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Sunday, November 2, 2014

How to Win #NaNoWriMo

Bustle.com has a great article up today about how to win #NaNoWriMo, and they actually mentioned me as a winner with a good tip to use! :)

(clicking image makes it bigger!)



Let me explain that tip in more depth, here, excerpted/updated from the original post Bustle linked to:

Rule number 1 for NaNoWriMo: Give yourself permission to suck! 

Leave the typos and plot holes in place, and just keep going. Don't go back and reread - like another commenter said, write a quick note to yourself at the end of the session so you know where to go, like (Hero and heroine have first kiss and she gets upset when villain interrupts.) I actually do that all the time, not just for Nano.

If you find yourself realizing you need to make a change (like you gave away too much info in first chapter) just keep writing as if you've already made the change, and when it's time to edit you can go back and make the change. You can even write a note to yourself like (pretend they never kissed) and keep going. 

Many writers can write 1000 words in an hour, so if you give yourself two hours a day you can meet your goal. During Nano I try to write 2K a day to account for days when something happens (like Thanksgiving). 

Side note: every day is NaNoWriMo for me; I write at least 2K words a day, every day, in order to keep up with contractual commitments and you know, write a lot of books :)

The Pulse, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy was written during NaNoWriMo (75k words);  Snowed in With the Tycoon (a book I self-published and which makes me some nice income every month), and The Tycoon's Convenient Bride...and Baby (which was published by Entangled Indulgence, and hit the B&N Nook Bestseller list) were also written in a Nano-esque month. So good books can come out of it, it's all about December and revisions :) 

Most importantly, have fun with it. When you don't know what to write next, add in a new secret, a new character, or a new obstacle. Instant plot twist!