NNWM (Or Any Writing) Pep-talk
Consistency
We think of the consistent writer as one who writes every day, plugging away word by word and sentence by sentence, slowly but surely completing a novel. Surely many writers are like this. But if you think of consistency as an everyday, bit-by-bit endeavor, then many writers aren’t what one would call “consistent” in their practice.
The creative process is different for everyone, and some writers perform their craft in short, powerful bursts instead. A story bangs around in this type of writer’s head until she has a sudden epiphany and writes furiously until that story has gotten out of her head and onto the page. Most of us have a writing practice somewhere in-between.
So What Kind of Writer Are You?
Are you writing on your lunch hour? Getting up an hour early each day to write in the morning? Avoiding Netflix like a bad romantic partner so you can spend your binge-watching time on your novel?
Are you writing in the dark? Are you writing in a park?
By its nature, NaNoWriMo is a “short burst” kind of writing experience, but we hope that it helps you develop a consistent writing practice – whether consistency is, for you, the occasional 24-hour caffeine-fueled sleepless weekend of writing until your eyes bleed, or a 30-minutes-every-day steady march to your finish line. One of the benefits of doing NaNoWriMo is figuring out what kind of writer you are by trying out different techniques to help you in your race to that 50,000th word.
With that in mind, we encourage you to spend the month experimenting with different techniques. If what you’ve done up until now feels stale, or if you’ve fallen off altogether, try something new. Remember, one of the goals of NaNoWriMo is to prove to yourself that you CAN make room for writing in your life.
Writing: A Habit-Forming Activity
You’ve probably read about studies of creating and breaking habits. If you think about it, writing is just another habit, like brushing your teeth every night before bed, or jogging a couple of miles after work a few times a week, or, you know, eating chocolate. Researchers disagree on exactly how long it takes, but they agree that if one can keep a habit going for some few-weeklong period, one will often be able to sustain that habit.
You don't need to Margaret Hamilton sustain the habit or anything.
So even if you’re already behind, and even if you know there’s no way short of supernatural intervention – time warps, super-brain powers, the ability to live without sleep or food or human interaction – that you’ll be able to “win” this year, if you make it your goal to write every day, no matter how little you put on the page, maybe this month will feel like a win without hitting word 50,000.
And you can reward yourself. With Chocolate.
