Guest Post: Joya Fields – NaNoWriMo: Week Two Means Keep Up the Great Work
Stay strong, flex those wrists and…keep writing!
It’s the second week of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Your goal is 50,000 words and where do you stand so far? Maybe you’re ahead of your projected word count (yay you!) and raring to write more. Maybe you’re dragging your feet, trying to get a feel for the story that isn’t coming out as fast as you’d planned (no worries you can do it!).
Congratulations. You’ve finished the “ready, set, go!” part of NaNoWriMo. There’s no right or wrong way to feel after the first week, there’s only this: keep going. Even if you write your grocery shopping list over and over again. Even if your characters start to do really stupid things and you want to stop the story and figure it out. Nope. Keep going. Stop thinking. Whatever you do, don’t backspace.
One way to stop over thinking your writing is to type with your eyes closed and keep your fingers moving. It might feel weird at first, but there’s a good chance that your closed eyes will help you visualize the characters and their setting more clearly. This works well, especially if you’re a visual person, because whether you write at a coffee shop or the seclusion of your office, it blocks out all of the stimuli of distractions around you. All you see is your story. A quick caution: peek at the screen every once in a while, otherwise your fingers could be on the wrong keys and you won’t be able to decipher this awesome page of incredibly creative writing later.
NaNoWriMo is about two things: setting goals and letting go. You’ve joined NaNo (if not…there’s still time: NaNoWriMo Website), so you’ve set that goal of 50,000 words by the end of November. So there! Go you! You get a gold star in the goal department. NaNo site even does all of the math for you so you know how many words you have to write every day to meet your monthly word count goal. So all you have to do is write.
Which is where the other side of NaNo comes into play: letting go. Proper spelling? Uh-uh…ditch it. Do you hear your elementary school teacher yelling as you blast out words so fast that you forget commas and periods? Picture her with duct tape on her mouth and shut her up (sorry teachers…we’ll remember what you taught us later… in the editing phase). Let the words pour out of your head and through your fingers without censor. Write so fast that the thought appears on your screen before you even consciously realize what happened. Write without caution.
Caution stilts us. That inner editor who wants everything to be perfect in the first draft. What will my family/friends/critique partners think of this? This is crap. Who cares! They won’t see it until you fix it (later…much later. Definitely not during November). It’s you and your book. You and your characters. And they’re the only ones who matter.
Here’s hoping that your hands hit the keys as fast as the ideas pop into your head. Keep going. Keep writing. Hang on to that goal and reach it. Know you can do it and you will. My last release was a NaNoWriMo book. I wrote it in a month. You can too!
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