of 1,667 words per day.

Hot Tip #1: if you have an open day, write more than your daily minimum. You don’t know what will happen later; the dog may get into your chocolate stash, you could be buried in a snowstorm without power, or running from zombies could eat up your lunch and evening writing time.

During Camp NaNoWriMo2019, I wrote extra whenever I could and was so thankful that I’d done that- I caught a cold and just didn’t feel like writing for a few days.

Hot Tip #2: Update your word counts daily on the NaNoWriMo site. Watching that little slider bar move is really motivating. Plus, you don’t want to miss out on the goodies if you actually win but forget to update your word count before NaNoWriMo closes. NaNoWriMo prizes, should you meet or beat your goal, include social media stickers to accompany your modest bragging or excessive celebrations, and discount to writing-related software and services. 

My NaNoWriMo Journey

This will be my first official NaNoWriMo, but I did participate in Camp NaNoWriMo2019. Camp NaNoWriMo basically has the same rules and support, but it’s held in April. The timing of it worked out for me as I had just sent Book 1 to the editor and needed to get started on Book 2. During that month, I was able to draft the first twenty-seven chapters of the book.

Personally, I need a plan to be as productive as possible when I’m writing. I used to wing it and have fifteen to twenty ‘novels’ that got trunked after 1 to 5 chapters as a result. I’ve done a lot of reading about novel structure and found I like the 3-Act novel structure best, so I’ve created a simple template that prints on four pages to help me put together a loose plan for my novel. It has notes on where the main story beats are, and spaces for up to 60 chapters.

I’ve left myself enough space on the template so I can write an idea for the chapter, such as  “The pirates attack the colony”. I don’t go into more detail than that so while I know generally what happens in my story, I have no idea how it will happen. My chapter notes are essentially a writing prompt that will ensure I get to an ending that makes sense and provides the reader with a definable Beginning, Middle, and End.

How about you? Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? Did you win? If you’re going to try this year, send me an invite and we can cheer each other on! My user name on the site is JamiFairleigh and you can read about my NaNoWriMo project there. 

Header photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash