Braving NaNoWriMo to write a shaggy first draft

If you are thinking of embarking on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), here are some coaching tips to make your writing month a success – on your own terms.

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Transcript:

In this solo episode, I talk about NaNoWriMo or national novel writing month. This happens every November. It’s a free global writing challenge where you start and finish writing a novel in the month of November. I know that sounds really intimidating, but the goal is really just to get your shaggy first draft of 50,000 words or more done.

If that sounds like a lot. Well, it is. But the whole purpose behind this kind of accelerated focus is to get you to stop overthinking over-planning and editing as you write, the goal is just to get stuff down. Later, you can edit to your heart’s content.

I just coached somebody on how to prepare for NaNoWriMo and I want to share some thoughts about how you might prepare if you want to do this kind of focused challenge or anything like it. First I want to say, I really believe in this kind of writing freely and with abandon. It’s how I write every single thing. Later, I edit a piece at least two or three times.

What’s important to me about giving ourselves permission to write badly is this. When we let our words onto the page with the editor outside, trimming the hedges, doing something else but getting all in our space, our voice is so much more present. We’re writing from our truth, from our essence, from our own creative style.

This piece of writing voice it’s really what makes or breaks writing. If you don’t have your true voice on the page, honestly, the writing will be flaccid, uninteresting, and just not you. 

Let’s be real. It takes a lot longer than a month to write a novel. Writing a novel is a thing. If you’ve never written a book, you of course have a learning curve ahead of you, but that’s not a problem.

It’s not a problem to not know how to do something. Why would you know how to write a novel? Unless you’ve already written one. You have to do it in order to learn it. So I find the shaggy first draft incredibly useful to just get over those concerns about it being perfect or even making any sense on the first pass.

To be honest, I’ve done NaNoWriMo only once, mostly because I was writing the same dang novel for 12 years and the challenge is to draft something new. So for a long period of time, I was rarely in the ‘draft something new’ phase. I was in the revision phase. But the one time I did it was when I wanted to knock out a draft of a book that was on my list of things I wanted to write.

This project kept hovering on that list. And every time I would see it, I would think, oh, that someday I’ll do that. I don’t really like being a someday I’ll do that kind of person. I’m more of a, why don’t I do everything all at once right now, kind of person. So, here’s an idea that won’t go away. It seems to have potential, but it never will take priority on my list of things I’m doing. You know how it is, there’s an idea that won’t go away, but you don’t ever get to it. So I thought let’s crank it out in a month. I will use NaNoWriMo to contain the project to one month and then I’ll decide whether I want to go forward with it.

So you might be wondering what book I wrote in a month. The project was a book about the time I moved to Portugal. I fell in love with a hot young rock climber and had an amazing whirlwind romance that had a lot of highs and a lot of lows. This adventure took me all around Portugal. I saw some of the most gorgeous off-the-beaten paths. I drank a lot of tasty red wine and ate olives and cheese. And my God, I even became a rock climber.

But this person turned out to not be the love of my life. And one brisk October day saw me taking a 15-hour bus away from Lisbon crying my way all the way to Madrid. If this sounds like a good story, well, I have to say it is. That’s what I thought. I thought getting it out in writing would be at least cathartic. So I did it. And here’s what helped me succeed at getting 50,000, well, actually more like 60,000 shaggy words out, and these are some of the things I offered to the client I was coaching.

First, I want to say, write whatever project you want. While the point of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel who cares what you write? No writing hall monitor is coming by your screen to say, ah, Nope, that’s a memoir. That’s not allowed.

In the vein of doing what you want, consider why you chose the project you want to focus on. What’s important about that now? What do you imagine you will gain from spending a month of your life on it? Do a short free-write to clarify your purpose and intention. That will help you through any dark days when you question WTF are you doing this anyway.

Do daily timed writing sprints. I lead online writing workshops where we do three timed free-writing sprints of 10, 15, and 20 minutes. This adds up to 45 minutes of writing. In that time I can typically get out 2,500 words total.

So if you do that every day for 30 days, that gives you 75,000 words. Or more realistically, a few days of wiggle room when you might not be so productive,

You might want to buddy up with a writing buddy. I teamed up with someone else who was writing a book every day after I wrote I would text him that I had done the writing and he would respond that he had done his writing too. It was great accountability, but it was also camaraderie. And sometimes we’d share a little bit more than I just did it.

You might consider padding your month with self-care. Prepare ahead of time. Act as if you’re going on a month-long writing retreat. Maybe you cook up a bunch of meals and have them in the freezer or get someone else in your household to take up some of the household chores a couple of days a week that month.

What are the things that you need around you to make it super easy? Maybe there’s some clutter to clear. Maybe there’s a writing nook you need to set up. Act as if this month is a special time. Because it is and get yourself ready for it.

Also in that vein of preparing for a writing retreat, take anything off your calendar that’s not essential. You might limit your news reading. You might change up some of the things that you don’t really need to do. Just look at what you can clear off your calendar, but definitely keep exercise on your to-do list because you want to stay in good form. You want to feel that you have your energy for doing the work.

You might want to have a working outline and some character ideas laid out before you start the writing month. You might want to gather other pieces that are helpful for the writing. For instance, I gathered my journals and photographs that I had from that time, and that helped me with the details and the timeline and remembering some of the events. And from that, I was able to easily write them with some detail.

You might consider giving yourself a set of prompts to work from you. You don’t have to write your book chronologically. You can choose your prompts or scenes, and then you can draw them at random. You could put them on cards and pull one at random, or just use a list and write them. That way you have a sense of surprise and freshness in your writing.

I would say, don’t try to control the writing too much. As I mentioned earlier, voice is the most important thing. So you want to let your voice come through and that will bring the best freshest. I would say if there’s a need to control something, dialed down the static about how good the writing is. If it’s going to be a waste of time, will this end up in the book? Will it not end up in the book?

I recently pulled that 60,000-word NaNoWriMo manuscript out of the drawer, and I looked through it to see what was there. I know when I finished it at the time I felt done with it and I didn’t need to do anything with it, but now I’m considering giving myself, November and December to go in and revise it. I noticed that there is a lot of work to be done, but it still feels like I’m not starting from scratch, that I have something to work with and that there is some good material in there. And that helps me rather than starting from the blank page.

What you will have at the end of the month is hopefully 50,000 words or more. It doesn’t matter. Even if you only get to 20,000, it’s more than what you had at the beginning of the month.

NaNoWriMo will give you a solid sense of your writing stride. How long can you write for? When does it tip into diminishing returns? Where do you write best? Standing, sitting on paper or keyboard?

Use this month to give yourself a lived experience in your writer’s life. And you’ll see what works for you and what doesn’t. That in itself is so valuable, just knowing yourself as a writer. Make it fun, make it an experience.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Leave a comment here, letting us know what creative project you’re devoting yourself to in November. I hope this has been useful for you and given you a few ideas for how to frame NaNoWriMo and make November a super successful writing time for you.