Skip to main content

My Top 3 Tips for a Good Nanowrimo



Hey Everybody! Long time, no blog.
I just wanted to log on super quickly to give y'all my top 3 Nanowrimo tips.
So, just to start off, I am definitely not a good writer yet, nor am I claiming to be. However, I've done Nanowrimo for four years and have successfully completed it four times. (Some of those, I believe, were for camp.)  I have about 350,000 words written on my account and I actually used to have an old one that I've since lost. These tips are less about quality of work and more about getting words on the page.




So, tip number one: Stay away from the wordcount box.
Whenever I'm feeling like I don't want to write, I obsessively update my wordcount box. Literally. I will have 3450 and update and 3452. This is not a good writing habit, because it perpetuates a cycle of negative feelings. You don't feel good when you see that you've only written a hundred words. (If that's below your goal.) It traps you in seeing how little compared to your goal you've actually gotten done.
When you begin to fixate on the word count, you lose sight of what you're writing; where the story could go next, and all the lovely little things that make writing so rewarding. I would personally recommend updating only at about every two hundred words. (Though I break this rule towards the end of every day.) 


Tip number two - Use Apps!
Websites work also, I'm not partial. However, there are so many amazing writing websites. (Not sponsored, though I'm sure everyone is after me and my six views.) One of my favorites is 4thewords, which you have to pay for. It's essentially a video game that you win by writing. There are rewards for writing every day, and it's great to just get a few more words out. As for free tools, write or die and the most dangerous writing app are excellent. The most dangerous writing app is amazing if you're a fast typist, but if you aren't, you'll end up losing a lot of work. You can set it for either a time goal or a word goal, and you have to write at a quick pace or your work disappears. I find fear based motivation really effective, at least when the stakes are fairly low. (Yesterday, using TMDWR I ended up hitting 1667 in about half an hour.)


Tip Number Three - Skip around!
Writing a linear story is what most people picture of when they say writing. The closest metaphor I can think of is drawing. You wouldn't ink before you sketch. This is true in terms of revising - looking back on your draft before you're done will lead to problems. Sticking to the drawing metaphor, though, sketching in a different section of the picture is fine. If you need to get your word count up, writing a scene further ahead in your story can be great. You can even right several pages ahead and try to bridge the gap. If you feel like you're sloughing through your writing, you likely won't finish as quickly or effectively.



That's all for my nanowrimo tips. Thank you for reading, and best of luck with your writing!


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I'm Not Reading As Much YA

As you may have noticed, my blog has been in a bit of a lull. This has mainly because school and extracurriculars have made me super busy, but also because I've been undergoing a lot of shifts in my reading preferences. Before I go into this, obviously these are my own, personal reasons. There are tons of reasons to enjoy YA, but I'm going to be sharing why I've been moving away from it as a genre. Lastly, a little background on me. Without revealing my exact age, I am squarely in the center of the young adult demographic. I began reading young adult in about 2015 or 2016, slightly before I was demographic age and also slightly before the genre began blossoming as a whole. Last year, I read 161 books, and the year before that, 139. Of the 161, 20 were not YA, 10 in November and December. In 2018, 10 of the 139 were not YA. So it's safe to say I've had a lot of exposure to the genre. In my reading, I have settled on 3 concrete reasons why I've "left...
Post a Comment
Read more

Disappointing Thrillers: How could they have been better?

I don't know what it is about thrillers that gets me. Maybe it's the jacket design or the reviews that call it a page turner. (If it is, I'm unaware of it.) Maybe it's that I want to be surprised. No matter what it is that keeps me coming back to thrillers, one thing is constant. I'm always disappointed. Today, I'm going to talk about three thrillers that I've read and where I think that they went wrong. Every one will have spoilers, so readers be warned. So, first up. "In A Dark, Dark, Wood," by Ruth Ware  was extremely disappointing to me. I am probably a third of the age of the target audience, and yet I still found it to be extremely predictable and dull. The character motivations were childish, the setting was mildly interesting but proved boring, and the plot was hardly there. The main thing that annoyed me about this was that the murders in the story were committed over a romance that had happened when the characters were sixteen, ten ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Best Books Of 2018

Now that we're a month into 2019, I've decided to do a best books of 2018 post. Maybe by 2020 I'll be punctual and able to write blog introductions. Without further ado, my top 18 of 2018. (In no order.) 1. Sawkill Girls, By Claire Legrand Three girls unite to fight off a monster representative of the patriarchy on their tiny island.  Despite being about four hundred pages long, the story is extremely engaging and the characters are well developed. I cannot hype this one up enough.)   2. Far From The Tree, by Robin Benway Three siblings who grew up apart reunite and help each other recover from their various life traumas. The writing is simple and sweet, and despite there being a lot of characters, you really get to know all of them.  3. A heart in the body of the world, By Deb Calletti Anabelle takes off running from Seattle to Washington after tragedy strikes her at home. A heartbreaking story about family, recovery, and violence that will keep you read...
Post a Comment
Read more