Oh anon I’m touched you are asking. I hope I’ll be able to help you!
My number one tip is tracking.
I believe the NaNo site offers a way to do that year round now with their goal trackers. To write 50k in March that averages out at 1613 words a day. Sounds scary right? I mean the problem isn’t doing it once, it’s doing it every single day. Life happens, build up a word debt and then the totals start getting crazy. Been there. I know that panic, but it is avoidable. How?
Break it down
I don’t know how fast you write. That is the first thing you should work out. Get a timer of some description and when you are prepared, set it to go for 15 minutes and start writing. At the end you’ll have an idea of how many words you can write in a certain time frame. That is your baseline.
I mean March is tomorrow so you might have to go by memory but find your free time basically. What do you do now that you could cut down on a little for a month? I don’t know about you but personally I could cut down on scrolling tumblr, cut down on watching TV, I could definitely cut down on playing games on my phone. That gives you writing time and you’ll know how much you need to find because of your baseline.
Now I said to write for 15 minutes because that’s long enough to get into the story and make some progress, but not so long that attention starts to wander. You might well be able to focus a lot better than I can, but 15 mins is kinda my maximum. The trick to writing a certain amount, within a certain time frame is focus. Far easier said than done, but this is when tricking the brain comes in.
Like I said saying “I have to write 1613 words a day!!!” is super scary. Saying “I’ve just got to write for 15 minutes” is not that much of a big deal. Do that a few times and then you’ll have your words. You don’t have to break it down by time either. One of my favorite ways to break a chunk of words down is to roll a dice and write that many hundred words. I mean you can even follow a word crawl if you like, which breaks it up for you. I actually wrote one for Once Upon a Time if you are a fan of that anon.
Back to tracking
Right I said my number one tip is tracking. That isn’t just to scare the hell out of you by working out the “average words needed per day” it’s also a good tool for encouragement. During NaNo season I update my word count fairly obsessively because I like seeing the numbers go up.
Then I’ll see that I’m fairly close to my next thousand and I’ll write a little more to get there. Then I’ll see how much I’ve written that day and I’ll be near a pretty number for that and so I’ll write a little more. Each goal is usually only a few hundred words away. A few hundred at a time is less of a big deal.
Preparation
This is kind of a “your mileage may vary” thing. Some people like to write by the seat of their pants and see where the story takes them, other people like to write full scene by scene outlines. I don’t know what kind of writer you are anon and neither approach is wrong. However, what I would say is whether you are a pantser or a planner always end a writing session knowing where you are going next.
Write yourself a note saying “next time person A slaps person B” or you know whatever. That’s just a random example. This means when you sit down to write for your next session you aren’t going “urk I’ve got no clue what to write” because oh boy that is a big time waster. If you always know what you are writing then you can just dive straight in and get on with it.
Last couple of things
Forgive yourself. Far easier said than done, I am terrible for this but it’s important. Bad writing days happen for everybody. If you don’t write one day then try and let it go, so it doesn’t drag you down. Also don’t feel you have to catch up in one day, catch up over a few days so it’s not like trying to climb such a big mountain.
Friends. We all need cheerleaders. If you haven’t got a writing buddy anon then feel free to hit my askbox anytime and I’ll be that person for you. I believe that you can write anything you want. The first time I wrote 50k in a month, I hadn’t written much of anything in about a year. That was actually also my first original story. While practice does make it easier, everybody has to start somewhere. You’re worried you won’t be able to do it but you won’t know until you try. Plus no matter how far you get, you’ll still have more than you started with and you’ll have learned things. You can do this! I believe in you.
