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For those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo is the very clunky acronym for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, the goal is to write a novel - defined here as 50,000 words - in thirty days, during November. The official NaNoWriMo website is hugely helpful because it allows you to connect with other writers, receive pep talks from amazing authors (including John Green, Markus Zusak, and Rainbow Rowell), and measure your progress.
BUT. This progress-measuring has two sides. Sure, it allows you to see how much you've written, and the bar graph makes it easy to calculate how much more you should write, but sometimes it can be very depressing.
You'll be happily writing for hours (or at least a few minutes), filling up pages and pages (well, maybe one page), and you'll confidently click over to enter your progress onto your graph.You'll wait while it's loading, positive that you've already passed your daily word goal, when - what do you mean I've only written 29 words?? That horrible little blue line barely even rose with your number. Well, never fear. I have several great, slightly-cheating tips to help lift your word count.
1. Song lyrics. This actually is probably real cheating, especially if it's a song you didn't write ... but as long as it (kind of, sort of) affects your story, I think it's okay. For example, your character could be listening to a song, then suddenly realize how it relates to her life and be motivated to, I don't know, go on a walk or something, whatever characters do. Plus, if the chorus gets stuck in her head, she can keep singing it during the whole book, which will add just a few extra words.
2. Skip contractions. This is also totally cheating and doesn't help your story move along at all...but come on, sometimes you just need five more words. Don't becomes do not, won't becomes will not, and wouldn't've (which may or may not be a real word) becomes would not have. Sure, nobody talks like that in real life, but this is your story and, who knows, maybe contractions are illegal in your fictional world.
3. Introspective scenes. My book doesn't have any plot (seriously, no plot at all. How did this happen?) so quite a few of my characters spend entire chapters sitting in their rooms questioning their existence and picking their nose (this is a real thing that really happened in my book. Don't judge me).
4. Pointless tasks. Are you procrastinating from writing? Then have your character procrastinate from doing whatever he's supposed to be doing. You can write him doing exactly the same thing that you're doing at the same time as you're doing it - which not only is very easy and doesn't require a lot of thought, it also is very Inception-y and could lead to some kind of plot point about dreams and reality or something.
5. Dreams. Give your character a very detailed, rambling, nonsensical dream - because that's what dreams are, and the best books echo reality, right? Right. So it's totally okay to spend three pages describing talking squirrels. And maybe the dream could be some detailed fore-shadow-y metaphor for the rest of the story.
6. Write talkative characters. I am convinced that Miss Bates was only included in Emma because Jane Austen was participating in NaNoWriMo and needed an extra boost. Last year, during the final week of NaNoWriMo, I added a character who said everything twice. Really. But I completed my novel.
7. Give up (but not really). Accept that your book probably won't be very good - which, let's face it, it probably won't be. Trying to cram as many words on the page in as short a time as possible might not create a masterpiece - but you will get lots of valuable practice, and you might create a character, setting, or storyline that you love and will come back to later. Don't worry about the quality of your words, just try to write something - and it'll still be more than you would have if you hadn't written it. (That sentence is an example of the quality of my entire novel. Learn from this and lower your own expectations).
Generally when I write, I try to make it the best it can be, and I spend twice as much time editing as I do writing. This usually results with me never writing anything at all. During NaNoWriMo, though, I can just let all of that go. My expectations for this book are exceedingly low, but I will finish it, and maybe I'll learn something from it. If I ever read it again, I'll probably laugh, but I might find something worth keeping too - and I'll definitely be glad I wrote this pile of 50,000 words.
~Maya
p.s. Full disclosure: this entire blog post was written as procrastination from writing my novel, and I'm currently 4,597 words below my word count goal for the day, so I really have no idea what I'm talking about and you shouldn't follow any of my advice. Thanks bye.
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