How to NaNoWriMo — Christian Riesen

When it comes to the National Novel Writing Month, I find that I keep repeating the same things over and over, so instead of doing that and always forgetting half the things I want to say, here is a post about it. I might edit and update this along the way. Also this is not THE one and only guide, it’s what works for me very very well, and maybe it has something (or all of it) that you might find helpful.

Step 1: Start writing. Step 2: Don’t stop.

Ok, ok, it’s a bit more than that. While I can’t tell you what to write or how exactly to write your story, I can give you some tips on the technique on how to achieve the 50′000 words for NaNoWriMo without falling into common pitfalls.

First the tool of the trade. Use something small and simple to write in. Forget Word. What you want is a plain text editor. For Windows users I can recommend Notepad++ for everyone else, but also windows users, I can also recommend Sublime. These are stable text editors that have a large depth of features where needed. But most importantly, they will allow you to skip some pitfalls. First thing, turn off spell checking. Also since this is text, you can’t format, so that will be out the door too. Make for each day you are writing a new file and as son as you make a new one save it.

Files can corrupt and other nasty things, so text files are largely safe in that regard. In fact if you machine crashes, both Notepad++ and Sublime have usually the exact copy of what you wrote down to the last character still open when you reopen the program.

But then there are more problems that can happen, so backups are your friend. I don’t mean copy to a USB stick (though that works), I mean automatic backups, as those you won’t forget as they just magically happen. You can sign up for a free Dropbox account which gives you 1 GB of free storage or a Google Drive one that gives you 15 GB of free storage. You could write your whole life and not exceed even the 1 GB. In either case you install a small application and then have a folder that is linked. You can access those files locally but also over the web. Whenever you save the file and you have an internet connection, it will also backup to the server. Now even a fatal fall of your laptop will not kill your novel, you can always get it back.

Another alternative is the also free Google Docs, which is part of Google Drive really, but has a nice twist, no limit in storage size of a documents. It is also great for collaboration, even real time simultaneous editing the same document, or leaving comments, but it’s also already (maybe) a bit a too large tool to use. It’s more akin to Word than just a text editor. I happen to copy all the content of the day when it ends and paste it into a google document, just as an additional backup.

And lastly in tools, the input device. Now keyboards do well, but this is about writing fast, get forward, not looking back, so you might want to make sure you are comfortable. There are many good resources on ergonomics, so I’m not even starting on that, but I would like to offer an alternative. When I did nano ion 2014, I screwed up my right hand badly. Too many words, too fast, in the wrong positions. The diagnosis was to keep it absolute still for 2 weeks so it can heal. I finished nano with the help of voice recognition software and have been using it to draft the first version of things since then. I tried many different ones, there is one inside Google Docs for example, but the one giving me the best results is Dragon Naturally Speaking. The “home” version (number 13) goes for about 75 USD at the time of this writing in 2016. You don’t need the other, more expensive versions just for dictating. I do suggest getting LibreOffice though (or Open Office) as Dragon will integrate with those better than a text editor. Set the writing software to auto save, get a wireless headset and you can dictate while doing almost anything else in your household.

I cannot stress backups enough! Rather have too many than too few. Automatic ones are your friend, manual ones in addition just make it even better. Moving on.

Now you have the the tool and your files get automatically backed up, you are ready to fire and lay down the words. Before you do though, make sure you keep a few things in your mind as you write.

You will go over it again, so don’t worry about it if this draft will be dreadful.
Don’t use backspace, delete or the arrow keys.
If you made a mistake but you can still understand what was supposed to be there, leave it.
If you think the sentence/paragraph is crap, hit enter and start new with what you thought was bad.
No spell checking, no formatting other than hitting enter.
If you think you need a note in there, hit enter twice so you have a space and write your note, then do it again. I like to leave markers at the beginning of those lines I can find easy again like “XXNOTE” so I can quickly search for them in the text.
All my chapter breaks are a new line then “Chapter X” and then I continue after a new line. Don’t worry about numbering or titles.
If you want to name something, anything at all that needs a name and you don’t already have it, go by the alphabet, say you need a character, name him Andy, or her Anna. Then you need a city, name it Belgrade, and so on. you can always go back and replace them later when you thought of the perfect name for them.
You don’t know how to get the Hero out of the dungeon and on to the horse? Write “And then he got out of the dungeon and on to the horse” and continue.
If you need to read what you previously wrote to continue, read at most one paragraph back, never more. If it doesn’t fit, you make it fit later on.
Write fast and horrible. Don’t worry about grammar or reusing the same words over and over.

Now all of this might sound horrible. And it is. What you end up with is a crooked pile of garbage that you can’t show any sane person without dying of shame in an instant. Relax, that’s ok. You are editing it once you are at the end.

That’s the entire point, getting to the end. Your goal is not the 50′000 words, but the end of your story or stories. Yes aim to reach at least the mark by the end of the month, but your overall goal is to tell the story. Once you have reached the end of it, then you know the entire story, you’ve written (at least most of it) the thing out.

Only once you reached the end of the story or your book and also the end of the month of course, you can go over it again. You switch your hat from mad word count racer to editor. Now you enable spell check, now you use a proper tool like Word, Google Docs or Scrivener. Now you fill in the glossed over parts. Now you edit grammar and cut what didn’t work.

This is very important as only at that point, with the entirety of the story laid out in front of you, you will understand it and be able to make deeply informed decisions about what to change.

For book one of Toreas, I added and deleted chapters, rearranged, split and merged them. There are new characters and existing ones got deleted, elevated or put in the background. But all of this was only possible because I had a grasp on the entire story.

Most people I talk to that end up not getting there fall into the trap of editing while writing. Write, then edit, then write the next chapter, then realize you need to edit in chapter 1, then go on and realize the first two chapters need to changed entirely, and so on. It goes into a death spiral which usually chokes the will to write out of a person by the 20 - 30′000 words mark the latest.

Don’t edit, yet. Vomit out your ideas into the page. It’s not pretty, but keep remembering, you will go over it again. It’s ok. This will be ugly. But it will be done and then you can make it pretty.