National Novel Writing Month–or NaNoWriMo–takes place every November. Nanowrimo.org offers an online platform–website, Facebook, Twitter–classes, inspirational essays, writing sprints, questions, and advice. And then there’s the intimidating goal of writing 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November, 1667 words per day. But what if you, like me, suffer from writer’s block–paralyzing fear that you can’t write anything but crap–ever?
For one thing, you risk not reaching the goal of 50,000 words; in other words, of not “winning” NaNoWriMo. Last year was my first year, and I set a personal goal of 10000 works; I finished like 4000, I think. BUT I’ve been writing ever since. So, for me, that was a win.
This year, I plan to share the official goal of 50,000 words of a new novel. How do I plan on doing it with a big fat case of writer’s block? Here’s how:
#1: Writing Sprints–short periods of time, say 20 minutes, or 5 minutes, when I do nothing but pound out words on the screen. Then I take a short break. For example, a series of sprints might be 25 minutes writing, 5 minutes relaxing, and another 25 minutes of writing, followed by a longer break. During the longer break, I can check email, make phone calls, do the dishes, or lie down and rest.
#2 Schedule my day to alternate sprints and long breaks to get non-writing tasks done. However, food should be prepped ahead to time, so that meal prep consists of microwaving something or dumping prepared salad onto a plate or cereal into a bowl. I will plan time to get about 2000 words done every day (gulp)–for me, about 4 hours.
#3 No Editing–absolutely no green monster of criticism.
#4 Thorough preparation during October–Preptober, it’s called–many of us do an outline or a Beat Sheet (See Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody.) or just make some notes. I believe I will need much more detail than last year’s sketchy outline to set myself up for success.
#5 Go Public by using the tracker on nanowrimo.org, as well as posting on Facebook and Twitter. I want to be as public as possible about my goals, my successes, and my–ahem, learning experiences.
#6 Use imagination to envision myself vlogging with some books of mine on a shelf behind me. At one time, I was unable to picture success. My dream world was blocked, too. Now, however, if I take it slow and easy, I can imagine writing and publishing books, and it seems doable.
#7 Lower Goals–My goals went from traditional publishing to self-publishing and from being small-time famous to selling some books to actual strangers. My immediate objective went from writing something good, to just getting something on the page, to be fixed later.
By the way, these suggestions aren’t original. I’ve read these ideas and others a bazillion times. I’ve listed only the advice that has worked for me.
Maybe not all these suggestions are attractive to you. Maybe some won’t work for you. Much of the advice I’ve read doesn’t work for me–especially stuff like, “well, maybe you just don’t want to write.” Or “having writer’s block is unprofessional.” Whatever. I’m going to continue to plug away and hope for the best. And you can, too.
