How to Survive Week 2 of NaNoWriMo

Well. NaNoWriMo 2014 is officially one week in. There’s been 7 days of writing (or x number of days of wordage, subtracted from y number of days of misery and panic, depending on how you’re going). There’s also been coffee, pain, joy, inspiration, and huge community efforts to keep each other on track, which is awesome.

Now, although I can’t participate in NaNoWriMo normally this year, I thought I’d still try to cheer everyone on from the sidelines. As someone in the very unique position of having hit my 50,000 words very, very recently, and having the memory of gritting my teeth and dragging every word out slowly from my Muse’s eviscerated corpse grasp still fresh in my mind, here’s my tips on how to survive Week 2 0f NaNoWriMo.

1. Don’t Compare Yourself to Anyone Else (unless it helps you)

Everyone writes and learns differently. Some amazing people were able to hit 50,000 words in one day. Others are still sitting on 0 words, or a few thousand, or just struggling to keep up. This tip obviously applies more to people tending towards the second group.

Just…

Stop.

Breathe.

Those other people. The ones who seem to be gloriously riding in the sunlight on rainbow-spouting unicorns. They aren’t writing your story. It’s an old truism that every idea under the sun has been already thought of in some way, shape or form. But what makes your story special is that nobody else can write it like you, with your style and execution.

So there’s honestly no point comparing. NaNoWriMo is about your own challenge, so the only person you’re competing against is that asshole in your head who says you can’t do it. Set your own goals, and genuinely reward yourself when you hit them.

That said, comparing yourself to others can help you if you’re:

1. Competitive, or
2. Using it to set a bar for yourself.

Point 1 is fairly self-explanatory, I think (aaargh! My writing buddy is on 2000 words today, I’m going to write 2003 so I can be Grand Leader of the Writing Scoreboard). Point 2 was how I managed to see 5,000 words a day as something achievable, and indeed something that I should be able to achieve in 3 hours.

2. Don’t Rely on Inspiration

Again, I think there are some people who will be writing full steam ahead, either following an amazingly written plan or pantsing it with extreme glee and prejudice. And then there will be some people who are approaching exhaustion. That great idea you had that seemed so brain-splittingly awesome at the beginning of the week? Starting to look a lot like sad, canine regret.

Just…

Stop.

Breathe.

Some ideas need to be binned, yes. But I’m going to guess that there was a reason you decided to commit yourself at the start of the week to writing this story in particular. So don’t give up hope yet. There’s still a number of things you can do to reconnect with the story, depending on how you tick as an author. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Go back to the core idea that excited you: It might be an image (A woman in a black cloak, her eyes gazing over a brooding sea), a song, an idea (The main character must break a curse and save the clockwork automaton from going supernova) or anything. Go back to that core idea, and think about the feeling you get from it. What excited you. Dig and sift, until you excavate that idea and all of your feelings towards it, and see if that gives you anything to continue your story with.
2. Hunt Inspiration: Don’t rely on just feeling inspired to write at the time you’ve allotted yourself to write. If you’re feeling dry, actively go out and look for inspiration. Make a list of your favourite books/movies/computer games/songs/whatever piece of entertainment you fancy. Jot down some of the reasons why you like it, eg. cool scenes, makes me feel shivery, love the characters, etc. Go into detail, until cool scenes becomes I really, really loved it when they invaded the castle with magic and lightning spears. See if you can relate anything back.
3. Pick up a craft book: What I mean is a book on writing, a book that supplies you with the tools to craft a story. Often they will have some great, simple, step-by-step ideas that will spark something inside your own head. Introduce a challenge, you say? Ooh, how about a swashbuckling traitor? Some fantastic ones are James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers, Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer, and Stephen King’s On Writing.

3. Just Write

This one’s a classic, and I think it’s for a reason. If you’re facing writer’s block, or you’re scared that things aren’t going the way you wanted to, or you feel like what you’re writing is the most disastrous thing to ever happy to the written word… well you can still get to 50,000 words or whatever your goal is.

Trust me. I know.

I can say so many things that have already been said by better writers than I. So I’ll simply leave you with this quote by Enid Bagnold:

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”

Write to create. Write to write. You’ve embarked on this journey, and if you give up, nobody’s going to stop you. So write for yourself, even if it’s the Worst Thing Ever(TM). In fact, if it is The Worst Thing Ever(TM) that’s great – writing is a learning process, and if you see this one through, then the next thing you write will suck slightly less, and the next one after that will keep sucking less, until you stop sucking and start being a little more awesome with everything you do.

Best of luck, and feel free to share your favourite ways to keep motivated below!