Preparing Before NaNoWriMo

We only have a few more weeks before NaNoWriMo comes knocking at our doors, asking for our utmost dedication and creativity for the 50,000 word count. NaNo guest Sydney Salter encourages us to prepare and plan accordingly on what we want to do with our novels when we finish. 

I’ve pushed myself to the 50,000-word finish line for six NaNoWriMo novels—My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters and Swoon At Your Own Risk eventually got published. I polished the other manuscripts into market-ready shape, should the market ever be ready for a YA mummy romcom. I had fun writing those unsold stories and learned a lot. No regrets. I told stories that I wanted to tell. 

It’s that sixth manuscript. I wrote 50,003 words and never opened the manuscript again. It’s still on my computer file with a 2012 date stamp. 

That’s the novel I wrote by the seat of my pants. I dove into the story with a big voice and a vague notion of where it might go. And I struggled. One day I padded my word count with the character’s grocery list. She needed A LOT of stuff at the store! Ugh. The plot, characters, setting—all of it is a big fat mess.

Not that a mess is a bad thing for a NaNo novel. To reach that 50,000 words in 30 days, you can’t go back and fix stuff. That’s one of the best parts of fast writing. You push yourself through some rough patches, making notes about stuff to fix later. 

The problem occurs when you make such a mess that the thought of rewriting everything makes you want to do anything else—like scrub your bathroom, or something. The other sad fact is that 50,000 words usually leaves you in the perilous middle of a full-length novel. After November you have to find the excitement to write thousands and thousands of words to get to that magic phrase: The End. 

My 2012 NaNo experience was so bad that I waited seven years before trying again. I wrote slowly for years. I missed out on creating that fast draft that exists to be revised into something shiny and good. Writing slowly gets the job done, eventually. But slowly.

We’re not here to write slow. We’re here to get a big chunk of a novel written! 

A little preparation can go a long way to making November a fun and productive writing month. Right now I’m thinking about my main character. His sidekick. His enemies. I’m thinking about what he thinks he wants versus what he needs. I’m jotting down ideas for great scenes. I plan to create a loose outline. I know that magic happens during the writing process, so I won’t be rigid about my planned scenes, but if I’m ever feeling lost, I’ll have something to write about. You know, besides groceries. 

I’m not going to do it alone, either. I’ll look to all the great info here at NaNoWriMo and I’ll pick a writing craft book to accompany me through this first draft. So many writing exercises have turned into really great scenes in my stories. 

Every NaNo is different just like every story is different. But I do know that taking some time to prepare can leave you in a better place when you hit that delicious 50,000 word mark. You want to write something that you are excited to finish and revise. Let’s get ready to write some great stories!  

Sydney Salter’s novels include My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters, Jungle Crossing, and Swoon At Your Own Risk. Sydney lives in Utah with her husband and assorted dogs and cats. Her proudest NaNoWriMo moment: baking six pies AND writing 1,667 words on Thanksgiving Day. You can visit her website and find her on Instagram: @sydney_salter  

Top Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash