by Daniela I. Norris

Every November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. First created in 1999 by writer Chris Baty with 21 participants in San Francisco, it has now turned into a global event including thousands of writers from all over the world. You are welcome to participate even if you are not American and even if you don’t write in English - as long as you are game for this very Californian concept, which I absolutely adore.

If you are an aspiring writer and haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo, google it quickly or check out their website www.nanowrimo.org

The bottom line is to encourage writers to take the month of November in order to jot down the first draft of a novel – a minimum of 50,000 words. That is precisely 1666.6 words a day if you write every day – more per day if you skip the odd day here and there, like most of us do.

While 1666.6 words a day are not that hard to achieve for most writers, maintaining the effort for 30 days running can be immensely challenging. Here are seven tips that could help you achieve your objective:

1) Carve out your writing time in advance – write it your diary, block it in your Google calendar or put your schedule somewhere visible, such as your bathroom mirror or magneted to your fridge.

2) Tell your friends and family that you are doing this crazy experiment, and that you’ll see them in December. This serves a double purpose: they will hopefully minimize requests from you and won’t be temping you with distractions such as an evening out, plus - you will then need to prove to them that you’re someone who sticks to their goals and actually finish the damn thing.

3) Don’t worry about editing. A first draft is about getting an idea down, not about writing a masterpiece. Then you can take an entire year, or more, to work on your draft and improve it. 50,000 words can always be improved upon, while zero words can’t.

4) Stack your cupboard and fridge with healthy snacks, such as whole grain ready-meals, cereal and protein bars, fruit and veg every few days and – if you're like me - several kilograms of chocolate. Going shopping takes time and if you ain’t lucky enough to have someone who can do it for you – stack up.

5) Set a designated time for writing emails and surfing the Internet if you must – don’t be tempted to do it on your writing time. Whether you have a full-time job or if you are a lucky student with many free hours during the day – you stand the same chance of completing your objective if you can carve out 3 writing hours every day, with minimum distraction and maximum focus.

6) Find a clear and inspiring writing space if you don’t already have one. Many writers write in a cluttered space and this is fine if that's what works for you, but going to Starbucks or a lobby of a hotel to write every single day of November is fine too, as long as it is a place where clutter – physical and mental – are minimal.

7) Last but not least – just write. It doesn’t matter what comes out – as long as something does. Most writers get discouraged by the tenth or twelfth day because they think their work is not good enough, or because they fall behind on the planned schedule and give up.

I finished my first novel on NaNoWriMo some seven years back. It never got published, but it got my creative juices flowing and I proved to myself that I can start - and finish - a novel. I’ve tried to write 50,000 words for the past six years, during NaNoWriMo - and managed only 15,000-20,000 each time. But that's ok, as it helped the progress of the books I’ve been working on for the past six years. This year, I aim to complete the first draft of the sequel to my first published novel, Recognitions. Whether I’ll manage to complete this feat by the end of November remains to be seen – so far I am a little behind schedule – but one thing's for certain – my word count and storyline will both be much better off at the end of November, than they were just a week back, at the end of October. So here's to your upcoming novel and as NaNoWriMo addicts often say - WRITE ON!

Daniela I. Norris’ first novel, Recognitions, will be out from Roundfire Books in January 2016.  You can pre-order the paperback online now (AMAZON US AMAZON UK_) Daniela is currently working on the sequel, titled Premonitions.

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