Young Writers Society

Hello Fellow Writers,
As you may have guessed, I am in the middle of a moral dilemma. It is currently Day Four of NaNoWriMo and I may or may not have cheated. So, I began the month with a plot that I had been crazy for a month ago, but lost faith in, as well as ideas. This evening, looking at my dismal word count of barely over two thousand, I realized I had grown bored of this idea. Instead, I have switched novels. This novel is one that I had begun work on before NaNoWriMo. This novel is closer to today's word count, but still below it. Am I cheating? Is this okay. Should I continue on in NaNoWriMo or abandon it and work on the novel separately. I had been thinking that NaNoWriMo may motivate me to work more on this novel that I still love. What do you think?

Nah, you're good. I'm continuing a novel I started before November too, and mine's way longer than yours (cough seventy five thousand words cough). Just add 50,000 to whatever your starting count was and shoot for that. I think that as long as you write 50,000 words during the month, you're not cheating at all.

And besides, people do all kinds of crazy things during NaNo. Like write a bunch of poetry, or a screenplay. After all, there is a reason why there's a "NaNoWriMo Rebels" section on their forum.

Well, there are actually two NaNoWriMo's out there. The official one's purpose is really to write a novel in a month. They intend you to start on page one and continue writing from there until you hit 5k. The less official one is the "young" NaNoWriMo, and that's for teens and kids. The goal there is to write 50k words of anything, as Magnus said. So the answer there is yes and no.

My advice, however, is to write what you are inspired with. If the original book you chose for NaNo is giving you fits, you can try and grit your way through it, but it's probably much more effective to write about something that comes more easily to you. Remember, perfectionism is moot here, you have to write fast and furious and worry about rounding things out later. Plus it's not too far into the game, so I think it would be fine if you fudged a little. Cut yourself some slack here.

People do crazy things during NaNo; I've done crazier than working off an existing novel. (Once I tried to rewrite a novel for NaNo. Literally rewrite it from scratch.) I honestly think that if you can get 50k words out of this project in November, it shouldn't matter if you "cheated" by having 10k or so pre-written; just try to write more during NaNo - try to get to 60k, maybe, by the end of the month. (I know some people are aiming for 100-150k. They're the REALLY crazy ones.) ;D