NaNo Coach: Lose Yourself In the Language

This season we’ve brought on published authors to serve as NaNo Coaches to help guide you to reaching 50,000 words. Our second week’s NaNo Coach, Kristyn Kusek Lewis, shares her words of wisdom below:

Six years ago, when a fellow writer friend suggested we do NaNoWriMo together, my response was along the lines of “You’ve lost your damn mind,” but not quite that polite.

I had just spent a year working on the draft of a novel that ultimately never worked, and I had conceded, finally, to lay the thing to rest in my file cabinet, where it remains. But my friend, wise soul that she is, knew that what I needed in that moment was to start working on something else. She was right, because if you’ve been at this a while, you know: The only way to feel better about your writing is to write some more.

And, so.

I had a thread of an idea, something I’d been knocking around for a while, and I went with it. That December, when I looked back at what I’d written, I did so mostly through my fingers. I had 50,000 words, yes, but it was far from a novel. There were extraneous characters, shaky subplots that dribbled off into nothing… it was, essentially, a highly protracted brainstorm. And yet, I was thrilled. I had the raw material for what would eventually become my debut novel.

My point is this: NaNoWriMo is not Novel-O-Matic. You don’t get to November 30 and, ta-da, a book! No, what I want you to glean from this month is what November gave me, which is the joy of writing for the sake of the exercise itself.

Take the pressure off. I hereby give you permission to wing it.

Make this experience simply about spilling words out onto the page. How you reach your 50K is up to you: Write the ending first. Abandon your outlines. Change course mid-scene. So the dialogue goes on for days? Good! It’s probably helping you get to know your characters. You’ve suddenly realized that your big tie-it-all-together scene is junk? Great! Better now than six drafts from now.

Writing a novel in a month is lunacy, so let yourself go a little crazy. Go to the page without any expectations. Lose yourself in the language. Have fun. Play. And in December, or later, when you look back at what you produced, you might just find that you have the makings for something wonderful. I wish you the very best of luck. 

Kristyn Kusek Lewis is the author of How Lucky You Are (Grand Central), which was a Target Emerging Authors Pick. A former magazine editor, Lewis is an established magazine writer who has written for many national publications including the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Reader’s Digest, Glamour, and many more. Her next novel, a love story about two doctors, a tragic accident, and the power of forgiveness, is due out from Grand Central in early 2015. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her family. 

Top photo modified from one taken by hownowdesign.