4 Lies You Tell Yourself During NaNoWriMo

     With NaNoWriMo just eight days away, I decided to kick off my writing blog's re-activation with a post about the self-same!  Buckle your seatbelts kids, 'cause today I take off the training wheels and give you a taste of what it's like to be a big boy!  These are 4 lies you tell yourself during NaNoWriMo, and the reasons why they're full of shit.

1.  I'll Do It Later

     Mmmmmm no you won't.

     Listen, I know; I've been there myself.  You insist, "I'll do it later, I promise, I swear," and then it never gets done and you fall asleep and wake up the next morning and groan because oh great, now you've got twice as much to write today as you did yesterday!

     Do it now, while you're thinking about it.  You'll thank yourself later.

2.  I Don't Have Time Today

     Honey, it's November, ain't nobody got time for anything.  It's midterm season, it's holiday season, it's family drama season, everything goes crazy in November and you will never have time.

     So you have to make it.  Stick a knife into your day and carve out the time if you have to, even if it's just five minutes here and fifteen minutes there.  Use your lunch break to get some writing done, you can type or scribble or dictate between bites!  Install Dragon on your phone and talk it through your scenes while you're driving home from work, or walking to school, or tip-tap some paragraphs on your ipad while you ride the bus or train or magical flying kangaroo to whatever the hell it is your afternoon is full of.

     Even if you have to wake up at four in the morning to get those 1,667 words out, you do it.  Because the truth is, you're never going to have time, and life is always going to get in the way.  If you want to win this thing, you need to make your own time, and guard it with your life, the way a dragon hoards gold.  You are a word-dragon, and your story must be told.  ROAR.

3.  It Doesn't Matter/It's Not Important

     Maybe it doesn't matter to your neighbor, or your friends, or even your parents or your wife or your kids or your dog.  Maybe it doesn't matter to anyone else in the entire world, but it matters to you, doesn't it?  It certainly mattered enough for you to make the commitment.

     And you're the only one it has to be important to.  Newsflash:  No one's WIP is ever important to anyone except the person writing it until it's been published.  And once it's published it could be the most important gd book in the entire goddamn world, or at least a super important book to one person, which is just as good.  In fact, your book could be the catalyst that changes someone's entire life, and you just don't know it yet because we're three-dimensional beings passing through the fourth dimension as if it were a linear plane.

     But before that book is published, it needs to be written.  It can't be important if it never exists in the first place.  Except for inside you--you believe it's important, don't you?

     Then write it, damn it.

4.  I'm Too Tired/Hungry/Thirsty, etc

     Me too!  I mean fuck, why am I always tired, amirite?  Is it all my medications?  Or the drugs?  Or the alien probe lodged deep into my hypothalamus?  Who knows!

     But dude, my dude my friend my sweet Florida bucket of orange juice, you need to keep going.  Get those words out, comrade.  Pound them out of the keyboard like you never pounded a keyboard before--and I know about the summer of aught nine, so I have some high expectations from you.

     Seriously though.  I know you're tired, and you need your sleep, you're hungry and you need food, you're thirsty and you need thirty barrels of Irish coffee STAT or you won't be able to stand another second of staring at this too-bright screen and oh god now you've got a migraine and you absolutely cannot work in these conditions, can you?

     Only you can.  Get your food and drink and guzzle and chow down between word sprints--maybe you reward yourself with a bite every fifty words or something.  You can multitask.  As for sleepiness, you can write while you're tired.  It may not be the best thing that ever flew from out your fingers, but sure as heck by gosh by golly, words will appear!  And then you can edit them in January, after you've hit 50k.

     You can write tired, you can write hungry, thirsty, achey, breaky, keyboard-hatey, whatever your current mood and physical condition.  It doesn't have to be gold, it just has to be words.

     "I'm too ___" leads to "I'll do it later," and then we're back at square one and nothing gets done!  Just do what you have to do.  Keep writing, and don't stop; chances are good that no one's keeping track except for you, but you don't want to let yourself down, do you?

     Don't sabotage yourself, pally.  When the bomb drops, you don't want to be the only person you can blame--that one's a bitter pill to swallow, and very large, too.  Don't make me shove it down your throat!

