NaNoWriMo Tips

A couple of days ago, I searched for NaNoWriMo tips from people who’ve done it before. I especially looked for lessons that people discovered by contrasting their own failures versus successes with NaNoWriMo. I compiled a short list of the most interesting tips as reminders for myself, so I thought I’d share this list with you in today’s post. I’m sure you can generalize some of these ideas to improve your ability to succeed with other short-term challenges as well. Just write. Don’t do editing, and don’t even fix typos as you go. This was among the most common tips. Many people failed NaNoWriMo by getting sucked into editing their work after writing it, which doesn’t advance the goal of writing at least 50,000 words of the first draft. Do write-ins and word crawls. These are social writing sessions with other people, in-person or virtual. Social support was often leveraged to get past low-motivation slumps instead of going it alone every day. Write every day – no zero days! Advance the word count every single day of NaNoWriMo. Having even one zero-word day along the way can hurt or kill momentum. Even if you only add 100 words one day, it’s better than zero. It’s motivating to see your word count increase every single day. Get ahead on the daily word quota during the first 10 days, and then stay ahead. To write 50K words in 30 days, you must average 1667 words per day. It’s wise to aim f...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Productivity Source Type: blogs