051: How to Prepare for NaNoWriMo
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How to prepare for NaNoWriMo
This episode is going to be all about NaNoWriMo prep NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. And the idea is that you write 50,000 words in the month of November, and it's this annual event, people get really into it, you can go to the NaNoWriMo website, and I'll put it into the description of this episode, you can sign up if you'd like, you can register or you can just decide kind of on an individual level that you're going to participate. So it's worth doing a little bit of prep before NaNoWriMo. And deciding what you're going to write but also getting together a plan a strategy for how you're going to do this because writing 50,000 words in the month of November, is a lot. It's a lot to think about writing 50,000 words in 30 days. And so it's worth doing some work before November 1, to think about how you're going to do this, it's going to help you be a lot more successful once November gets here. Now the information in this episode, I recorded it at a training /event that we had in my blank page to book membership community.
So this is a membership, you can join three months or six months, and you get access to all kinds of things trainings, and online course podcasts, all that stuff. But one of the things that we decided to do is host like a NaNoWriMo kickoff events slash prep slash Hangout. And the portion of the portion that I recorded is from the beginning of that event where I was just sharing some tips to help you be successful. And also some information about how to even decide if this is something that you should participate in. So I cut off the recording once I got through my portion of it just because the rest of the event was people in the membership sharing about strategies. And we all just kind of chatted, so it so I just wanted to include the prep portion in this podcast. And it also gives you kind of a preview to of you know, the kinds of things that happen in the membership.
There's a monthly training every single month and this month's training, October's training was actually on world building. And then we just, you know, I just decided to have this event kind of as a bonus, because some people in the membership were participating in NaNoWriMo. And some people were doing it for the first time. So I thought it might be good to do kind of an intro kickoff event for for NaNoWriMo. Because again, preparation is key. So enjoy this episode.
And even if you are not doing NaNoWriMo, even if you decide not to do it, I still think this episode is worth listening to because it gives you some tips and tricks for how to approach an intense writing period. And maybe for you this is just you're getting ready to finish your novel and you've got a deadline, and you really want to get it done. And you're going to be writing a lot, you can use some of the tips and tricks in this episode to help you. So enjoy. And if you're participating in NaNoWriMo, good luck, I'm going to be cheering you on, you'll hear me say this in the in the recording, but I'm doing something for NaNoWriMo I just have to commit and decide to exactly what I'm doing. So I'll keep you posted. Alright, enjoy. So I want to talk about like how to make the decision of whether you should participate or not. You've got a few more weeks to decide. But you know, since there's a little bit of planning and preparation that's involved, it's probably better to make a decision kind of relatively soon about if you're going to participate or not.
So what I would do is just get really honest with yourself and do a gut check. Look at your calendar, look at your your, you know, the month of November, like are you traveling? Do you have three business trips planned? And do you have you know, is it are you on a deadline for work like are are the are there all kinds of outside circumstances that would make participating in NaNoWriMo just feel stressful, and feel like added pressure on top of everything else that you have going on in your life. If that's the case, maybe it would be better to either kind of adapt NaNoWriMo, which we'll talk about later, or just not participate this year. And know that NaNoWriMo is always going to be there. You can always participate next year. But if you do a gut check, and you think about it, and it feels exciting and expansive, maybe a little bit overwhelming and daunting, like maybe there's some fear too. But if it feels exciting, then then that's a good indication that you know might be something that that's worth doing.
So, as far as prep goes as far as like knowing what to write the preparation that needs to happen before November 1. I'm going to give you kind of two different approaches for this based on If you are a plotter, and someone who likes to do a lot of plotting and outlining, and then an approach for those of you who are Panthers and just want to write, and the idea of a detailed outline just makes you crazy. So for those of you in the membership, that idea to book course, Module three is going to help, there's some information in that module about the brain dump method, which is a great method for Pantsers. Because basically, what you're doing is just getting all of your ideas out of your head and onto a document, you can just do bullet points, you can have it be really rough. And you don't have to create like an actual structured, detailed outline.
So if all you know your story so far is you have an idea, like a vague idea of who the main character is, and you kind of know, like, what you want to write about, maybe you've got a couple of scenes in mind, perfect, put them all in bullet points on that, you know, Word document that you're using as your brain dump document. The snowflake method that I talked about in module three, the three snowflake method will help as well, because you can, you can kind of adapt that method to be whatever you want it to be, if you just want want to write a sentence of what your book is about, and then turn that sentence into a paragraph and stop there, you can absolutely do that. And that's going to be kind of like your north star during NaNoWriMo. Because you know, roughly what your book is going to be. But if you want to get more complex with it, obviously you can. I also think it's worth doing just a tiny, tiny bit of preparation and thinking about your main character, even if you're a pantser. And you're like, I don't want to do a character profile template and like, get really detailed.
