National Novel Writing Month is all about sticking your butt in a chair and writing your pants off for 30 days, until you reach 50,000 words.
While there are a lot of advantages of taking part in NaNoWriMo, you don’t necessarily need to sign up for the official challenge. During the month of November, you can still use NaNoWriMo principles to spur you toward your ultimate goal of writing a novel.
If you decide the official NaNoWriMo challenge isn’t just what the doctor ordered, why not try one of the following novel-writing alternatives?
1. Outline a novel
Maybe we could call this one NaNoPlanMo.
Yes, you could spend an entire month outlining a novel you plan to write in the future.
Start by grabbing a copy of Larry Brooks’ Story Structure Demystified, and study it from cover to cover. Then, research the basic information you’ll need to write your story. Make character sketches.
Devote at least one hour per day, for 30 days, to outlining your story, and I guarantee writing the thing will become exponentially easier.
2. Finish your first draft
Are you in the midst of writing a novel?
The NaNoWriMo official rules say you have to start from scratch, but that doesn’t mean you can’t finish writing the first draft of your novel on your own this month.
This is what I intend to do. At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to have finished my novel by the end of December. I set my sights too high considering the whole baby thing, but I am very close to having a solid first draft of my novel completed. One month of putting my nose to the grindstone could see it finished.
3. Resurrect your drawer novel
You know the one—the one that’s been sitting in your drawer or hard drive for months or years. You’ve completely given up on it despite knowing it has potential. Why not take one month to plan an overhaul? You may not even need to do any writing at this point because the entire problem with the book may be an initial lack of planning.
What are you doing this November?
November may be National Novel Writing Month, but if a 50,000-word-blurt isn’t going to get you closer to your ultimate writing goals, then choose an alternative that will.
Let’s take 30 days to do something great, even if we don’t have a badge to show for it.
What are you doing to further your writing goals this November?
I’m not participating in NaNo either this year. I feel like I’m missing out right now as everyone excitedly talks about it, but I know I need that time to pursue other projects that will help me most right now.
Yeah, there’s that feeling of missing out, but I’m so close to finishing my first draft there’s no way I’d rather start something completely new right now. Good luck with your other projects!
I’m finishing up my first draft. More important to move forward than jump in the deep end and flounder around hoping not to drown.
Moving forward IS the most important thing, isn’t it? If NaNo can help you move forward, then it’s a great thing to do. Here’s to hoping we both finish our first drafts this month!
This is what I am planning to do this month. I was going to shoot for the 50,000 words but I realized that it wasn’t so much that I wanted to finish a novel that quickly, I just want to get into the habit of sitting down for a certain amount of time each day to write. I am not very good with self-discipline.
The habit of sitting down to write is definitely one that takes discipline!
I teach 5th grade, and I’m having my students do NaNo this year. They are psyched! The lower word count goals (2,500-6,000 words for my students) gave me the goal of simply adding 5,000 words to my WIP this month. It’s great inspiration for me to get me back in the regular writing routine this month while helping my kids through the noveling process.
What a wonderful idea! Next time I’m teaching in a classroom, I’d love to do the same. I hope your students enjoy the experience!
I’m definitely going for Option Two; ‘Finsh your first Draft’. I’ve been writing this one since late March and had planned to complete it by September / October / November.
But life intruded, as it always does, so the ‘end in sight’ keeps slipping away.
NaNoFYFDMo it is…
Let’s finish them together…Ready? Set? Go!
Andrew Toynbee
Ah, life. It always gets in the way, doesn’t it? Luckily, I don’t really have a set word count to get through my first draft. I’ve already written the skeleton of the first two-thirds of the story, and now I just have to write the ending (I already know what that’s going to be, of course, because I outlined in the beginning). See you at the finish line!
I’ve never participated in NaNo myself, but I’ve always wondered whether it is effective for some writers. My main concerns have always been burnouts and anxiety, learning to value quantity over quality, and developing bad writing habits. Perhaps it’s just because there are stories that I *have* to write, and the thought that people are justifying their stories through NaNo or using the ‘winning’ wordcount as sole motivation is a bit unnerving. Shouldn’t the story or character/s or idea itself be enough to warrant writing any time of the year? Shouldn’t the story be the right length for the story, rather than meeting a set target? I’ve heard people say they’ve had a great time, of course, and I know it can work… I’m just not sure how it does. I’ve never participated, because I’ve always been too busy writing at my own pace. I suppose that this year, like all the others, I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing all along.
I think it CAN be really good depending on your motives and goals. Right now, my goal is to finish my first draft, not start a new one. Maybe next year!
What I need to do is write at least 1,000 words per day. Albeit, I’m writing my novel in a notebook so I have no idea how many words I wrote. I write for at least an hour or two and that is 2 or 3 pages worth.
A thousand words a day isn’t so bad, but you’re better than me if you can do it in a notebook! I can’t stand writing by hand 🙂 I get all sorts of cramps and my handwriting is atrocious! It took me a while to get used to writing on a computer, but now I can’t do it any other way.
This was my plan before I found out about NaNoWriMo. I had outlined the basic plot points of a few novels, since I didn’t have any partially completed ones sitting around waiting for me to show them some TLC.
But then I discovered that people actually write novels in one month so I decided to take advantage of the collective peer pressure that comes from knowing “175,000 other people are doing it, so why shouldn’t you?”.
I’ve been playing around with a bunch of characters in my head, and NaNoPlanMo is probably what I will do this year. I agree with rosness, in that I would prefer some quality over a set amount of words. I could easily “vomit” out 50,000 words in a month, but if I have to delete 40,000 of them then I don’t quite see the point, at least for my writing goals.