If you have decided at the last minute to join in the madness and take part in National Novel Writing Month, don’t panic – there are still ways in which you can prepare yourself for the challenge, whether there are only a few days or hours left before the challenge begins, or whether you are stepping in after it has already started.
The trick is to clear your mind of all doubts and anxiety and focus on the facts:
- You know that you must complete 50,000 words to win before the end of November.
- You know that certain things in your usual routine are going to have to change in order to make it happen.
- You know that you need a vague idea for a story.
How to Clear Your Mind
Before you do anything it is important to clear your mind and relax your body in order to unlock your creativity and feel energised, positive, and raring to go. There are several ways to do this.
- Switch everything off around you that is a distraction and sit down with a nice hot drink for half an hour in silence to just relax and think. You might decide to keep a notebook handy in case any ideas come to you.
- Run a hot bath and use the time to rest your body and gather your thoughts.
- Find a quiet spot and meditate for twenty minutes, focussing only on your breathing, and slowly blocking out all exterior noise and internal thoughts until you feel fully relaxed and refreshed.
Once your body is rested and your mind is clear, any feelings of stress or anxiety that will hold you back and stunt your creativity will be replaced by eagerness to move forward. You will feel newly motivated and positive about achieving your goals.
Meditation: Breathe Your Way into a Healthier Life provides a clear method of meditation for you to follow.
Establish a New Writing Routine
In order to keep up with the high word count of the NaNoWriMo challenge you will need to make space in your life for more writing time. This might seem like an impossible task to begin with, but just remember that there are thousands of people all over the world who are doing exactly the same thing; and if they can do it, then so can you.
It can help to draw out a weekly timetable to establish where your free slots are. Divide a sheet of A4 paper into thirty days and divide each day into three sections for morning, day, and evening. Then go through each day and highlight the sections where you are working, looking after kids, shopping, sleeping, etc. When you have finished you will visually be able to see how much time in the month of November you will actually have to write your 50,000 words in.
You should try to organise your life so that you can fit your writing time into regular slots. Think about whether it is possible to wake up an hour early five days a week to write before you go to work or before the kids wake up. If you know that you write better in the evening then make sure you can do so every evening of the week.
Once you get into a writing routine, you will look forward to your designated writing slots; writing won’t seem like a chore, and life won’t seem like it is getting in the way.
Create a Story Outline
NaNoWriMo for most people is a fun challenge, so don’t take it too seriously. Your novel is not going to be a masterpiece. This writing challenge is just about motivating you to get a completed draft on the table. What you do with your draft when the challenge is over will determine whether or not your novel will be a masterpiece. But for now you should just think of it as a bit of fun, and enjoy the process.
To create a simple story idea that you can develop into a novel, think of a situation between two to four characters. Mimic what you know; so if you read a lot of romance, write a love story. Or if you love Sci-fi set your situation in space or in the future.
Once you have thought of a situation; for example, four characters discover a time machine and get sent to the future, you then have to decide on a major conflict which will drive the story forward. The conflict here for example could be that someone or something is after them and they want to get home, but a vital part of the time travel machine breaks and they need to replace the part before they can go anywhere.
How to Write a Plot Ouline for a Novel sets out in more detail techniques for plotting your story,
From this point you will be able to start developing the story even more by thinking about character conflicts, and the different things that drive each character. For example perhaps one character is in love with another and his main priority is to make sure no harm comes to her. Another character may be driven by ambition and wants to bring something back with them that will make them rich and famous, but this might compromise the mission… and so on.
Once you have your situation, conflict, and characters sorted, your story will at least have some momentum to begin its development as you write.
Plot Your Word Count
Finally you should calculate how many days you will have to write your novel and figure out how many words you must reach each day and week in order to keep up.
50,000 words divided by thirty days is apx.1,667 words a day – so if you are planning on writing every day this is how many words you should be aiming at. On the other hand it might be more realistic for you to focus on writing 500 words a day during the week and then use the weekends to write larger sections.
Some people won’t want to plan ahead so rigidly because they can’t predict how productive they are going to be from day to day. It can give you peace of mind however to at least calculate a word count target that you need to hit once or twice a week, so that you know you are on the right track to success.
Good luck!
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