     Just get the words out.  You can do it; I believe in you, and you should believe in you, too.

Cheating Your Way To A NaNo Win, Part 2

     The other day I wrote a post about how to cheat your way through NaNoWriMo.
     Keeping in mind that these things will not necessarily make you a good NaNo novel, or even a finished NaNo novel, just a longer NaNo novel, here's some more cheat codes!


6.  What is your character thinking?

     That long bit of narration and headwork that you know is bad writing, and if ever published would rival the likes of even Twilight?  You know the one.  Where your character goes off on a long rant about how pretty it is out, and how much he likes flowers, or whether he's really in love with Billy the Cheerleader or Mandy the Jock, or if he's going to risk buying some edibles from Cynthia and Harlan Mayweather, because yeah, obviously they make the best stuff in town, but their mother is sort of the evil overlord of earth and she has this really strict policy against drugs that Cynthia and Harlan probably only get away with because of nepotism....
     That one?  It goes nowhere, it's not entertaining, it contributes nothing, you could more concisely convey the same information in like two sentences tops?
     Slap that bad boy down as drawn-out and useless as you like, my friend.  First drafts are for play, final drafts are for serious work.  Treat it like a free-write, like I just did up there; just set your fingers to the keyboard and let 'em fly!  No one will know the difference.
     Except for you, you dirty, dirty cheater.

7.  Lavish description

     Explain to me what the set looks like in vivid detail, tell me the exact shade of every single hair on the hero's head, and name every solitary scent in the princess's perfume; leave nothing unsaid, and employ every single last sense, even the extra ones!  Come on, it'll be fun!
     .... for you.
     Look, description for the sake of description?  As a reader, not my cup of tea.  But because it's not my cup of tea, as a writer I tend to under-dress my sets, which is great for the stage, where creative directors want to have all the leeway they can get, but for novels that makes it difficult to keep the reader interested--you risk having talking heads and bland settings.
     It's just so damn easy to overdo it, though--so don't even worry about it.  Just overdo it right from the start, all the words you want, all the description you like.  Then deal with the merciless cutting and hacking later, like with everything else on this list.

8.  Long dialogue

     Now, it helps if your characters are witty.  I know my characters having humorous back-and-forths about innocuous things (at least, innocuous to them) had to have made up at least a third of my NaNo Novel last year--my characters were funny, and if they wanted to show it off, who was I to stop them?
     I also delivered a lot of exposition through dialogue, which can also boost word count depending on how it's done, but witty dialogue is probably the best for boosting word count--even if it's just the characters thinking that they're witty.  Sometimes the more so, even, because people thinking they're witty tend to stumble and need correcting more often than others.
     You can also employ speech patterns to your advantage--in one of my WIPs from a while back a few of my characters have a habit of saying one another's names as a method of establishing dominance in a conversation, and I've had a character or two who liked to loop themselves around in webs of metaphor or simile, or who just plain liked run-on sentences (for whatever weird, totally not based-on-a-real-person reasons).
     As long as you keep those characters talking, your word count will keep climbing.  BUT....

9.  Try to avoid floating heads, but don't bite yourself if you can't

     Talking heads are terrible for a whole host of reasons I'll probably get into at some other time, but for now just know that a talking head occurs in a story when a character, or several characters, talks for an extended length of time with very few or no dialogue or action tags--so for six pages on end, there's just talk talk talk blather blather blather.
     And I get why--I've certainly done it before, it's easy, it just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing, and once you hit that speech rhythm it's hard to stop!--but talking heads are secretly killing your word count.  For every three spoken words you could be piling up a fourth outside of the quotation marks, just hanging out, relaxing, maxing all cool and the like; having your character perform actions as they speak will not only make your scene a million times more relevant/interesting, but it will also make that word count skyrocket, and, my good man or woman or nonbinary or genderless individual, I do believe that is why you are here.
     And this one's not even a cheat!  Totally legal.