Totally fine, you don't have to, but I think doing a little bit of thinking before you start about your main character in particular, is going to help you be successful, what does this character want? What are their goals, what's motivating them a little bit about their personality, those kinds of things. So, and I as far as kind of like, if you're doing if you have a work in progress, and you have already written 10,000 words, or 30,000 words, and you're thinking about doing NaNoWriMo to get you to the end of your book, then you're probably already to the point where you know what your story is, you know what your characters are. So you might not have to do as much work.
But I would just kind of think through, okay, based on what I have so far of my book, like what's coming up, and again, totally up to you how much brainstorming you do. But even if your 10,000 20,000 30,000 words in, it might be worth doing kind of a revised, or a different version of a brain dump, where you just think about the rest of your story and get those thoughts onto the page. Okay, in terms of like preparation, what else you're going to need before November 1. Number one is a plan a plan, a plan a plan. And what I what I mean when I say a plan is knowing when and where you are going to write. So this is about looking at your schedule, looking at your commitments for November, and deciding when you're going to write NaNoWriMo is 30 days of intense writing.
So even if you are someone who likes to just kind of write when you feel like it and kind of go with the flow, it's going to be so much easier for you to do NaNoWriMo if you have a routine, if you have a plan. Doesn't mean that you have to write the same time every day. But at least doing some planning and thinking about when you're going to write will be super helpful for you. And that might even be like on a week to week basis. So maybe on Sunday night, you look at the week ahead, you know, the afirst week of November, what is November 1, November 1, is a Tuesday.
Okay, so maybe Monday night, you October 31, you look at the week ahead and think, Okay, this week based on my work schedule, based on all these other things, when am I going to write and like put it in your calendar, okay. And of course, you can move it around if you need to. But there's something about like having a routine, when you are writing every day, that's going to make it so much easier to just sit down and get started because your brain is going to start to associate all those things that you're doing with okay, we're in writing mode. This is familiar, we've been doing this for a few days. Now, we've been doing this for a few weeks now, like it's time to get down to business and start writing, you're also going to need the second thing you'll need is a way to track your word count.
So NaNoWriMo is the kind of basic idea of NaNoWriMo is that you write 50,000 words in the month of November 50,000 words is technically not it's it's almost a very short end of a novel. So, you know, kind of think about like what your word count goal is overall and where 50,000 fits into that. But if you are writing 50,000 words in the month of November, that works out to 1667 words a day, or 12,500 words a week. If it's easier for you to think about it in terms of day, great if it's easier for you to think about it in terms of week. Great to. So you're gonna need a way to kind of track your word count so that you can see okay, am I on track? Am I wait by I find my head that'll kind of help you gauge, maybe how much time you need to be scheduling going forward as you get into the process. And it's also really motivating to, when you start to see your word count, increase. That's, that's fun. So you can just do this in an Excel sheet, you can do it in a notebook like pad of paper, however you want to do it, but you'll need some way to track to see kind of where you're at in the process.
Third thing you'll need is, well not need, but I suggest some kind of reward system. So what this can look like is, when you get to the end, when you get to the end of November, what is your reward going to be? And it doesn't even necessarily have to be tied to did I complete NaNoWriMo and write 50,000 words or not, it can be I wrote a lot in the month of November, like holy crap, more than I've ever written before, what is my reward going to be? And this can be like, I don't know, anything you want buying yourself a new like, monitor for your computer buy yourself, going out to dinner with your partner. I don't know just whatever you want, taking yourself to the bookstore, and like buying some new books, whatever it is, so that when it's hard when you get into those days in November, where it feels like, Oh, why am I doing this, just kind of think of that reward and be like, Okay, this is gonna feel so good. Once I'm done.
