Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: How to Finish Your First Draft

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, our NaNo Coaches are here to help guide you through November! Today, author Aiden Thomas is here to share some advice on pushing through to the end of November:

Hello Friends! My name is Aiden Thomas, I am the New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys and I’m your Nano Coach for the dreaded week 3 of National Novel Writing Month!

I think most authors would agree that they hit a wall around the 30K mark of their manuscript. You’ve ridden out the high and novelty of Week 1; Week 2 things started to get tricky as you got deeper into your plot; and now you’re on Week 3. Right about now, your stakes are high, your character is facing some challenges, and very likely so are you. At this point it’s easy to get stuck, so I wanted to give you some advice on how to keep pushing forward.

The first and most important thing to realize is that your rough draft will never live up to your vision—and it’s not supposed to! First drafts are supposed to be crappy. The story you have in your head will never be exactly as you want it on the page the first time, and especially not in 30 days! Right now, you just need to get the words down. Stories become beautiful books with revisions, not during a fast draft!

So, how do you keep pushing forward and get that crappy rough draft done so you can hit your NaNoWriMo goal and start revising? I’ve got some tips!

1. Talk it Out

The most helpful resource to me as an author are my writing friends and critique partners! When I get stuck, I usually send them a Google Doc with the challenges I’m facing and we talk them through and come up with solutions. About half the time, I don’t even take their advice, but just bouncing ideas around helps me come up with an answer! Sometimes getting out of your own head and just talking it out with someone—even someone who isn’t a writer!—can give you the inspiration you need to break through writer’s block.

2. Bullet Points

Okay, this is lowkey Plotter propaganda, BUT JUST BEAR WITH ME! I often get stuck with the crushing stress of hitting my writing goal to the point where I freeze up, unable to move forward. Looking at the larger plot can be totally overwhelming, so try focusing smaller accomplishments that feel more manageable. By taking it one scene at a time and really breaking down the sequence of events, you’re setting yourself up for success by hitting achievable goals!

3. Take Note

Plot holes are a total pain and can pop up out of nowhere! When you figure out there’s a problem with your plot, or maybe just a detail you realized needs to be changed 20,000 words earlier, don’t get distracted! When that happens, take note of it (either leaving a comment within the manuscript or writing a list) and fix it during the next draft. You probably want to fix it immediately, but now is not the time! This is a crappy first draft, remember? And you’re on a deadline! 

4. Focus Time

Writing sprints are a whole thing in the NaNoWriMo community, but I find them intimidating! The pressure to write a bunch of words quickly in a set amount of time sometimes just makes me freeze up completely and I get nothing written! A lot of folks don’t work well under that kind of stress, especially if you’re “competing” with friends to get the highest word count. What I find MUCH more helpful are doing “focuses”. I’ll pick an amount of time (usually 30 minutes) and commit to doing nothing but writing for those 30 minutes, no distractions! It takes some of the pressure off and it’s a lot easier to reason with myself to get writing done if it’s “just for 30 minutes.” After the focus time, I can get a snack or mess around on Twitter, but for those 30 minutes I am entirely invested in writing!

The most important thing to remember is that by November 30th—regardless of if you hit 50K or not—you will have gotten more of your story written than you did November 1st, and that’s still a success! Take a deep breath, try not to put too much pressure on yourself, and keep moving forward.

Aiden Thomas is a New York Times Bestselling author with an MFA in Creative Writing. Originally from Oakland, California, they now make their home in Portland, Oregon. As a queer, trans, Latinx, Aiden advocates strongly for diverse representation in all media. Aiden’s special talents include: quoting The Office, finishing sentences with “is my FAVORITE”, and killing spiders. Aiden is notorious for not being able to guess the endings of books and movies, and organizes their bookshelves by color.