10.  Include needless scenes if need be

     Much like those rambling headspace dealies, if there's a scene you know will never, ever make it into your finished novel, but you're running out of options?  Toss it in there.  Is it an AU fanfic of the story?  In fact, is it a fanfic of any type?  Did you write a poem or a short story?  Do you have less respect for the novel in and of itself than for the creativity upon which NaNo was founded?  Then toss it the fuck in, my friend!
     Tons of people do this--rather than attempt to write a novel this upcoming NaNo, a lot of people will attempt to slap down 50k in blog posts, in short stories, in poems, in paperwork, in scattered bits and pieces of whatever they can write in a month, because to a lot of people, NaNoWriMo is less about the novels than it is about the creativity and the community and the kinship you find within those thirty days.  NaNoWriMo is about more than writing novels, guys; it's about using the constraints of time to accomplish a creative goal, with an army of like-minded individuals to back you up.
     So maybe finishing your novel isn't going to be what's up this NaNo, but creativity will be, and part of creativity is knowing when to adapt your goals and the methods you use to get to them.
     Maybe that means using this list of technically-not-really-cheats to flesh out your word count for your novel; maybe that means writing at certain times of the day when you know you're at your creative peak.
     Or maybe it means deciding that a novel was never the real goal in the first place.

     Happy NaNoing my friends!  ... Even if it is February....

How to Cheat Your Way to a NaNoWriMo Win

     *GASP!*  Cheat on NaNoWriMo!?
     Now before I launch into this bad boy saddles a-burning, let me just say that the use of these tactics is not going to necessarily net you a good NaNo novel, or even a finished NaNo novel, but it will help you up your word count, and who knows, using some of these tactics might help you flesh out the story in your own mind, if nothing else.
     Just remember that once all is said and done and you have a finished novel in your hands, you're going to want to litter the cutting-room floor, probably in a pretty major way.
     SO, now that that's out of the way.....

1.  Adverbs and adjectives

     Adverbs are the little things that modify verbs, which everyone and her sister will tell you is Bad Writing™.  Usually they're words with "ly" at the end, like "clearly" or "slowly."  Adjectives are the same thing, but with nouns, and are usually referred to as descriptor words, ie, "beautiful," "deadly," "shiny," etc.
     Lots of writers will tell you that adverbs and adjectives (but mostly adverbs) are to be cut out of your writing at any and all costs; that's silly, of course.  But it's important not to overuse adverbs or adjectives in your writing, or things can get clunky.  Clunky is what first drafts are all about, though, so if you're looking to bump word count, these guys can help you out, at least temporarily.

2.  Use needlessly complicated sentences

     *sucks breath through teeth*  I really don't recommend this one, I mean... hhhhhh, there's no need to needlessly complicate things, but hey, if Occam's Razer isn't for you, who am I to judge?  Just make sure you simplify things down the road.  And that you do not don't not forget what it was that in the first place you were attempting to try to accomplish.
     (it's your funeral)

3.  Write parts that haven't happened yet

     This one I really do recommend--it's what I do.  When I have an idea for an upcoming scene, instead of risking its loss by waiting until the "appropriate" time to write it, I just type it up right in the document--usually at the top--then later I can copy and paste it into place no problem, and it's not even technically cheating since it was supposed to be in your story all along.


4.  Write parts that won't make it into the final cut

     This gets us back into the pseudo-cheat territory, but it's also something that I do so *applies the fuck-it adjustment* why not share it with the world.
     That scene where those two characters do nothing but banter and chat about stuff that has nothing to do with the story?  The one that you know, just know, even as you write it, is going to end up on the chopping block as soon as you go back to edit?
     Steer into the train crash my friend.  Play chicken with that sucker and watch from an out-of-body experience as you and your car are totally mangled by its twenty-ton onslaught.
     Okay, so that's a bit melodramatic; you aren't going to die.  Not from this, at least.  Probably.  I mean, I'm not a doctor or a lawyer or anything, so anything's possible.  Probably you'll just have some extra words to cut later--maybe a few extra darlings to murder.
     I know you're capable of it, though, you have big, strong arms, and what else would those garden shears be for, we're in the middle of LA for crying out loud!  I'm sure you've done it before.
     Wow, my metaphors are really just running away from me tonight.
     My point is, this is a harmless crime, and can in fact be helpful--sometimes the most telling moments we have are the ones that occur when nothing big or life-altering is happening, the little things we do in the dark that no one will ever know we did.  Sometimes the audience needs to see scenes like that, but a lot of the time it fucks with the pacing or doesn't move anything along, etc, etc, and will ultimately need to be cut; but if it's informed your work on the character, then even being cut out, it has served a very valuable purpose.

