I’m trying this year, peeps; I’m really trying, but not to hit 50k words.
So if you don’t know, I never do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November because there’s no way in hell I can write 50,000 words in thirty days. Now, I do support NaNoWriMo’s mission of supporting creative writing classes in schools, and I often participate in Camp NaNoWriMo during the spring and summer.
The problem is that my brain doesn’t do well with writing during November. As a college professor, it is the busiest time for papers/grading, and between grading, the holidays, and some low key seasonal affect disorder, I don’t do well mentally during November on the best days. Add on top of that seeing people post, “I wrote 3000 words today!” and my brain shrivels up like a depressed, anxious raisin. In recent years, I’ve jokingly called it “No Words November” because, more often than not, I write very little in November, if anything.
It isn’t like I don’t want people to fail at NaNo or not pull those huge word counts, but seeing it en masse does something less than great to my psyche, especially as someone who can write 1,500 words on a really good day and 500-1000 words on a normal day. I am a slow writer, and the pace of true NaNoWriMo is basically impossible for me. This year, my only goal is to not have No Words November. I want to harness the synergy of NaNoWriMo and just write like I would any other month. That is literally my only writing goal for November. If I could write 10k-20k words in November I would be very happy because most years, it’s literally 5k or less, which is what I can write in a good week in April or July.
I actually bought a NaNoWriMo 2023 shirt to not only support the charity aspect but to remind myself that I need to keep my attitude up and not get discouraged by seeing giant word counts. Despite my smaller word counts, I have written and published nine books, a novella, and several short stories, so my process works for me. I never thought the smaller daily counts made me less of a writer, but it often shook my confidence because my process doesn’t match that of the visual majority (not that most do that but you see those word counts more during NaNo).
So what am I going to do to set myself up for success in November to avoid No Word November?
- manage my mental health by muting words/phrases regarding NaNoWriMo as necessary
- focus on my own paper, aka focus on my daily word, not other people’s
- have an idea of what I’m writing, at least somewhat, before November starts, so I am less likely to be aimless and panic
- be kind to myself because it is a hard month for me mentally and in terms of grading
If you do NaNoWriMo and actually hit the 50k and find the words usable at the end, how? I would love to know in the comments if you have any tips for being able to write so much and actually use it later.
If you aren’t doing NaNo, what are your writing plans for November?
Kara Jorgensen 
So I do rebel NaNo, which means I’m adding more words to an existing project rather than starting a new one, which definitely helps with hitting the wordcount since all the worldbuilding and character creation stuff has already been very solidly sorted and I already know where I’m going before the month even starts (usually).
At the moment I also explicitly take time off to write during the month, since in my current job I’m able to do that (provided I book that leave at the start of the year), which means that I can literally spend two weeks doing nothing /but/ writing – if I didn’t have the luck to be able to do that, I suspect I’d have crashed and burned last year (I /did/ crash and burn the year before, but it at least meant I got a couple of chapters written).
The other thing I do is gameify things – I use 4thewords for my writing in general, so I’m already incentivising myself to hit targets by way of completing quests, and last year for NaNo one of my partners went and got me a ink advent calendar, which I immediately repurposed as a ‘I get to open a new door every 2000 words’ incentive (which worked ridiculously well, because apparently a chunk of my writing brain is very highly motivated by the promise of shiny things).
I also throw out the ‘don’t edit’ rule, since that absolutely /doesn’t/ play well with my brain – if you force me to write without at least editing a little as I go, I get hung up on things that I want to change and can’t make myself move forward until I’ve fixed them.
All very good ideas. I really wish NaNo wasn’t in November. I feel like any other month, this might be feasible for me but not November. Too much work chaos, unfortunately.
The thing I love about NaNo is that it’s an excuse for me to try to seriously focus on writing, which is what I need. It’s just the month, you see. It’s not like it’s every Sunday afternoon or two nights a week, which somehow SOUND like a lot more than they are. But saying, “Oh, this is the time I give myself once a year to ignore the things I need to drop in order to make time,” feels much more palatable. I’m not antisocial, a bad mother, negligent spouse or daughter, I’m *doing NaNo*, which is recognizably different and socially acceptable. I realize this says more about my circumstances than it says about NaNo, but there you go. It works for me, and it lets ME give MYSELF permission to do something I want to do at the expense of other calls on my time and energy. (Within reasonable limits.) That’s huge, for me.