How to Customize Your National Novel Writing Month Experience
The nights are getting shorter, the leaves are falling to piles, and authors are starting to prep for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.
While some writers thrive using word counts and strict parameters, I think it’s really important to listen to your body versus trying to push through just because you signed up. Flexibility, choice, and rest are essential, especially if you’re planning to commit to a deep writing month. Also, this won’t apply to everyone, but if you lean towards perfectionist tendencies, then modifying NaNoWriMo will help ensure you’re not bypassing your own needs in the process.
So, let’s make our own rules, shall we?
What Is NaNoWriMo?
National Novel Writing Month was founded in 1999 by Chris Baty with a daunting yet straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. (To reach this goal, you’ll need to write about 1,600 words per day.) In 2006, NaNoWriMo officially became a nonprofit organization, and now includes other initiatives like writing challenges throughout the year, local programs for libraries, bookstores, and community spaces, and a young writers program for kids and teens.
Why I Don’t Follow NaNoWriMo’s Guidelines (and Still Make Progress)
Before 2020 I had never considered participating because it’s pitched as a novel writing month and I’m someone who primarily writes nonfiction (though never say never). At the time I was in the middle of a memoir and while I’d made some progress, felt like a little boost of momentum could be helpful and wanted to explore creating some more intentional time to write. In short: I was curious. My goal was to simply write more often than I normally do in any given week. Some days I typed up a single paragraph. Some days I wrote 1,000 words. Some days I didn’t write at all. I did manage to write more days than not, which gave me a sense of momentum and I tracked the days I wrote with a star in my calendar.
I replicated the experience three months later, specifically to finish the current version of a draft I was working on, and I kept the rules loose. Although I didn’t write as frequently as the first time around, I still ended the month feeling good about where I was, so I’m a fan overall of using the program as a way to support your writing practice.
4 Ways to Customize Your NaNoWriMo Experience
If NaNoWriMo sounds intriguing, here are a few ways to customize the program to make it work for your current season.
01 Choose your project
The first and most obvious decision is choosing what to focus on. And although NaNoWriMo was created with the intention of working on a novel, I think you can do whatever you want! You might prioritize a fiction manuscript, a memoir, or a poetry collection. You can even participate with a workshop you’ll be teaching that requires research and writing to put together.
02 Pick the time
Next you’ll want to think through when you’ll write, so take a look at your schedule and consider what makes the most sense for you right now. For example it might feel feasible for you to take 15-20 minutes when you first sit down at the computer, before launching into your other work for the day. You might not be able to write 2,000 words in that time but if you can commit to 15 minutes every morning before work, that’s amazing. You might also be able to use part or all of your lunch break. Even if you can only write for 10 minutes a day that still counts. Instead of typing, 10 minutes might be writing longhand in a notebook before you go to bed or while your kid is having a sports practice, and that can be how you participate.
You might also consider different expectations during the week vs. the weekend. Maybe during the week you write in your notebook, and on the weekends you type everything up. Or during the week you aim for 15-20 minutes a day, and on Saturday and Sunday you might spend an hour.
You might do something opposite—I know for me, I tend to stay away from my computer as much as I can on the weekends, so maybe you write Monday-Friday, then take a break on the weekends and let your ideas integrate or just write in your notebook instead of the computer.
The point is you can absolutely make this your own!
03 | Consider accountability
The next thing to think about is accountability, and there are a few ways to handle this. You can use an existing tracking system if you have one, or you can create an account on NaNoWriMo’s website. You can make a new spreadsheet just for the month. You might use a bullet journal. You might want to use stickers on a calendar, or color code something on your phone app. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be a way to see the progression.
If you’re open to more public accountability, you might share your commitment on social media, maybe you create an Instagram story every day letting your followers know if you wrote or not. Maybe you can find a writer friend who you can text every day after you’ve finished. (If you want to keep all of this to yourself, that’s totally fine too.)
04 | Celebrate milestones
Both of my recent podcast guests have talked about this and it’s so important to give ourselves a pat on the back even for something that seems as small as writing two sentences. On the episode about publication and your nervous system, Tiffany Clarke Harrison shared how she encourages clients to celebrate all the time. Someone will tell her they just wrote this really tough paragraph, and she immediately says: How are you going to celebrate that? We’re really good at diminishing our experiences, but we need to get into the habit of celebrating those moments and inviting joy into our writing life more often.
And in the episode about why writers need rest, Ximena Vengoechea shared the concept of productivity dysmorphia, which is something where just put our heads down and then reach a milestone and accomplish something and then completely minimize the experience. Ximena gave the example of how when her first book came out, she didn’t stop to absorb the moment, she just started thinking about what to work on next without integrating all the work she’d completed.
If you participate in NaNoWriMo, it doesn’t matter how many words you write. If you commit to yourself and your writing and see it through in any capacity, that’s worthy of celebration. It’s an incredible gift to yourself, your story, and your future readers, even if it’s 10 minutes a day.
I hope this post helps you feel empowered to turn NaNoWriMo into whatever you need it to be. Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote attributed to Mark Twain that says “the secret to making progress is to get started.” It really is as simple as that. Write one word, then another, and before you know it, you’ll have sentences and pages and something new taking shape.