5.  When you're stuck, skip ahead and come back later

     Tied into the two above is the age old, "Do It Later" approach.  Which, contrary to what you may suspect, especially since this article is supposed to be all about cheating, is a really solid method; sometimes something with the current portion of the plot or dialogue or what have you is tripping you up, and you just need a breather.  That's life!  Sometimes you just don't have the tools to deal with something in that moment.
     What do you do when that happens?  Well, if you had all the time in the world you might get up, go someplace new, do some research, have an adventure!  But since you're a Writer and are both slave to the written word and to the sacrificial blood oath you made upon avowing to write 50k in 30 days, you don't have time for that.  Probably not the energy, either.  Plus it's cold in November, and it's probably raining today, and all your good coats are still in storage because you don't really want to admit it's winter yet, and....
     You get the picture.
     So one of the best ways to shake it up is to just skip ahead.  Narrow down what's causing the issue and bypass it completely.  Maybe writing a little will shake that crud loose for later, and if not, you can write it during the editing phase, when taking long breaks to stare at your manuscript and scream is considered healthy and reasonable.
     Sometimes you just need to work on something else for a whi


     And then the dreaded corkscrew blunderbussss threw down its MIGHTY HAMMER, and...

How To Win NaNoWriMo in 15 Days

     Last year, I won NaNoWriMo with a couple days to spare, and I was pretty proud of myself.
     THIS year I won NaNoWriMo in HALF the allotted time, and I felt pretty darn great, I tell you what.  Unfortunately I didn't finish my novel in time (I'm too damn long-winded), but I walked away with a certificate and a smile and a good portion of a first draft for a story that I'm really into.
     Of course, if I kept the secrets to my success a secret, it wouldn't exactly behoove all of you writers out there, wondering how you can get not just your NaNo Novel, but ANY of your fast drafting on even faster, so I'm here to spill the beans and teach YOU how to blow the fishes out of the water with the power of your magic writey-downer abilitations.*
     Here's eight tactics YOU can use to win big fast!

*not a word.

  

1.  Cheat

     Okay, so not cheat, exactly, but sort of???
     See, what allowed me to win so quickly was the fact that on the first day of NaNo I was able to log 11,518 words.  No, it's not because I'm some sort of superhuman (I mean, I am totally some sort of superhuman, but that's not how I was able to write so much).  My secret?  I took NaNoPlotMo VERY seriously; I outlined like hell and scribbled down every note and spare thought I had, fleshing out the first half of my novel so vividly that half my job on day one was essentially copy-paste-expound-upon.
     This also meant that, for the first half of my novel at least, I had a clear idea about where I was going, who my players were, etc, so once I hit the ground I hit it rolling, fullspeed downhill with a fire on my ass.
     This is sort of cheating, yes, because all the WRITING is supposed to be done during November, but taking extensive notes is just an expected part of October for us NaNoers, and no one is looking over your shoulder raising their eyebrow at you for "thinking too much," so you do you and take as many notes as you want, comrade, it's your journey and can't no one tell you how to climb that mountain but you!
     (Also, no one can tell you not to write tons of run-ons in your first draft.  NO ONE.)

