Young Writers Society

Hello again.

I'm thinking of doing this NaNoWriMo in November, and I'm kind of at a loss to how I should even THINK of starting.

Is it a good idea to set a day by day word count minimum? A week one?
What if I get stuck?
Is it really as hard as they say?

Tips would be really really cool. Love you guys, and thanks so much.

The aim of NaNo is to write. And write. And write. However you write. It doesn't matter so long as you write something. So if you get stuck, just write whatever. Even if it's stupid. Actually, especially if it's stupid. I don't know how fast you write, but I write really slowly, so the only way I ever meet any of my word count goals is to write the stupid things that come to my mind at 3AM or whenever.

So just write. You might wind up with multiple stories of awesome contained in a single draft. You might not. But you'll definitely wind up with something. XD

Pretty much seconding Kyll. xD

I ended up doing JulNo, and what saved me was backstory like crazy. I had the outline for the magic system, pretty much everybody's case history, and what their house looked like and why. In the first 23k. Not a scrap of plot to be seen for all that writing.

Did I care? No. I was winning word wars by letting myself go crazy on that, darnit. xD

Most people just set basic goals they need to hit, some daily, some weekly, depending on their schedule, while others just write everywhere and see how many words they end up with at the end of it all.

And if you get stuck, just come up with something crazy to happen. And forget about making it all work together. (I've had the... pleasure of reading 2 completed NaNo novels. To say they were logically put together is one of the farthest things from the truth)

I have done NaNoWriMo twice.

First time, I didn't complete the goal because I became too caught up with what I was writing. I had the whole story planned out which I find didn't help. It just made you want to make sure everything went perfect. I barely made it over 25k. But what I had written was decent and is a part of my novel now. So it wasn't a total failure.

Second time around, I completed it and I second Rosey and Kyllorac. It wasn't good. It was writing for the sake of writing and the plot was everywhere. I find making a word limit for each day was counter productive for me because on some days you don't meet it, and if you are like me, it makes you all gloomy and frustrated at yourself. So I would sit down and write for how ever long I could. It wasn't that hard I found, and I was completed with time to spare.

Its a great experience so don't be scared.

I've done Nano 5 times and I agree with everyone else. You need to relax your writing standards a bit to get it done. Don't focus on perfect, focus on word count. And don't be afraid to add in a ninja or a pirate to keep things moving. Sometimes you need to shake your story up. If you want a steady goal to work towards every day, 1667 will get you 50K in 30 days. You're going to want to write as much as you can when you can, though. And don't worry about ending up with under 1667 words because plenty of people can catch up by the end of the month.

Don't be afraid to use a couple of dirty tricks (the forums usually have some interesting ones), but in order to be a true Nano novel, you need to try to keep it all in one work of fiction.

I've successfully completed NaNo four years running now and yeah, I'm gonna just echo everyone else above me. Don't worry about the fact that you just wrote basically the same thing twice in the space of two paragraphs. Don't worry if the character walking up and down the street four times in the course of a chapter is boring. The point is to get 50k words out in a month.

It really isn't quite as hard as it sounds. I've never had to resort to inserting ninjas, though I have killed more than one character on the spur of the moment. If you get stuck, kill a character or have another one walk on scene. Give us their backstory and their relationship to all the other characters introduced. More plot will likely emerge on its own.

On the other hand, it really is as hard as they say. I tend to round up to a daily goal of 2000 words a day (the NaNo offical day count is 1667 words a day to get 50k by the end) and that can really be a grind sometimes. Especially if you miss a day. Or two. Because then you have to make those up. Always try to exceed your wordcount. If you make it to 1667, awesome. Keep going! Milk as much out of a writing session as you can!

Word wars. They are amazing. Chat will almost always have one going during November.

And don't take it too seriously. After all, you're only in it for yourself. Have fun with it!