Fourth thing that you need is some kind of accountability. This looks different for everyone. Because some of us, you know, I talked about a lot some of us are like, externally motivated, some of us are internally motivated. So it's gonna look different for everyone. But here's what this might look like. Here's some options. Posting in the Facebook group, the membership Facebook group, letting us know where you're at keeping yourself on track holding yourself accountable, you can absolutely use the Facebook group for that, attending the drop in writing sessions, if they work with your schedule, I know that they they don't work with everyone's schedule, but that's a way to do it. posting on social media. So if you create content on Tik Tok, or Instagram, or Facebook or blog or whatever, you know, let people know and say,
Okay, I'm tracking this, like, here's what I'm doing for the month of November, um account using an accountability, buddy, however you want to do it, I really suggest getting some accountability. And there's something about kind of like harnessing the energy of NaNoWriMo. That's really cool. Because you know, there are 1000s of other people who are doing this alongside you, which is kind of fun. And the last thing that you need, or that I suggest you have is clear communication with people in your life. So when I talked about kind of looking ahead at the month of November, for those of us in the US know, Thanksgiving falls in November, so you know, thinking ahead, like, okay, am I hosting people am I going to be traveling? Is this going to disrupt any potential plans, like kind of working around that. And part of that requires communication with people in your life, if you have a partner, if you have kids, like kind of letting people know, hey, I'm doing this thing that's going to require me to step away and be at my computer for more maybe than I have been in the past. And so just kind of letting them know, just to keep them in the loop. But also, you know, if you have supportive people in your life, you can use them for support. And if not, if they're like, why are you doing that, then, you know, maybe don't use them for support, but you can at least, like clue them into what's going on, just so that they know kind of what to expect. Um,, all right.
So now let's move on to the mindset piece of this because it can be really overwhelming and daunting to think about writing 50,000 words in 30 days, especially if you've never written that much before. You've never if you've never done NaNoWriMo before, it's a lot. My biggest piece of advice is something that I say all the time, which is to let the draft be messy. As much as you can, resist the urge to go back and edit, you're not going back, you are moving forward, full steam ahead. And that applies whether you are starting on page one from scratch on November 1. Or if you have a draft already, if you have a work in progress that you've been working on, and you're using NaNoWriMo to kind of get you to the end of the draft. Let it be messy. Let it be rough, it does not matter. Part of what's going to help you be successful of getting those 16 1667 words in per day is just writing as quickly as you can. Not stopping to go back and edit. Get the words on the page doesn't matter if it's a mess, doesn't matter if it's rough. It's okay.
My second mindset tip is when you look at a really intense period of 30 days, a really intense writing period. It can be again, like I've said daunting to think about 50,000 words. Take it one day at a time. Take it one day at a time you are only focused on writing that day. You are only focused on that one writing sprint that you're doing. You are only Focus on that one scene that you're working on, you know, just like really focusing on that one day, one day at a time. And then a third mindset tip that you can use. This is sort of like the reward thing, but it's more about visualizing the end. So visualize yourself on November 30. Being like, holy shit, I did it. Oh, my God, you know, just like that feeling of wow, I wrote 50,000 words. And even if you don't write 50,000 words, maybe you wrote 20,000 words in a month, which is amazing, like, picture that end goal. And you can really get into it like, really imagine yourself, okay, what were you sitting on November 30 when you're done writing for the last time? What are you, you know, what are you wearing? How are you celebrating, like, really get into it and feel it and connect with that future version of you?
Who has done it, who's completed NaNoWriMo? It's so exciting. The last thing I want to say, and then I'll turn it over to you all, is you can adapt NaNoWriMo. That's actually what I did last year is I just made a commitment to write every day, I think in the month of November, I actually can't even remember exactly what I did. But I know I adapted it somehow. So if after looking at your schedule, thinking through your commitments, thinking through where you're at, in your draft, you're like, you know, what, I just can't 50,000 words just isn't gonna be doable for me, you can still participate and just tweak and do your own version of NaNoWriMo. So decide upfront, what that's going to look like, is it going to be you writing every single day in November, doing a 15 minute writing sprint every day. Is it going to be you write 500 words every day, you know, kind of, don't be afraid to adapt it and tweak it. And don't feel guilty that like, you're not really doing NaNoWriMo this is it's just for you, like no one is going to judge you for it or care that you're not like doing the 50,000 words. And if they do, we don't need that, we don't need that energy.
So you can go to the NaNoWriMo website, if you just Google NaNoWriMo, it'll take you to the official kind of event page, you can sign up, you can register if you'd like. Or you can just kind of you know, decide like make a decision on an individual level that this is something you're going to do and decide what it looks like for you. I need to take my own advice here. Because I am still deciding what I want to do. I want to do something in the month of November. But just thinking through my schedule and thinking through where I'm at with my own book. 50,000 words is not going to be doable for me, but I want to do something. So I think what I'm gonna do is either make a commitment to write every single day, like do a 20 minute writing sprint every day. Or maybe write 500 words a day, I haven't quite decided and I was also thinking about doing something on Tik Tok, where maybe I do a blog every day or I go live every single time I write, I don't know, tying it into tiktok on how to kind of help with the accountability. But we'll see what that ends up being and, you know, I'll let y'all know if you want to follow along or do the same or whatever. I'll let you know what what I decide. But thank you so much for tuning in.