2.  Don't Look Back

    This is just one of those old classics of the NaNo experience, but still SUPER helpful.  Like, so helpful oh my God, I spent most of last year's NaNo just LEARNING this one, and it's helped in all my drafting since; don't go back and reread.
     It's tempting, I know!  But you must resist the urge.  Go back a chapter or maybe two if you need to at the start of the writing day, to try to kickstart your creativity, remember where you left, etc., but don't go any further back and do not, I repeat, DO NOT, I REPEAT AGAIN FOR FURTHER EMPHASIS, DO.  NOT.  EDIT.  
     I know those words are being real shitlords--they're screaming at you, begging you to come fix your mistakes, taunting you with your imperfections, but don't do it!  It will only slow you down, it could lessen your word count (which is all well and good during editing season, but not when you're drafting, ESPECIALLY not with NaNoWriMo), and you'll lose all your momentum.  Even if you're suffering from a block, you'd be better off getting up and going for a walk, or reading, or watching an hour of TV than risking a trip into the bog of edit hell.
     Don't even look back for details--if you forget a detail, make it up, you can always fix it in post.  And hey, who knows, maybe you'll like the new way better!
     Just, in general, if you can possibly help it, don't look back.  The time for looking back is not while your chainsaw is half-way through the lonely housewife's torso; the time for looking back doesn't come until the last grudge match has been settled and your bloody trail of carnage and slaughter finally matches the tale of woe and revenge set down in the notebook you made to look like that one from Deathnote.  That's when you bust out the bleach and start checking IDs.

3.  Don't worry about POV

     This year, I couldn't decide if I was writing from multiple third person limited or from third person omniscient.  Last year, during Camp NaNo I kept slipping into second person POV, too, and randomly switching tenses.
     This is pretty normal, we all do it to some degree, some more than others--our brain will just randomly switch gear and suddenly a third person story has six paragraphs of "I went to the store today" slapped in the middle.  Don't sweat it.
     This is another thing that can be fixed in post.  If you're not sure what POV you even want the story to be in, just write.  Write whatever comes to mind and deal with the aftermath later.
     That goes for tenses and shit, too.  Just don't worry; again, it can all be fixed in post.  Right now, the most important thing is to get that story out of your goddamn body before it has the chance to escape in a less palpable form, or takes hold of your brain and drives you MAD.

4.  Big casts help

     I'm not saying that big casts are the answer, or that they're right for your particular story, and I'm DEFINITELY not saying that every story needs to be an ensemble.
     What I AM saying is, I had a big cast this year (both years.  I'm a fan of large casts.  Sue me) and it really helped keep my juices flowing--I had a lot to work with, a lot of subplots to dive into, and any time I couldn't figure out what my MC's next move was, I could cut to some of the more minor characters and talk about a subplot for a chapter or two, which allowed me the time to let my MC ruminate on his options and decide what to do next--and, sometimes, for new characters to invent themselves.
     And of course, while writing my MC's scenes, I was able to work out what my side characters were doing, etc., etc., which makes for a good process most of the time.


5.  Set a big word count and follow that shit

     After my eleven thousand word victory I was like HELL FUCKING YES
     But I knew I had to keep working--I told myself that I would write at least three thousand words a day.  I didn't, of course, but I tried to; some days I went over, some days I went under, but because I was so far ahead, it wasn't any problem--even if you don't get off on the huge side of the bed the first morning of NaNoWriMo, exceeding the normal goal is a good thing to shoot for--maybe you write two thousand words a day instead of 1667, maybe three thousand, maybe five thousand!  Whatever you can handle, do that and do it consistently; that way if something happens and you're under one day, it's no big deal.  If you do it enough and for some reason you have to skip a day, again, you have some room under you, no big deal.
     BUUUUUTTTT.....

6.  Don't skip a day

     If you can help it, don't skip.  I know you have those pretty little days' worth of word credits saved up from all your SUPER DUPER WRITE-TASTICNESS, but do your best not to let them get to you.  If you take that day off, it's going to seriously screw with your momentum, which is what fast-drafting is all about.  You gotta go hard bro, 'cause in this game, there's no goin' home.  *Insert Murder Eyes*
     Plus, by skipping a day, your manuscript becomes a little less clear in your mind, details become a little more hazy--if you knew what you were going to do in the next scene, maybe you lose it, or lose part of it, and you risk the dreaded need to (DUN DUN DUUUUN) TURN BACK.  *LOUD MELODRAMATIC GASPING*

7.  Set up a routine that works for you

     I like to work in chunks of several hours at a time, when I can, so I try to get up early and write for a few solid hours before school, before I've expended my creative energy for the day, and then I do my best to squeeze in whatever extra time I can between classes--maybe you work best at night, though, or for fifteen minute intervals throughout the day; maybe the only time you can squeeze it in is while hastily shoveling bologna sandwiches into your chomping maw at the midday hour.
     Whatever works for you, set a time and try to stick to it--then grab whatever extra time you can get your grubby little hands on.  Try to set up a workstation if you can, leave your computer on sleep instead of off so it takes less time to boot up when you feel the desire for a pyre!

