Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: Write the Joy

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, author Rebecca Roanhorse is here to share her advice on how to overcome some of NaNo’s obstacles:

It’s week three of NaNoWriMo, and you are either: 

deep into the slog, floundering helpless and feeling that you’ll never catch up, or a few thousand words from the finish line, victory in your grasp! 

Most of us are either at number one or two, with a few industrious souls claiming number three. But no matter where you are in this wild writing month, take a moment and congratulate yourself. You’ve made it this far. You have dared something very few people ever dare and given it your all.

And now, staring down Week Three, maybe you’re ready to quit.

Because writing a novel is not as fun as you first thought it would be, is it? In fact, it’s a lot harder, and maybe a lot more boring. Your daily word count goal is feeling like a punishment. You finish it and wake up the next day to re-experience the same dread again. Unless you’re writing a horror story, that’s not exactly motivating.

So, I’m here to remind you to find the joy again. 

Remember how you felt on November 1st? You were nervous, unsure, but brimming with ideas. You had a setting, a journey, a possible ending. But most of all, you couldn’t wait to meet your characters. You knew their names, first and last. Maybe you did one of those lengthy character brainstorming sheets and knew their habits, likes and dislikes, favorite colors, childhood pets. You couldn’t wait for all your characters to meet each other and interact. They were going to go on adventures or solve mysteries or fall in love or commit murders or…what? No murders? Just me? Okay.

Anyway, no matter what you were dreaming up for your characters, if you are anything like me, you had some of your favorite potential scenes already visualized in your mind. That final showdown with the villain, that awkward first kiss, that moment your main character realizes they had an evil twin. No evil twin? That’s just me, too? Fine.

“It’s your story. You don’t have to write anything you don’t want to write.”

Okay, well, you knew you had some great scenes in your head, whatever they were, but here you are, studiously following your outlines (you did outline, didn’t you?), pushing through the soggy middle of your draft, feeling like those fun parts you imagined will never come or have long passed you by. Well, here’s my Week Three advice for you:

Ditch the boring parts.

That’s right. It’s your story. You don’t have to write anything you don’t want to write, and if week three has turned into trying to remember why you started this impossible thing in the first place, stop making it impossible. Go write the scenes you first dreamed of way back at the beginning of the month. Write the fight scene, the kiss, the best friends’ banter, the murder! If you already wrote the bet parts, make up some new best parts. (You’re supposed to save the best for last, anyway.) Make writing fun, again. Write something just for you that will make you and only you happy. Embrace that garbage ship, lovingly detail that planetary landscape, indulge in that dream sequence with the killer deer… again, that’s only me, isn’t it? I knew that.

Let Week Three be the week that reminds you why you love writing. Week Four will be here soon enough to remind you why it’s hard work, again.

Rebecca Roanhorse is a Nebula and Hugo Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer. Her novel Trail of Lightning, Book #1 in the Sixth World Series (Saga Press), is available now. Book #2, Storm of Locusts, is out April 2019. Her middle grade novel, Race to the Sun (Rick Riordan Presents), drops Fall 2019. She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pug.