I was on the NaNoWriMo Blog the other day and noticed a couple of interesting trends in overall stats for the 30-day novel writing marathon:
To anyone who has attempted the long slog toward completion of a novel, the latter stat should not surprising. It’s hard for most of us to keep producing draft at a consistent pace for 30 straight days.
The NaNoWriMo model is designed to lighten the load somewhat, most notably by keeping things starkly simple: there is only one requirement – produce that 50,000 word total, period.
But most of us go in with more ambitious goals, and if we don’t seem to be meeting them, it’s all too easy to skip a few days, fall hopelessly behind, then quit.
I came across a post on Fiction Matters the other day that suggests a modest, but effective antidote. It may sound contradictory, but what the author, P. Bradley Robb, proposes is limitation, a limitation that liberates.
The real challenge, Robb notes, is consistency – steady daily effort.
Setting some reasonable limits on what you will produce, then sticking to those limits, leads to consistency. Consistency leads to habit. And once habit has taken hold, it’s progressively easier and easier to pile up those pages.
Sustaining momentum actually takes less out of you than a pattern of starting and stopping will. Thus the prolific Cory Doctorow’s paradoxical remark: “It’s easier to write a novel every year than to write one every ten years.”
In these pre-pre-NaNoWriMo days, this post is well worth checking out.
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I’ve done NaNo twice, and “won” twice. I had never written any fiction before, much less a novel, so along with the physical act of writing I was figuring out how to write a story. You are right, less is more. To “win” NaNo. It is important to remove the drama — and hysteria. To win you must complete 50,000 words. Period.
I limited myself to the daily minimum of around 1640 words and left it at that. A couple of days I wrote more so I could have a couple of other days free to rest. It worked for me. After NaNo I expanded each manuscript by 50-70,000 words, and that was a pleasure as well.
This year I am doing some planning, trying out the Snowflake Method. I have 16,000 words in notes/plot development. I can’t decide if it a good thing. I’m afraid it will take the romance out of NaNo for me…but maybe not. We’ll see.
Thanks for the post
Sounds good, Katie. Don’t worry about losing the “romance.” 30 days of novel writing is a tough haul, no matter how you look at it, and the most effective way to go into it is without illusions. Novels are sustained performances–not sprints but marathons. They are best written with a cool head, some planning, and a practiced hand. These things free the mind to make the most of the moment, while writing. As for romance, and like a childhood crush, it will probably end in disappointment anyway. Your approach sounds ideal.
Hello from Malaysia.
Two things have worked for me in most of the years I’ve done and won NaNoWriMo – have a few writing sessions each day, and have the first session as early in the morning as possible. With the daily 1,667 word count in mind, I usually aim for around 600 words each session. So with the first session done before leaving for work, I only have 1,200 words to write before the end of the day. And it was worked for me.
Now, I work from home, and I don’t need to leave for work in the mornings, but I shouldn’t change this tried and tested routine.
Thanks, Chet, great system. I’ll be interested to know if it will be as easy to maintain it without the structure of going to work outside the house. You’d think so, but I struggle with that.