8.  Throw shit in there

     Obviously, you don't want to just slam a random thing down for the words, but don't censor or limit yourself.  Use those adverbs and adjectives you're not sure you'll need, you can cut 'em later!; write that introspective diatribe, you can change it later!; give a flashback that explains the entire character that you're pretty sure you'll end up using like four sentences from in the end; you can cut the rest of it later, but at least now you know, and this is a part of fast drafting that, as more of a pantser than a plotter, I love, because now I have all this information about my characters and their lives that I can use later, or not use at all, but at least I can write the character with all this shit in mind!
    And my wordcount is boosted, and no one got hurt**, and all is well.

**Except for all those people you murdered on number 2.

Things Not To Do During Camp NaNoWriMo

     The first half of Camp NaNoWriMo ended nearly a month ago, and I lost by a little more than half my goal.  I'm not proud of this, but I'm going to call it a "Learning Experience" and use it to get a blog post in.  Here's a list of nine things you SHOULDN'T do when embarking on Camp NaNoWriMo.

1. Get sick
        I came down hard with a throat virus in early April that really sent me reeling.  I couldn't talk, I couldn't move, I couldn't do much of anything.  The one thing I COULD do was write--which I did a lot of!  I got something like twelve thousand words written in one business week.
        But then I had to go back to school, and this is where I died.  I had reading to make up, worksheets to fill out, MORE reading to make up, and everything went to hell.  I was still sick when I went back, too, which meant that in addition to scrambling trying to catch up with backwork, I was also exhausted just getting up in the mornings, and my favorite thing to do was come home and sleep, which meant foregoing my daily writing for days at a time.
        Don't get sick when you do NaNo, kids.
    
2. Buy an iPad
        I've never owned an Apple product before, or even a cell phone more high tech than a basic Tracfone, but last month I decided to purchase a used iPad from my boss.  "This will be awesome," I said to myself.  "I'll be able to write my NaNo Novel anywhere I want and not have to worry about transcribing!"
        I did not, you will have inferred, understand how iPads work.
        My intentions were good, but one of the first things I did was go online and download a bunch of Apps that looked cool, and some of them actually were.  The one I wanted most to work properly, however--the word processor--was lackluster and comparatively difficult to figure out, and I ended up spending far more time trying to make my digi-self a rich famous moviestar in the coolest high school university EVER, which cost me precious hours in writing time.
        Since then I've chilled on the games (mostly), and I had a lot of fun but hindsight being 20/20 I know now that it was really a very bad idea right from the get go.  Maybe buying an iPad wasn't the problem in and of itself, but I'd say it's for the best if you not download really fun apps just before you start Camp NaNo.  Probably.
3. Start three plays
        I've never done more than one play at a time before, so I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to jump in and do three at the same time because easing your way in is apparently for chumps.  This, however, was ALSO a giant time suck on this, the month of my daughter's birth (my daughter being the manuscript, you see).  Three days a week since I've been out of the house essentially from eight in the morning to nine or ten at night, which cuts severely into the two-thousand-word-a-day goal I had set for myself.
        I don't regret this, since it's a lot of fun and also my career path, but NaNo was a bad month to START it--as I may have made clear by now, starting things is a hectic and exhausting business which leaves time for almost nothing else.  I had the same commitments this month as last, but this month it was far less taxing, simply because I'd already adjusted to it.
        Maybe just try to avoid starting pretty much ANYTHING, really, during NaNo months.
4. Get Sick
5. Get no sleep
        I have a lot of trouble sleeping most nights, but for some reason I had an especially hard time sleeping in April, which left me too lethargic and dry-minded to write much of anything at all.  Maybe it was because all of the above were tiring me out.  Because that's totally how normal biology works, right?  Yeah.
        It's really important that you get enough sleep to keep yourself healthy, especially on a NaNo month.  Writing fifty thousand words (or whatever your goal was this time around) is a terribly taxing task, and if you continually end up running on empty, your manuscript will suffer.  When your manuscript suffers, the writing gets hard to continue.  When the writing gets hard to continue, it's pretty easy to quit.  And when it's pretty easy to quit, you let the mouse in through the window and it sucks all your blood out through your palm.  And that, children, is why you never give a mouse a cookie.
        Can you tell that I'm tired as I'm writing this?
6. Get Sick
7. Get Sick
8. Get Sick
        Jesus Christ, please do not get sick on NaNo, you will regret it once you go back I promise you take care of yourself stay healthy stay hydrated sleep well don't lick peoples' noses, you don't deserve the loss of word count you are a good person you deserve a finished manuscript
9. Put it off until tomorrow
        When you have thirty days to write sixty thousand words, it's really easy to say "I'll just write four thousand tomorrow to make up for it!"  When you're tired and busy it gets even easier, and once you've pushed the deadline back once it's easier to do it again--and again, and again, and again.  Before you know it the month is up and you have almost nothing to show for it but a husk of an MS and some progress on a game you'll honestly probably delete in like a month.
        Sometimes it's unavoidable, and as I've said before, you don't need to beat yourself up about it--but you should do your best to avoid it.  When you dedicate yourself to a daily goal, do whatever is in your power to reach it as quickly as you can.  Write in the morning, write throughout the day, write when you get home from work, write, write, write, write, write.
        Because Write Is Right, and the only one you hurt by blowing off your goals is you.

