How Can I Possibly Write a Novel in 30 Days?



You are reading page #3 of EelKat's Guide to NaNoWriMo. If you have just starting reading this, please go back to Page 1 to read this entire 40 page article from it's beginning.

Write 1,667 Words A Day

Write 1667 words a day. This can not be over stressed enough. In order to reach 50,000 in 30 days you must write a bare minimum of 1,667 word per day. You can (and should) write more than that per day, but whatever you do: DO NOT WRITE LESS!

Write EVERY DAY!

This is even more important than writing 1,667 word per day: WRITE EVERY DAY!

This can not be stressed enough. Writing every day is the true secret to winning NaNoWriMo. Not writing every day is the #1 reason why 65,000 people failed to reach 50k last year.

They wrote a bunch on day one.

Wrote a little bit less on day two.

Skipped day three thinking "I'll write double tomorrow."

Skipped day four thinking: "Well it's only two days that I missed and I still have the rest of the month to finish."

Day 20 came along and they still had only written 10k and now had 40k left to write in 10 days: That's 4,000 words a day.

I have no problems writing 4,000 words a day, I can easily write 10,000 a day. But you know why I can do that? Because I've been writing for 27 years, and I write every day, and the more days you write, the easier it becomes to write and in the end the more words you write per day!

For someone new to writing though, it's pretty hard to reach 1,000 words a day, and that is why writing EVERY DAY is so very, very, VERY important.

Write every day, even if you're ahead.

It is a common folly to start out writing 3,000 - 5,000 words the first day. Not that writing 3,000 - 5,000 words in one day is a folly, it's pretty good, and you should go right ahead and do it. The folly of this is that many newbies look at that and say: "That's 3 days worth of writing, I can take a break tomorrow."

Tomorrow comes and goes. Than so does the next day. And the next. And than Thanksgiving rolled around and you realize, you have 4 days left to write and now you are really in a bind.

Writing a bunch each day for the first few days is good, but never let that be a reason why you skip a day of writing. Getting ahead is easy, falling behind is even easier, and catching up once you've fallen behind is pretty hard. So, write every day, even if you're ahead.

Write every day, even if you don't feel like it

Write every day, even if you don't feel like it.

Every writer has a day when they wake up a say:"I don't feel like writing today." But you know what, if you are a career writer; a writer who writes as a career, you can't do that.

Why?

Well, how many times have you woken up and wished you didn't have to go to work? But did you call your boss and tell him: "I'm sleeping in today, sorry, I'll come to work tomorrow." No, you didn't, because you'd have been fired. You got up and you went to work anyways, because that's what you have to do.

Writing is the same thing. You don't write, you don't get paid. You can not take a day off from work, even when you work at home as a writer.

The same thing goes for NaNoWriMo. You don't work, you don't win. You got to work at it every day to win.

Write every day, even if you REALLY don't feel like it.


The End?

No, you have NOT reached the end of this article! What you have reached is the end of what it currently online. The rest is coming, hopefully it'll be on here in a day or three so keep checking back. I will remove this message at the same time I put the rest of it online.

As my long time readers will already know a server crash took down most of the old free-hosted site on June 4, 2013 (which was online since 1997 and had reached 6,000+ pages). Thankfully everything was saved on a separate hard-drive and the site is being rebuilt with a new host and for the first time on it's own domain. YAY!

I am currently moving all 6,000 questions&answer articles to this site one page at a time, at a rate of about 4 to 7 new pages being added each day, so be patient. Not all links are yet clickable. This process started on September 2, 2013 and will be ongoing at least through to January 2014. (And it may be well into 2017 before all 6,000 pages will be back online if I continue at this rate of 5 a day.)













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