A Week to NaNoWriMo: 3 Unwritten Rules

OK, even I’m getting tired of my own good advice, but this week of NaNoWriMo posts has helped me remember all the bitter lessons I’ve learnt from past years. A month might seem like a long time, and 50,000 words a lot of ground to cover, but it goes by really fast, and you’re left with nothing but a manuscript you don’t want to see for several months, and a sad case of Post-NaNoWriMo blues. I think that’s why so many repeat WriMos begin planning earlier and earlier (kind of like Christmas, though thankfully with less extended family). Here are a few unofficial rules that are good to remember:

NEVER DELETE anything you’ve written. If you really can’t stand looking at what you’ve written, change the text to white (or your bg colour) and continue. This is from an old NaNo pep talk, can’t remember whose…
DON’T GIVE IN to the urge to start over. I know it’s dreadfully tempting, but especially if this is your first NaNo, and you’re desperately struggling with word count, keep going. Write a paragraph about how you should have written the beginning of your novel, then carry on working towards the end. I’ve talked about this before. I think the reason it’s important to stick to your guns is because the “better beginning” is just a vision, and once you begin to write it, you realise it has as many problems and loose ends as your original beginning. If you keep starting again you’ll wind up with a groundhog day mess of a half-novel which you don’t know how to edit. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience. Like Churchill said, “if you’re going through hell, keep going”.
DO TALK ABOUT NANOWRIMO. Constantly. To yourself, to your dog, to people at the bus stop. Most of all to your friends and family because it will give them the illusion that you’re not completely lost in an imaginary world, and you never know, they may actually come up with some good ideas you can steal for your novel.

My Preparations

My excitement is mounting by the minute, and I’ve been feverishly devouring all the resources I’ve blogged and tweeted about. I’ve spent today working my way through my checklist. First of all I cleared my desk, and gave it a good scrub (it was surprisingly dirty), then I put together a classical music playlist and synced it to my ipod. I usually use my smartphone for notes anyway, but I also loaded the Magical World Builder and the NaNo Book onto it. I’ve tentatively scheduled one long library session a week, but it’s a bit tricky as I will probably be travelling. For this reason I still need to find a small, pocket-sized mascot, something with eyes so that I can talk to it, and wither under its tiny expression of disappointment if I miss a day of writing. I also need to finish my plan-list-outline and write my little paragraph on “what I want this novel to be”. As for my reward for reaching 50,000, it will either be a Kindle or some fancy fountain pen ink (or maybe a new fountain pen), though in all honesty I don’t think a physical reward can motivate me half as much as the thought of 50,000 words of literary abandon.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day the biggest challenge isn’t preparing for NaNo, it’s organising the rest of my life so that I can concentrate on NaNo…

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