7 Things To Consider When Contemplating Your First NaNoWriMo

     There's a lot to learn every time you put pen to paper.  When you put fingers to keyboard 50,000+ times in a single month, you're sure to learn a thing or two.  My brain's a little fuzzy from all the wordage so I'm probably not including everything I figured out during NaNo, but here are seven things I do remember!
     Fair warning:  Most of it has more to do with the actual NaNoing than the writing itself.

1. November is the best month to write a novel.
   
        November is a perfect month to write a novel.  It's the only month I know of in which hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are all working hard to accomplish the exact same goal in the exact same frame of time, and writers are everywhere!  Online, IRL, even your relatives become writers during NaNoWriMo!  It's a great time to dive into the writing community, because everyone has something to say, everyone's ears are wide open for advice, and everyone is looking to both support and be supported.
        Really, November is the only month out of the year where writing becomes a truly social event, and it's glorious.
   
   
   
   
2. November is the worst month to write a novel.
   
        Yeah, everyone is writing in November, but everything happens in November.  There are birthdays galore pouring in from the yearly Valentines-day procreation vapors, there are deaths to mourn, Thanksgivings to plan, Black Friday sales to either murder people over or altogether avoid, plans you have to make to see family members you don't want to see (and a lot of exercises in self-control undertaken in order to not to get in any major arguments), long stretches of time where you may not have access to the internet (which, if you're using an online word processor, can be a major set-back), plans to make to talk to family members you do want to see, etc. etc. etc.
        The point is, November is chock-full of Stuff To Do, and it's a real challenge to be able to fit it all in and then pound out roughly two thousand words a day on top.  Like adding sprinkles, only they're made of keyboard keys and make your head hurt.
        (Really, feel free to vent about all your set-back events in the comments.  It can be a tough month to get through, and I know how much it helps to just complain every so often.)
   
3. Fast drafting is like cocaine
        Not that I've ever used cocaine (that stuff on the table's just sugar, I promise), but I've heard some stories and I think the analogy holds up.
        Trying to Fast-Draft like that makes you feel like that guy from Owl City, blending up rainbows and shooting them right through your veins (or your eyeballs, but that's heroin, I guess.  So, Fast-Drafting is like... um.  Don't laugh at me, it's drugs.  Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, Ecstasy, the difference doesn't matter if you're a clean-as-a-whistle word junkie like me wink wonk).
        You're on high, forcing yourself through fifty-thousand tiers of excitement, frustration, bliss, and exhaustion.  You're screaming words into the void, doing your damnedest to make them sound pretty but not really caring as long as they're /out,/ and that feeling of progress is pretty fucking intoxicating.  You want to punch dragons and piss on ogres, and when you're on a roll you feel invincible!... but when you crash, you feel like you fell into a bespiked pit of shit from which there is no exit.  The more you touch that high, the more you crave it--but the longer you go without it the closer you get to being clean; once you reach that point it's easy to give up, get a nice respectable job as a shit-sweeper, and stop dreaming about that old silly notion that you could be a pen jockey.
        I um.  I forgot where I was going with this.  I blame fast-drafting.  *Snorts the sugar on the table and rides away on a horse-sized fountain pen*
        I guess the point is, it's not always easy to tell what's up and what's down once you get in the zone.  You're so focused on the words that nothing else seems to matter, and you want more--which makes it feel so unsatisfactory and so much like drudgery when things get hard.  You really have to either push to make everything come out, or skip around to the parts that make you feel like you're flying.
   
4. There's burn-out
   
        I finished my draft in the very extremely early morning of the twenty-ninth of November (it was like one, maybe two AM, which I still count as the twenty-eighth since I hadn't yet slept), and with 50K under my belt I was ready to see what else I could accomplish.
        "Another ten thousand before November ends!" I said to myself, riding the final wave of endorphins from accomplishing my goal.  "I want this monster finished by mid-December so that I have time to put it away before Edit January begins!"
        December fifteenth is still my goal for finishing.  My goal per day is probably going to continue to be two thousand words a day, but this blog entry is the first real piece I've been able to write since finishing Nano.  "But Maggie, it's only been two days!" you say, and yes, that's very true, my treasured reader.  Insanely true.
        But it's more than that--I can feel this exhaustion looming in the word parts of my brain.  Putting my fingers back to the keys for Captive Stars feels like an overwhelming task right now.  I may need a few days to get back into it--the hope is that spending a few days away will give me plenty of time to turn my gears back to the story.  I've tired of stories before, I've had periods of time when I didn't want to write, but it's been a few years since I've been in a space where the prospect of writing was mentally and physically repulsive.
        The best thing I can suggest for anyone else suffering from burn-out (and I'm sure there's a lot of you; writing a novel is a task of extreme exertion, and our brains can only take so much at a time) is rest.  Put on some nice music, maybe read a book or veg out on TV, take plenty of naps, and try to just let your mind recover.  It did a lot this month, and it deserves a little pampering.
   
5. Other responsibilities will suffer
   
        I'm in line to be valedictorian of my class this year.  Since it's senior year, that's kind of a big deal.  I've been working really hard to keep my grades up, especially important since I'm only taking three academic classes, but I was resolved this year to put NaNoWriMo first--it'll be a lot harder to put those words in once I'm in college, after all.
        So the second marking period ended and, as it turns out, my grades have certainly suffered.  I'm still doing great, just not ME-great.  More like, classmate-great (said the perfectionist to the happy kids).  It got harder to find time to study when I was trying to make time for NaNo.
        It was also difficult to make time for family and friends--I know my mother was disappointed that I wasn't able to help with a lot of Christmas preparations because I was either writing or sleeping (to make brain-room for more writing).
        Was it worth it?  Yeah, I think so.
   
6. After all that goal-holding, it can be hard to continue the novel
   
        Maybe it's all that burn-out, but it feels almost like a drag to keep going now that the rush is gone.  I'm really going to have to find a way to keep myself motivated if I want to be able to edit in January.  It's a little easier to hold yourself accountable for word count when you're competing against an outside goal and there's an ABSOLUTE deadline. At least for me.  I tend to give myself too much lee-way with deadlines.
   
7. Don't go back for information
   
        During NaNo I became very good at just writing and writing and writing--without going back to check for accuracy.  It really helps you to push on through the narrative, resolving to fix it in the editing process; speed's the key and 50K is the lock!  Or something like that.
        Toward the end there (the last three days or so) it almost felt like momentum was the only thing keeping me going.  This ties back into the above--the more momentum I gained, the higher I felt.
   
   

     I wish I had more to share with you, especially after my very long, very sudden hiatus, but my brain is all tapped out.  Maybe I'll have more NaNo tips after Camp NaNoWriMo (which I hope to see you all at in the summer).  

     Fare thee well!